Language as a Clue to Prehistory

[lpetrich]

John Bengtson then goes into detail about Euskaro-Caucasian.

Lexical: "ear", "tongue", "fire", "star", 'dog"

Grammatical:

• Oblique stem marker -ri-
• Basque has fossilized class markers: *be-/*bi-, *e-/*i-, *o-/*u-, *a-, productive in NC languages. Answering Larry Trask's 1996 question "Pre-Basque clearly had an extraordinarily large proportion of lexical items beginning with a vowel, and ... only a very few word-initial consonants. Why is this so?"
• Verbs: participial suffix -tV (Basque, Archi)
• Ablaut: *o ~ *a

Then some Basque - NC sound correspondences.

 

[lpetrich]

Euskaro_Caucasian_2_pp.pdf - Another online copy of John Bengtson's 2017 presentation on Euskaro-Caucasian.

Has a map that shows "Extinct Euskaro-Caucasian Languages" and the present distribution of Basque and North Caucasian. From east to west, Urartian, Hurrian, Hattic, "Pelasgian" (pre-Greek), Rhaetic, Etruscan, some south Italian and Sardinian ones, Aquitanian (expanded Basque), and Galician (not the present-day Romance language). He didn't name them in the text, however, and he neglected Lemnian. But he does say

Several extinct languages, most clearly Aquitanian, in southern France, and Paleo-Sardinian; possible traces of extinct Euskaro-Caucasian languages (based on studies of substratum words) are suspected in other areas: southeastern France, the Alps, southern Italy, and the Balkans. Due to scarcity of evidence, the extinct languages are ignored in the rest of this presentation.

Then grammatical evidence, like these noun-case suffixes: genitive (of) *-n, dative (to) *-i, dative, (al)lative (toward) *-lV, locative (in) *-d-/*-t-, *-tSV, instrumental/ergative (with) *-s, *-k'V, locative series (in, ...) *-g-

Then on Basque having frozen noun-class prefixes.

Then words for: die, dog, ear, fire, horn, I, know, thou, tongue, tooth, two, what. Also resolving some Basque etymological mysteries.

Then some Basque - North Caucasian correspondences in agricultural vocabulary: domestic animals, milk and milk products, grains and legumes and milling.

Then quoting “... Sardinians and Basques are the two modern populations with the highest genetic proportion of early farmer ancestry. ... This suggests the Basque might be the remnant of a much larger Vasconic speaking area, suggesting a possibility that language family spread along with the first farmers.”

That shared vocabulary is consistent with descent from Neolithic farmers.

 

[lpetrich]

ἀψίνθιον - Wiktionary - apsinthion "wormwood / absinthe plant"

This -nth- suffix is found in terminthos "terebinth" (>"turpentine"), erebinthos "chickpea", minthê "mint", huakinthos "hyacinth", plinthos "brick" (>"plinth": "foundation block"), mêrinthos "cord, line", kêrinthus "bee bread", laburinthos "labyrinth", and also in personal names like Rhadamanthys (u-stem) and place names like Corinth (Korinthos) and Tiryns (consonant-stem: -uns, -unth-) - most of these words are o-stem words.

So for Pre-Greek, we have -nth-, -ss-, and -ng- suffixes.

ἐρέβινθος - Wiktionary - chickpea
notes similarity to
ὄροβος - Wiktionary - bitter vetch (has lentil-like seeds). Also Latin ervum (same), Proto-Germanic *arwîts "pea" (Dutch erwt, German Erbse).

 

[lpetrich]

From ETRUSCAN AS AN EAST CAUCASIAN LANGUAGE Vladimír Orel and Sergei Starostin
from Shevoroshkin (ed.) - Proto-Languages and Proto-Cultures (1990)_text
at the Internet Archive, I've found another one:

Etr. matu wine - PEC *mHädwV- spirits

This looks a lot like English "mead", so I looked further. It's an alcoholic drink made by fermenting honey: honey wine.

