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I have a book comparing the Indo-European ans Semitic languages written by Professor Saul Levin. I'd like to read that book. John McWhorter writes of a notion that Germanic strong verbs, verbs that represent tense with an ablaut series, derive from interaction with some unnamed Semitic language.
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John McWhorter writes of a notion that Germanic strong verbs, verbs that represent tense with an ablaut series, derive from interaction with some unnamed Semitic language.
He is a contrarian, ain't he? And where did the un-named Semitic language borrow it from? Germanic ablaut looks a lot like Indo-European ablaut in general, a lot of which happens through the language family. Where did Latin borrow it from? (cf. capio, cepi)?
But seriously, I think that the ablaut was phonological at first, and only later came to be re-analyzed as morphological (i.e., having to do with tense). It's the sort of thing that happens often enough cross-linguistically that it has a name: grammaticalization.
Last edited by zmjezhd; 09/27/11 01:04 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Hey, surprise! Thisyad I think lives on in the dutch slang word 'jat' = hand. In informal speech they say: Keep your 'jatten' off it! = hands off! It is verbed to 'jatten' = nick, steal.
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Thank you for the proof Goof!y
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I believe McWhorter had a bunch of verbs that didn't have cognates in non-Germanic IE languages. They were all strong and matched Semitic roots. And my question about, e.g., capio, cepi would be whether those are examples of ablaut or umlaut. I don't know much of anything about proto-Latin to have any idea myself.
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I believe McWhorter had a bunch of verbs that didn't have cognates in non-Germanic IE languages. They were all strong and matched Semitic roots.
So, that means that Proto-Germanic came into contact with a Semitic language. Which one? And how did all those other IE languages get ablaut which most historical linguists trace back to PIE?
Basically, umlaut is the changing of a vowel because in a subsequent syllable there is an i. Ablaut had to do with the variation in vowels (such as that in Germanic strong verbs) caused by some other phonological process, e.g., the shifting of tone or stress (depending on when it happened).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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McWhorter also suggests that "do" insertion and progressive "-ing" are borrowings from Celtic.
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McWhorter also suggests that "do" insertion and progressive "-ing" are borrowings from Celtic.
Yeah, and I have questioned that, too, but it has its champions here-abouts, too.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I believe McWhorter had a bunch of verbs that didn't have cognates in non-Germanic IE languages. They were all strong and matched Semitic roots.
So, that means that Proto-Germanic came into contact with a Semitic language. Which one? And how did all those other IE languages get ablaut which most historical linguists trace back to PIE?
Basically, umlaut is the changing of a vowel because in a subsequent syllable there is an i. Ablaut had to do with the variation in vowels (such as that in Germanic strong verbs) caused by some other phonological process, e.g., the shifting of tone or stress (depending on when it happened). Do other IE languages use ablaut to indicate verb tense? As to which Semitic language McWhorter suggests loaned Germanic verb-tense ablaut I think he had some ideas but didn't get too deeply in to it in his Bastard Language, which is where I learned about this idea of his. He did suggest that there was evidence from some other discipline of a candidate. He has not responded to my Fb friend request.
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Do other IE languages use ablaut to indicate verb tense?
It occurs in the verbal systems and has to do with tense, aspect, and changing of parts of speech-hood.
Semitic languages also tend not to have verbal tense, but use aspect instead. Just speculating that some unnamed and unknowable "Semitic" language had an effect on Proto-Germanic seems a bit silly to me. I've seen estimates that as much as one-third of the Germanic lexicon is non-Indo-European. The usual suspect for a sub-stratum language is "Old European" (Vennemann et al.), and another theory is that Germanic started as a pidgin, thence to Creole, and finally a language. The linguist, who came up with the term laryngeal, Hermann Möller also p[ublished a comparative dictionary of Semitic-PIE roots. It's probably up on Google Books at this point.
As for strong verbs: drive and bring seem to have PIE roots.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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