05 September 2015

Paleo-European *abVl- 'apple' (updated)


Several IE languages of North Europe (Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic) reflect a lexeme *abVl- 'apple' which is regarded as a Paleo-European substrate loanword by some specialists1. In my opinion, a likely cognate would bHittite sam(a)lu- 'apple (tree)', with denasalization of m and loss of the initial sibilant2, which in this and other words such as sākuwa- 'eye' < IE *H₃ekʷ- 'to see' and sankuwāi- 'nail; a unit of linear measure' < IE *H₃n(o)gh- 'nail' would reflect a labialized voiced pharyngeal fricative *ʕʷ (IE *H₃) .

Therefore, I'd reconstruct a Nostratic3 Wanderwort *ʕu-malV also reflected in Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'4 (with denasalization and further delabialization), and which I'd link to Nakh-Daghestanian *mhalV- ~ *mhanV- 'warm', with a straightforward semantic drift from 'warm (season)' to 'fruit'. This makes sense because the apple tree is originary of Kurdistan, precisely in the area where Nostratic was presumably spoken.
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1 For example, Theo Vennemann links it to Afrasian *ʔa-bul- 'male genitals', which (in his own words) is "semantically unsatisfactory although phonetically perfect". See T. Vennemann (1998): Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides, in Europa Vasconica, Europa Semitica, p. 591-652.
2 Explained by ortodox IE-ists such as Kloekhorst as the result of a "s-mobile".
3 My own concept of "Nostratic" isn't the one of a very large macro-family including IE, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian, etc. but a language spoken in the Taurus-Zagros mountains, where several species of plants and animals were domesticated in the Neolithic.
4 A variant *ʕu-manV would be the origin of Basque umao (B), umo 'ripe, seasoned' and Uralic *omena ~ *omVrV 'apple'.

3 comments:

  1. Hola, ¿qué tal?
    Primeramente , enhorabuena por tu blog que, aunque habla más o menos de lo mismo que el mio(evidentemente mucho mejor y más científico) es alucinante lo que estás comentando por aquí. yo también tengo una entrada sobre la etimología de la palabra ´manzana`, visita mi blog y míralo, estaría muy bien que me dijeras tu opinión. Es increíble ver que hay alguien más aparte de mi que esté interesado en algo como esto, algo que para muchísima gente no vale para nada. Yo por mi parte pienso que has hecho muy bien en hacer este blog y gracias porque ami me sirves y mucho!!

    Pásate por mi blog y sígueme si quieres, estás invitado que lo sepas!!! El link es el siguiente:
    http://latorredebabelmtn.blogspot.com.es/2011/07/manzana-propuesto-por-marta.html

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  2. Gracias, Miguel. La verdad es que la lingüística (y en paritcular la histórica) está muy poco valorada en general, incluido el mundo académico.

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  3. What is your thought on the Burushaski comparison???

    Following Berger (1956), the American Heritage dictionaries suggested that the word *abel (apple), the only name for a fruit (tree) reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, may have been borrowed from a language ancestral to Burushaski. (Today "apple" and "apple tree" are /balt/ in Burushaski.)

    MERRY CHRISTMAS, Octavia!!!

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