That's from Proto-Germanic *meduz, in turn from PIE *medhu "honey, mead" - Reconstruction: Proto-Indo-European/médʰu - Wiktionary - with lots of descendants, like Greek methu "wine" and Proto-Slavic *medvedi "bear (animal)" (<"honey eater")

It has descendants in Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Hellenic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian, and those descendants fit the sound correspondence for reconstructed PIE *dh.

It also includes among descendants Proto-Northeast Caucasian: *mHädwV (“type of beverage; liquor”) with source

Starostin, S. A. (2007), “Indo-European among other language families: problems of dating, contacts and genetic relationships”, in Starostin, G. S., editor, Trudy po jazykoznaniju [Proceedings in Linguistics]‎ (in Russian), Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskix kulʹtur, →ISBN, page 818: “...or *mHädwV ʽa k. of beverage, liquorʼ”

I think it likely that the word went in the other direction, from Euskaro-Caucasian to the PIE speakers, with NEC and Etruscan being descended from Eu-Ca.

Checking on the domestication of honeybees, I find Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers | Nature Roffet-Salque_et_al_2015_Nature - Roffet_Salque_et_al_2015_Nature.pdf

"The detection of beeswax in archaeological and historic contexts rests on its complex chemistry providing a unique and relatively recalcitrant chemical signature." - "The oldest evidence for beeswax comes from Neolithic sites in Anatolia dating from the seventh millennium cal BC, as these sites are the locations of the oldest pottery vessels in Europe and Eurasia."

However, the article did not discuss how far along bee domestication was by then. Did these farmers make beehives? Or did they only do honey hunting? That is, looking for hives in places like hollow tree trunks.

So I checked on the various Indo-European words for bee. English "bee" is from PGmc *bijôn, in turn from PIE *bhey- along with Baltic and Indo-Iranian. Proto-Slavic *bitSela has an obscure origin, as does Latin apis (Romance forms are mostly from diminutive apicula "little bee"). Greek melissa, melitta is possibly from PIE *melit "honey" and *leygh- "to lick".

PIE *melit "honey" has several descendants, like Latin mel "honey" and Greek meli "honey", and English "honey" is from PGmc *hunagan, in turn from PIE *knh2onks (not many descendants).

 

[lpetrich]

Also at the Internet Archive under "Shevoroshkin" is
Shevoroshkin & Sidwell (eds.) - Historical Linguistics and Lexicostatistics (1999)_text.pdf

with article COMPILING WORDS FROM EXTINCT NON-INDOEUROPEAN LANGUAGES IN EUROPE by Harald Sverdrup and Ramon Guardans

The Numbers List at Mark Rosenfelder's site, zompist.com - Proto-North-Caucasian was under Caucasian, but for Basque, Etruscan, and Hurrian, I had to look under Dravidian. I also added this paper's forms, with - in front of the name.

Language	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Proto-North-Caucasian	*cHə̆	*q̣Hwǟ	*ś̱wimHV	*hěmq̣ɨ	*f̱ɦä̆	*ʔrǟnƚE	*ʔěrŁ̱ĭ-	*bǖnŁ̱e	*ʔĭlč̣wɨ	*ʔěnc̣E
Ancient Basque	*bade	*biga	*(h)ilur	*laur	*bortz(e)				*bade-eratsi
Basque	bat	bi	hiru	lau	bost	sei	zazpi	zortzi	bederatzi	hamar
Etruscan	θu	zal	ci	σa	maχ	huθ	semɸ	cezp	nurɸ	śar
Hurrian	šukki	šin	kig	tumni	nariy	šeže	šindi	kira	tamri	eman
- Etruscan	(-pa), thu	zal	ki	huth	mak	sa	kezp	semph	nurph	zar
- Basque	bat, ike	bir, *zor	hir	lau	bortz	sei	zazpi	zorzi	bed-era-zi	*zi
- Iberian	ba	bi, (*sor)	(kiao)	(lu)	m(ek)			(sorse)		se
- Rhaetian	(-pa)		ki		m..	(sei)				(sui)
- Lemnian				hytt	maras	se				sar
- Caucasian	zu, ake	si	ki	-omk-	pchi, mki					swi

That paper's list is approximately correct, though I'm not sure where it got the Caucasian from.

