Reconstruction talk:Proto-Kartvelian/otxo-

Direction of borrowing

@კვარია How can we be sure about the direction of borrowing? In any case, if this is borrowed from PIE (rather than vice-versa), it would come presumably from "*(H)oḱto- (“four fingers”)", not "*oḱtṓw (“eight”)". Nicodene (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Compare *arwa- (“eight”) (← Semitic four, cf. Akkadian 𒐉 (erbet, “four”)); *as₁- (“100”) (← pos. from Semitic 10?, cf. Akkadian ešer (“ten”)). კვარია (talk) 21:12, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@კვარია Questionable borrowings that require assuming other divisions or multiplications are no evidence whatsoever against Indo-European *(H)oḱto- (“four fingers”) being the source. Gamkrelidze, for instance, apparently supports it. My question about the direction of borrowing still stands. Nicodene (talk) 22:27, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene:

1. Kartvelologists themselves agree with the borrowing from PIE. If you felt that strongly about this, you should have edited both pages rather than just PK. Noone here is a psychic, I don't know what your "probably" stood for. :)
2. RE Gamkrelidze-Ivanov and their PIE-out-of-Armenia theory: they aren't an argument for or against, imho, considering they took most of their comparisons from the already questionable {{Template:R:grc:Furnee:1979}}, and on top of that they added their own questionable comparisons. (Why couldn't Gamkrelidze just stay a Kartvelologist? sigh.) If you don't subscribe to their theory, which doesn't seem popular at the moment, how do you explain this word being present in almost all branches of PIE?
3. I've personally developed somewhat of an aversion to dealing with PIEists. Cf. also the newest addition to the bullshit collection: *sxmarṭl- ("suffixing" a noun with a *barebones root of a verb* to make medlar mean "rotten pear", no suffixes, no nothing). So I just say "cool" and move on with my day; if you want to filter PIE mumbo-jumbo, you're welcome to it.

კვარია (talk) 07:05, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@კვარია

1. Sure, I should have edited both pages.
2. Your assumption seems to be that I'm some kind of Gamkrelidze fan in general, that I believe the 'out of Armenia' nonsense, or that anything that a source that you don't like happens to say is, ipso facto, wrong. All of those assumptions are incorrect, but let's just focus on Klimov, the source that you yourself cited. You seem not to have read him carefully, because he does not say 'borrowed from Proto-Indo-European *oḱtṓw (“eight”)' whatsoever. He says the Proto-Kartvelian numeral is borrowed from Proto-Indo-European and brings up *oḱtṓw specifically for comparison (hence he says 'cf.'), making sure to point out that the -ṓw indicates a dual. Why would he say that, unless he in fact meant 'borrowed from the non-dual equivalent of *oḱtṓw', hence the sense of 'four' in Proto-Kartvelian? He would have directly said 'borrowed from *oḱtṓw (“eight”)' if that is what he meant, but he very specifically did not, so that's just your misinterpretation at this point, unless you have another source for it.
3. I could not care less about *sxmarṭl- or the (almost certainly wrong) 'out of Armenia' theory, I've no idea why you bring any of that up as it's completely irrelevant. It would hardly be surprising for a word, borrowed into Proto-Indo-European at an early stage, to have been inherited into several or all descendant branches. See Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰuǵ- for another possible early borrowing from the Caucasus area, which is, let's not forget, adjacent to where most scholars place the Proto-Indo-European homeland, even if the Kartvelian part is not the closest. Nicodene (talk) 10:43, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: I made no assumptions about you, rather about the distribution of PIE words as this is how Klimov and people like him typically explain borrowings into PK from PIE, rather than vice-versa. Furthermore, I didn't create this page so whatever criticism you think applies to me, also applies to you since you didn't fix the wording but rather added a misleading "probably" without elaborating further. :p Starostin-Nikolayev reconstructions are unreliable, have no regular sound correspondes, don't properly exclude borrowed words, and aren't fit to be used for any kind of far-reaching conclusions. კვარია (talk) 11:03, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@კვარია I really don't understand what point you are trying to make about the distribution of the Indo-European reflexes. If the borrowing occurred at the Proto-Indo-European stage, there is nothing surprising about it being inherited into several far-flung descendant languages.

Are you not contesting anymore that the borrowing involves the non-dual PIE form? Nicodene (talk) 14:02, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

It never mattered in the first place as we have "typological" comparisons with *arwa-. Now we're more closely following the source, for whatever good that does. As for not understanding "my" point, read more Klimov. Or don't. კვარია (talk) 14:22, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@კვარია So to prove that 'it doesn't matter', you point to another etymology which cites Klimov but fails to mention that he talks about borrowing via the Semitic dual form. Interesting that Klimov thought it worth mentioning dual-ness, or lack thereof, both there and in this etymology, but you dismiss it as unimportant.

Is this 'typological comparison' meant to be an awareness of the fact that some languages have dual numbers? Groundbreaking stuff.

'Read more Klimov'? If you don't know the answer, you can simply say so. Nicodene (talk) 15:03, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

I was always sceptical of the Armenian homeland for Proto-Indo-European, but the theory received a boost in 2022 from the serious genetic research by Lazaridis et al. See here and look at the nice map at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4247.

As for numbers, all Kartvelian numbers above five look like borrowings. But you shouldn't feel bad about it. Numbers above five are really hard. In the gym I always count as 1-2-3-4-5, 1-2-3-4-5. You have only five fingers to count (the other five hold the khinkali).

It has even been suggested that the relationship between Proto-Kartvelian *jor- ~ Old Armenian հոռի (hoṙi), *sam- ~ Old Armenian սահմի (sahmi) is more complicated than an Armenian borrowing from Kartvelian, namely that the Armenian and Kartvelian are borrowed from a common source. Vahag (talk) 11:01, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Both Armenian and Kartvelian borrowed these words from Proto-Dravidian *ir- (“two”) and Proto-Sino-Tibetan *g-sum (“three”) respectively, because it's obviously illegal for Armenians to borrow from us. :p კვარია (talk) 11:13, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not illegal, but the sound correspondences are irregular :) https://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/personal/jg/pdf/jg1987a.pdf. Vahag (talk) 11:24, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank god for that h! One more point towards my new Kartvelo-Dravidian-Sino-Tibetan theory. კვარია (talk) 11:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)