Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/albʰós

I have removed the entry for Lithuanian, since balañdis < báltas from *bʰel- (“shine?”) It did make me wonder whether the roots might be related through metathesis: h₂elbʰ-, h₂lbʰ- > h₂bʰl- > (h₂)bʰel-? Anyway, since I can't find this possibility discussed anywhere, I'll just assume the roots are unrelated.

Also, since this root is written with h₂- in most modern dictionaries, and there's no reason to assume a PIE *a-, I think this article ought to be moved to *h₂elbʰ-? --Itsacatfish (talk) 19:45, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree. this should be moved to *h₂elbʰ-. --Victar (talk) 20:19, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

FWIW *h₂ is demonstrated by Finnish kalvas. --Tropylium (talk) 19:56, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Hittite contradicts it, though. *h₁albʰós is a working alternative, however, if the first laryngeal also crops up in Uralic as a consonant, as it does, per Koivulehto (*h₁es-en- → *kesä (“summer”)). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:55, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

cognate with Proto-Semitic ḥalīb- = "milk"  ???

Böri (talk) 13:01, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Nope. Didn't we already block you for your crazy theories? --{{victar|talk}} 14:59, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

but laván (in Hebrew) = "white" cognate with laban (in Arabic) = "milk" (and this is the same, I mean...) Böri (talk) 10:10, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

This kind of an etymology is only plausible if two languages have already been established as related, which is not the case with IE and Semitic. (At absolute minimum you'd need to show that the Semitic term goes back to Proto-Afrasian, with the same phonetic material and without semantics diverging any further..) --Tropylium (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

They came from the Nostratic language... There's also "Indo-Semitic languages" article on Wikipedia. It begins with: "The Indo-Semitic hypothesis maintains that a genetic relationship exists between Indo-European and Semitic..." Böri (talk) 08:17, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

On Wiktionary IIRC the current agreement is that published Nostratic comparisons can be included in reconstructed entries, in some high-profile cases at least, but complete speculation should not be. That said, though, upon checking Dolgopolsky actually seems to agree with you in connecting the two (he lists also some Cushitic cognates). He is however also easily the least critical of the various Nostraticists. I'd still suggest against including this unless someone else agrees too. Beer Parlour might have more policy opinions on this. --Tropylium (talk) 16:50, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I am adamantly opposed to the including any Nostratic theories in entries on en.Wikt and will revert on sight unless a vote is passed to include them. --{{victar|talk}} 17:04, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Now, on internet I saw that Morris Swadesh already wrote this. Böri (talk) 10:29, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I am not supporting inclusion of Nostratic classifications, nor that there is a relation to the roots above. However, it is false to say that two languages must be related for a root to be connected. There is a such thing as "borrowing". "Algebra" is an English word, for example, whose root is Arabic. 188.172.108.164 09:07, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure the linguistics connoisseurs here are all perfectly aware of borrowing (no need to condesplain to us), but that's not what OP (Böri) proposed, as OP specifically used the term "cognate".

Also, the fact that "algebra" is a borrowing is historically easy to trace, while the proposal that either the IE word or any of the mentioned Semitic words (OP couldn't even get their story straight, just throwing out proposals to see if one might stick) are a borrowing from the other is pure speculation, and weakly founded. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:13, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

With or without laryngeal

I see there is a back-and-forth alteration between *h₂elbʰós and *albʰós. There is indeed reason to doubt the reconstruction of *h₂- (given that it was not reflected in Hittite), however, the Finnic evidence supports some kind of a laryngeal (not necessarily *h₂-). It's a similar story as *aryós. One fringe resolution is to reconstruct *h₄-, as some scholars do. In my opinion, it is better and simpler to add a Reconstruction section which explains the issue. Bezimenen (talk) 11:02, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Etymology

This is entirely just a speculation but alabaster / ἀλάβαστος#Ancient_Greek's etymology is also speculative and perhaps would be worth looking into any relation to here. Darkmagine (talk) 00:41, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

What does “globular vase without handles for holding perfumes” have to do with “white”, pray tell? This proposal doesn't even make semantic sense. It's even worse than the proposal mentioned over there. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 10:47, 2 November 2024 (UTC)