 

[lpetrich]

Then comparing words for "house, hut", "land, world", "beautiful, lick, mouth", "city, tribe", "border, limb", "spring (of water), drinking water", "high", "stone", "grave, realm of the dead", "hand, power", "god, sky", "head, leader", "man, chieftain", "rich, plenty", "man, male", "me, myself", "I, self", "house, at home", "son, male", "community, many", "large", "moon, month", "water, stream", "river, water", "hand, possession", "brother", "land, soil, four". Some of those groupings may be of homophones in Basque, because they don't make much semantic sense.

I checked the Basque ones with Google Translate, and some of them don't quite agree.

But it lists words from Camunian (N Italy), Elymian (W Sicily), Etruscan (N C Italy), Iberian (E Spain), Lemno-Pelasgian (Lemnos), Lepontic (N Itally), North Picene (N Italy), Ligurian (N Italy), Nuragic (Sardinia), Itturian (Belgium), "NW Paleo-European", "Central Paleo-European", Pictish (Scotland), Rhaetian (N Italy), Tartessian (SW Spain, S Portugal).

Paleo-European subgroupings:

• Northwest: Basque, Iberian, Aquitanian, Pictish -- Ligurian, Nuragic, Itturian
• Central: Etruscan, Rhaetian, Lemnian -- Elymian, North Picene, Lepontic, Camunian

Only ones with enough material for a likely classification: Iberian, Etruscan, Rhaetian, Lemnian

The languages have several similarities in their non-cultural lexicons, like pronouns and numerals. Personal pronouns:

• 1s: mi, me / nai, ni
• 2s: gu, ku, khu, ki
• 3s: te, e, ne, a
• 1p: gu, iu / ti, zi
• 2p: su, zu / wo
• 3p: nu / ak

 

[lpetrich]

Notes on some Pre-Greek words in relation to Euskaro-Caucasian (North Caucasian + Basque)

English "halo" is from Greek halôs, halôê, halôâ "threshing floor; disk; disk of the sun or moon; ring of light around the sun or moon”. Related to PEC *=VrtLV "to thresh" and Basque larain "threshing floor"

Greek anthrôpos "human being" ~ Basque *andere "lady, young lady, woman, wife". But the word may be related to Greek anêr, andr- "man (adult male)" < PIE *h1ner- "man; power, force, vital energy"

Greek psukhê "vital force, soul, ..." (> English "psycho-" words) ~ Basque *bi=si "life, lifetime, (adj.) alive" ~ PNC *b=siHwV (with b-prefix) "breath, to breathe"

"Breath" > "vital force, soul" is a *very* common semantic shift. Latin spiritus, Greek pneuma, Proto-Slavic *dukhu, Sanskrit âtman, Hebrew ruach, Arabic ruh, ...

 

[lpetrich]

Seems like someone should do for Basque and North Caucasian what Martine Robbeets did for the Transeurasian languages: use a list of meanings with highly conserved word forms and see how they compare.

Appendix:Swadesh lists - Wiktionary uses a 207-member list from Morris Swadesh's work. "Starting in 1950 with 165 meanings, his list grew to 215 in 1952, which was so expansive that many languages lacked native vocabulary for some terms. Subsequently, it was reduced to 207, and reduced much further to 100 meanings in 1955. A reformulated list was published posthumously in 1971."

The site has Swadesh lists for numerous languages and protolanguage reconstructions, and I found some for Proto-Indo-European, Georgian, Chechen, Ingush, Basque, and Etruscan. Georgian is Kartvelian ("South Caucasian"?) and Chechen and Ingush are Nakh family, in Northeast or East Caucasian, in North Caucasian. The Etruscan one was very scanty, as one might expect.

This has inspired the construction of similar lists, like what MR used, the Leipzig-Jakarta list.

One would first start with Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian, and their subgroupings, then do North Caucasian, and then compare to Basque.

 

[lpetrich]

I can't help but notice that the PIE words for honey, *medhu and *melit, are very similar-looking words. Could they be descended from the same word form? The resemblance to PNEC *mHadwV suggests borrowing, even if the direction is not very clear.

Another clue is their declension type. Both words are athematic, the older type of declension that mainly survives as relics in the attested IE langs.

When searching for discussions of PIE words for "honey", I found this:

Isomorphic co-expression of modification and possession in Proto-Indo-European: one origin of nominal -s- and -t- stems -- not the most easily understandable title, I must say. But from the paper, I propose:

Proto-Indo-European nominal -s- and -t- stems: modification and possession having the same form?

Alternating presence and absence of these suffixes is not very common, but it is present, like in PIE *meli ~ *melit "honey".

The authors note that some languages have that feature, like "heavy stone" being more literally "heaviness of stone", and they propose that as the explanation.

I also found this:

Latin examen, Greek exagogeus, and the Indo-European Apiculturist’s Taboo - noting a common taboo against naming what one is hunting for, presumably to avoid giving away one's intentions. That apparently applied to the PIE ward for a swarm or hive of bees, whatever it was. As to the Latin and Greek words in the title, they are action and agent versions of *h1egs-h2eg- > *ex-ag- "to drive out, to lead out", what the big bee in the hive presumably does.

In past centuries, many people called that bee the king bee, and believed that that bee commands all the others. But in recent centuries, we found that that bee lays eggs, and is the only reproducer, and thus was renamed the queen bee. That bee suppresses reproduction by all her daughters, the workers, but that's the extent of her "leadership". In fact, for the most part, honeybee populations, and social-insect communities more generally, are run as anarchist collectives, without any well-defined hierarchy of command.

 

[lpetrich]

Back to "Language Dispersal beyond Farming".

"Expanding the methodology of lexical examination in the investigation of the intersection of early agriculture and language dispersal" - Brian Joseph
Abstract:

Analysis of agricultural vocabulary remains one of the most compelling methodologies bearing on Renfrew’s Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis, by which the reconstructed lexicon for a proto-language of a well-dispersed language family is predicted to contain several agricultural items. Mostly, though, this methodology has involved noting the presence or absence of particular lexical items for a given protolanguage and drawing inferences from that, or working out root derivations and drawing appropriate inferences. I propose here two new types of lexically based argument, by way of expanding the methodology of lexical examination and analysis, looking first at derivational processes involved in the creation of relevant words and the meaning that such processes add to the derivative, and then at religious rituals and mythology to examine the embedding of agricultural vocabulary into the religious practices and mythological tales associated with early Indo-European culture. Ultimately, then, I argue that it is not enough to just look at the meanings of particular words and to try to develop a sense of what they originally meant, nor is it enough to determine the source of the words (derivation, etymology). Rather, one also has to look at how the words were used, what is reconstructible about the use and form of the word, and what the cultural context was for the words. Only then can insights derived from lexical examination be used in developing a sense of prehistory.

He discusses a reconstructed PIE word for plow: *h2erh3-tro-m with instrument-noun suffix -trom (neuter o-sterm). Was the word independently coined? But given how useful plows are for agriculture, it's likely PIE.

h1e -> e, h2e -> a, h3e -> o

For "(arable) field", we reconstrucg *h2eg-ro-s (masculine o-stem). It's likely derived from *h2eg- "to lead, drive". So a field would be a place to drive animals to, for working the land or for grazing. Then noting that -ro- usually formed adjectives, with the root in zero-grade ablaut and not e-grade ablaut. So *h2egros is rather irregular.

 

[lpetrich]

After discussing borrowings, getting into derivational processes. How are agriculture-related words formed? Were words formed much like that word for "plow"?

Then talking about *yugóm "yoke" (neuter o-stem) derived from *yeug- "to yoke, join", and then, reduplication, repeating part or all of a root. That was used for forming verb aspects, like imperfectives from perfectives and statives from other aspects. Reduplication has a meaning of extended or repeated actions.

Some words for grains have reduplication in them, as do some words for "press, vice", "sieve", and "rake". "Wheel" *kwe-kwlos -- a bit unusual with zero-grade ablaut in its stem.

All that is seen here for the semantics and function of these reduplicated terms across Indo-European is consistent with cross-linguistic uses of reduplication, going with nouns for items taken in collectivity in many little bits and pieces, like grains, and for repeated actions (cf. Moravcsik 1978), so that the possibility of independent use of reduplication in each linguistic tradition cannot be dismissed. However, it can be speculated that reduplication is perhaps especially well suited as a derivational process with agricultural terms, since the actions involved in agriculture, including tilling, plowing, and sifting, require repeated actions in ways that the tasks involved in, say, animal husbandry, do not, and the results of agriculture, especially involving grains, lead to collections of multiple small items.

Then noting reduplication of stative-aspect forms, and intensive or repetitive forms.

 

[lpetrich]

A further type of lexical analysis looks at the use of particular agricultural words in context. In particular, the language of Proto-Indo-European religious rituals and mythology gives evidence in them, as argued by Watkins (1978) in his discussion of “famous grains” of Proto-Indo-European, of the embedding of agricultural vo- cabulary into the religious practices and mythological tales associated with early Indo-European culture. This usage can be taken to demonstrate how ingrained (so to speak!) the practice of agriculture must have been for the Indo-Europeans if it is able to penetrate into their holiest and most sacred practices.

In particular, Watkins draws attention to a number of ways in which grains fig- ure in references to rituals and myths associated with rituals in early Indo-European texts, ...

Like Greek, Indian, and Iranian ones.

Then a chapter on "Agricultural terms in Indo-Iranian"

The article investigates the agricultural lexicon of Indo-Iranian, especially its earlier records, and what it may tell us about the spread of farming. After some general remarks on “Neolithic” vocabulary, a short overview of the animal husbandry terminology shows that this field of vocabulary was evidently well-established in Proto-Indo-Iranian, with many cognate terms. Words for cattle, horses, sheep and goats are well developed and mostly inherited, while evidence for pigs is more limited, ad the words for donkey and camel look like common loans. A more extensive discussion of plant terminology reveals that while some generic terms for grain are inherited, more specific words for different kinds of cereals show few inherited terms and/or irregular variation, and the same is even clearer for pulses and some other vegetables. The terminology for agricul- tural terminology is largely different from that of most European branches of Indo-European. The conclusion is that the cultural background behind these linguistic data points to spreading of a mainly pastoralist culture in the case of Indo-Iranian.

Lots of distinct vocabulary for cows, sheep, and horses: both sexes and young ones. Also vocabulary for animal products, like milk. Pigs were not as prominent, and words for donkey and camel were borrowed.

Proto-Indo-Iranian *khará- "donkey", *húshtra- "camel"

Latin asinus, Greek onos (< *osnos?) are likely from some pre-IE Mediterranean lang, while English "camel" < Latin camêlus < Greek kamêlos < some Semitic language: Hebrew gamal, Aramaic gamla, ...

For domestic plants and growing them, there is not much PIE vocabulary. Some generic terms for grains, but not much else.

Conclusion:

The pastoral terminology of Indo-Iranian is clearly inherited; most often we find regular correspondences within and outside of Indo-Iranian. In contrast to that, plant cultivation terminology most often shows irregular correspondences, pointing to early or later loans (sometimes wanderwörter).

Then most of the domestic-plant vocabulary being from sources other than those words in European IE.

Also the terms for agricultural technology are rather different from those found in Europe. Taken together, this situation speaks for a mainly pastoralist rather than agricultural economy at the time of Proto-Indo-Iranian. This agrees with the picture found in the earliest Indo-Iranian texts.

Like the Vedas, which describe a society of cattle herders, complete with descriptions of things that many Hindus might consider Satanic Verses: descriptions of cow sacrifices and cow eating.

Wanderwort - German: "wander word"

 

[lpetrich]

"Milk and the Indo-Europeans"

Recent evidence from archaeology and ancient DNA converge to indicate that the Yamnaya culture, often regarded as the bearer of the Proto-Indo-European language, underwent a strong population expansion in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE. It suggests that the underlying reason for that expansion might be the then unique capacity to digest animal milk in adulthood. We examine the early Indo-European milk-related vocabulary to confirm the special role of animal milk in Indo-European expansions. We show that Proto-Indo-European did not have a specialized root for ‘to milk’ and argue that the IE root *h2melg̑- ‘to milk’ is secondary and post-Anatolian. We take this innovation as an indication of the novelty of animal milking in early Indo-European society. Together with a detailed study of language-specific innovations in this semantic field, we con-clude that the ability to digest milk played an important role in boosting Proto-Indo-European demography.

First criticizing Colin Renfrew's Neolithic-farming theory of Indo-European dispersal. "Indo-European cereal-related vocabulary exists, but is either regional, semantically too vague to permit the inference of farming, or unrelated to agriculture."

Conspicuously lacking in the earliest Proto-Indo-European vocabulary are words for notions that unequivocally indicate agriculture: sowing, weeding, harvesting, fields, seeds for sowing, as well as stable names for domesticated cereals. The Austronesian family, the other model for the Farming/Language Theory (Bellwood 1985), has a much stronger claim of having arisen at least partly as a result of a shift to agriculture: Austronesian vocabulary reconstructable at the highest level includes all the notions (‘to sow broadcast’, ‘to weed’; ‘to harvest’, ‘field’; ‘seeds for sowing’) that are missing in Proto-Indo-European, plus the names of three domesticated cereals: foxtail millet, broomcorn millet and rice (Sagart et al. in press). Proto-Indo-European therefore cannot have been the language of a group of farmers, whether in Anatolia or elsewhere. Instead, Proto-Indo-European vocabulary at the highest level (i.e. including Anatolian) is animal-oriented, with stable names for bovines and ovines, animal fodder, and cattle-drawn carts, at least.

So the PIE speakers were primarily herders of animals.

 

[lpetrich]

Different strands of recent work on dairying in Neolithic Europe provide useful background on the development of lactose tolerance in Europe. As recently as 7000 years ago all human populations were lactose-intolerant (Leonardi et al. 2012): adults lacked the enzyme lactase and could not digest the sugar lactose contained in milk. Lactose tolerance arose independently in several of the world’s populations, both in Africa and Eurasia. As for Eurasia, the areas of maximum lactase persistence, as mapped by Leonardi et al., broadly coincide with the Corded Ware culture in NW Europe and with a zone centered on coastal Pakistan, extending into southeastern Iran and northwestern India. This is consistent with a link between lactose tolerance and the spread of Indo-European speakers.

Before that, people would make cheese from milk and eat it. Though they were lactose-intolerant, cheese is low in lactose, making it safe for them. It was invented around 8500 BCE in NW Anatolia.

Then noting that *h2melg- "to milk" is widespread, in Tocharian, Celtic, Greek, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic, even if absent from Hittite. Indo-Iranian lost that word form because of a similar-sounding word for "to rub". Words for "milk" (the substance) are either derived from the verb, or are separate, like Greek gala(kt-).

*h2melg- may originally have meant "to collect liquid"

Then a section on "Greek and Latin textual evidence for milk-drinking among Indo-European “barbarians”" like Scythians.

By themselves, these linguistic data are silent on whether adult speakers drank animal milk or whether the milk was used to make cheese, or both; though the greater prominence of terms for ‘milk’ compared to those for ‘cheese’ does suggest that milk was directly consumed by adults. ...

... Adult milk drinking by Indo-Iranian peoples is further confirmed by descriptions by Roman and Greek authors. Despite being linguistically Indo-European, Roman and Greek authors considered adult milk-drinking a barbarian custom, perhaps because Roman and Greek populations included a large pre-Indo-European farmer component.

That ends the book.

 

[lpetrich]

I tried looking for words for "cheese", but they vary quite a lot, and many of them are borrowed, like English "cheese" by some early Germanic seakers, from Latin câseus. The same was true of words for bread, like in the Slavic languages, where the word was borrowed by Proto-Slavic speakers from a Germanic word that is a cognate of English "loaf".


Turning to "Sphinx", that Greek word has stem Sphing-, making it much like a lot of other pre-Greek words; -nx, -ng-.

It is related to Greek sphing- "to bind, tie up in a bundle, hold together, press together"

 

[lpetrich]

CLLD - Cross-Linguistic Linked Data - "The Cross-Linguistic Linked Data project is developing and curating interoperable data publication structures using Linked Data principles as integration mechanism for distributed resources."

Using CLDF - Cross-Linguistic Data Formats - "To allow exchange of cross-linguistic data and decouple development of tools and methods from that of databases, standardized data formats are necessary."

CLLD - Cross-Linguistic Linked Data - a *lot* of databases. Some of them contain earlier languages like Latin and Ancient Greek along with present-day ones.

Other databases:

• EVOLAEMP // Home - Language Evolution: The Empirical Turn
• The Tower of Babel - An International Etymological Database Project
• Evolution of Human Languages
• The Global Lexicostatistical Database
• The Numbers List

Lists of words that are seldom borrowed or otherwise replaced:

•  Swadesh list - 207-word, 100-word, (Swadesh–Yakhontov) 35-word
• Appendix:Swadesh lists - Wiktionary - big collection, uses 207-word list
•  Automated Similarity Judgment Program - 40-word
•  Dolgopolsky list - 15-word
•  Leipzig–Jakarta list - 100-word

 

[lpetrich]

The Dolgopolsky list, with what's also present in the Swadesh lists (Sw1, Sw2), the Swadesh-Yakhontov list (SYk), and the Leipzig-Jakarta list (LJ):

1. Sw1 1 - Sw2 1 - SYk - LJ 14 - I/me
2. Sw1 12 - Sw2 23 - SYk - two/pair
3. Sw1 2 - Sw2 2 - SYk - LJ 9 - you (singular, informal)
4. Sw1 6,7 - Sw2 11,12 - SYk - LJ 34,50 - who/what
5. Sw1 44 - Sw2 78 - SYk - LJ 6 - tongue
6. Sw1 100 - Sw2 207 - SYk - LJ 15 - name
7. Sw1 40 - Sw2 74 - SYk - LJ 83 - eye
8. Sw1 52 - Sw2 90 - heart
9. Sw1 43 - Sw2 77 - SYk - LJ 28 - tooth
10. Sw1 8 - Sw2 16 - LJ 56 - no/not
11. Sw2 79 - fingernail
12. Sw1 22 - Sw2 48 - SYk- LJ 15 - louse/nit
13. tear/teardrop
14. Sw1 75 - Sw2 150 - SYk - LJ 4 - water
15. Sw1 61 - Sw2 109 - SYk - dead (to die)

I've also found PanLex | PanLex - "the world’s largest lexical database"

 

[lpetrich]

I'll try Basque, Chechen, and Ingush. Swadesh-207 list numbers 1, 2, 11, 12, 16, 23, 48, 74, 77, 78, 79, 90, 109, 150, 207

1 ni so so, 2 hi_zu ho ho, 11 nor mila mala, 12 zer khiun fu, 16 ez tsa_-ats tsa_-ats, 23 bi shi' shi', 48 zorri meza maza, 74 begi b'arg b'arg, 77 bortz_hagin tserg tsarg, 78 mihi mott mott, 90 azazkal dog dog, 109 hil dala dala, 150 ur khi khi, 207 izen_deitura ts'e ts'i

There are some words that match, though not many: 2, 16, 74, 78, 207.

 

[lpetrich]

The biradical origin of semitic roots

Many of the words in the Semitic languages have three-consonant roots with varying vowels in them and various affixes. Author Bernice Varjick Hecker proposes that these roots are extensions of two-consonant ones.

Here is an example:

Preliminary inspection of Semitic roots yields the potential etymon ĦM1 with the basic meaning hot 1 Ħ, ħ denote a voiceless velar fricative. vii (Hebrew xam, Arabic ħamm, Ugaritic xm, Akkadian ememu, and Aramaic xamam). But hot solely in the sense of temperature has too narrow a meaning for the biradical after other reflexes are identified:2 Arabic: ħamas: zeal; ħammam: spa, hot bath; ħamaša: enrage, infuriate; ħummah: fever; ħumr: red, bloody, excited; ħumam: lava, embers; taħammus: fanaticism; ħamaza: burn the tongue while tasting Hebrew: xemed: desire; xamar: become inflamed, agitated; xomas4: be ruthless; yaxem: be hot with anger or desire, conceive; xamas: do violence, injury Mandaic: hamida: hot passion; hamima: feverish, incensed; šxm: be red, blush; šxn: be inflamed by passion Aramaic: xemah: wrath; šaxam: burn to brownness; nxam: show warm feelings Syriac: xm: heated, glowing, fervent, violent; xmt/: anger; xm/: grow faint with heat Ge’ez: xemame: passion, disaster; xemud: burnt to ashes; xamama: have a fever, be afflicted; xamz: rage, venom Ugaritic: xmt: venom; xmxmt: ardor Consequently, the biradical ĦM is redefined as hot, inflamed because of these reflexes. The core of meaning is evident from the reflexes.

Thus, the name of  Hamas means "zeal" in Arabic and "violence" in Hebrew -- two cognate words.

Example of triconsonantal-root derivation:

For example, the consonants KTB form the root for “writing” in Hebrew. Using these radicals, there follow3 from it: KoTeB “to write,” miKTaB “a letter,” KTaB “handwriting,” KaTaB “a scribe,” KtuBa “a (written) marriage contract,” KiTeB “to engrave,” KaTaBah “a news article,” hitKaTeB “to correspond,” KToBet “an address,” and hiKTeB “to dictate,” etc. This is in addition to grammatical markings. For instance, KaTaBti “I wrote” has the same grammatical ending as hitKaTaBti “I corresponded.”

Meanings are sometimes very idiomatic, something very typical.

 

[lpetrich]

Biconsonantal origin?

1) “Ancient” biconsonantal nouns such as dam “blood,” yad “hand,” yam “sea,” etc. They consider that assigning these nouns to triconsonantal roots is “contrived and far-fetched.” 2) The so-called “weak verbs” exhibit many biconsonantal forms, such as the Hebrew qam “he rose” (root qwm) and the Arabic ram(at) “she threw” (root rmy). 3) Comparison with other Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) languages, such as Semitic qtl “to kill’ with Cushitic qal and Semitic p÷l “to make” with Cushitic fal.

Some further evidence of such origin:

As is known, the Semitic languages have many roots with the same meaning that have two consonants in common. Consider the Biblical Hebrew qes4 “end,” qas4e “end, border, extremity,” and qas4w “border,” which illustrate the (existence of) the biradical qs4 and the triradical qs4w ...

Then mentioning Proto-Indo-European suffixed roots, like *tewh2- with extensions *tewh2-bh-, *tuh2-k-, *tuh2-m-, *tuh2-r-, *tuh2-s-, and likely relatives *tewk-, *twem-