Wiktionary talk:About Proto-Balto-Slavic

CodeCat, the non-controversial position is "no original research", i.e. only sourced reconstructions. The controversial position is "allow original research". In the absence of consensus, the non-controversial position takes precedence, until a consensus is built. You keep invoking the lack of policy to forbid OR to justify the removal of the disputed sentence, when in practice there is more reason to have it than not have it. Your arguments are circular are fallacious. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Where do you get this nonsense that it's a non-controversial position? It's clearly controversial otherwise there wouldn't be so much discussion about it without a clear conclusion one way or another. You're still twisting the truth to your own ends. —CodeCat 20:27, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that there is anyone but you claiming that adding etymologies backed up by scholarly works such as etymological dictionaries is controversial. The controversy is not about adding established etymologies, but guessing new ones. Ergo, the former is non-controversial, the latter is. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:41, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

How can you think that when the past discussions say something else? Please stop trying to make it seems like everyone agrees with you. They don't, and I really have no reason to believe you any longer on this issue. —CodeCat 20:44, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall anyone saying that adding reconstructions backed up by sources is something controversial. The only complaints were against you adding made-up reconstructions (which are usually wrong when you guess them). Can you point me to a discussion where somebody other than you says so?

If we can establish that adding reconstructions backed up by sources is something non-controversial, as I've been saying, than it follows that adding reconstructions not backed up by sources, which we have received complaint against, is controversial. It follows that the default, non-controversial position is the status quo, and should be reflected in the guideline, and the controversial position is something that shouldn't be reflected until a consensus can be reached.

It appears to me that you're deliberately avoiding the discussion now because the core of your arguments have been proven wrong. Your whole case rests upon the supposed "controversy" of adding established scholarship, which you use to portray both it and your made-up reconstructions as equally "valid". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

And you still misrepresent the truth, turning the argument into a straw man. I have no problems with adding established scholarship, I don't know where you got that idea from. In fact, I very much agree that all reconstructions on Wiktionary should be founded in established scholarship. What I disagree with is assuming that anything that is not found in a scholarly source verbatim is automatically unworthy of consideration. In the past discussions, several others such as Pereru, and even you (in your list of proposed points, which I mostly agreed with), have agreed that reconstructions should not always be required to be featured verbatim in some source. —CodeCat 22:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

But that position, that uncitable reconstruction should be allowed as well, has not reached consensus. The less stronger statement - that we should add reconstructions backed up by sources, is not disputed by anyone. That we add only citable reconstructions is what you get when you do intersection of those two statements. Do I have to draw a Venn diagram? What your argument really is, is that in the absence of consensus of what is forbidden, that both citable and uncitable reconstructions are allowed, regardless of which one is controversial. That would work in the real-world law, but in the consensus-building wiki environment reversion to the uncontroversial status quo is done. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:42, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

So common denominator according to you is all parts of the scholarship that you personally in your OR quest don't like? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe they are, maybe they are not. It's not relevant. What matters is having agreement. We both have our own opinions and ideas of how things should be, and what is in the page now are those parts we both agree on. It's the only way I figure we can speak of any kind of "consensus" when there are only two editors involved. —CodeCat 15:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

It's relevant to establish a point of reference. From what I understand you believe that Wiktionary lacking OR policy gives you and anyone else free rein to selectively ignore all of the etymology-related scholarship and that only what is specifically voted on, or implied to have been formed as a consensus through the lack of reverts of otherwise explicit disagreements in discussions, is a valid starting point? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:56, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Basically, yes. Etymologies are researched at WT:ES, and we can and often do so without scholarship. —CodeCat 15:58, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Vowels

@CodeCat, is there o? Likely it's replaced by a. Also "vowel + ʔ" = "long vowel + ʔ"?

• PIE *dʰrowgʰos: *draugas (?) vs *drougos (Derksen 2008-121), *drougós (Derksen 2015-137)
• PIE *gʰordʰ-o-: *gardas (?) vs *gordos (Derksen 2008-178, 2015-164)
• PIE *nogʷ-: *nōˀgás (?) vs *noʔgós (Derksen 2008-345, 2015-339)
• PIE *h₃ew-i-: *awis (?) vs *owis (Derksen 2008-384, 2015-74)
• PIE *h₂eḱ-ro-: *aśras (?) vs *aśros (Derksen 2008-379, 2015-64)
• PIE *yugóm: *jū́ˀga (?) vs *júʔgo (Derksen 2008-209, 2015-213)
• PIE *tuH: *tū (?) vs *tuʔ (Derksen 2008-502f, 2015-473)
• PIE *golHweh₂: *galwā́ˀ (?) vs *golʔwáʔ (Derksen 2008-176, 2015-162)
• ...

I suggest to move them to *gordos, *noˀgós / *nōgós, *owis, *aśros, *júˀgo / *jū́go, *tuˀ / ditto, *golwáˀ / *golwā́, ... —Игорь Тълкачь (talk) 16:19, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

*o and *a merge in Proto-Balto-Slavic. Some linguists seem to think that this happened separately in the descendant branches, but I don't see the reason why it couldn't have happened in Balto-Slavic. —CodeCat 17:32, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

The contrast *a : *o is not reconstructible from Balto-Slavic data, and in the absense of strong arguments we should not reconstruct it either. I suppose people like Derksen may wish to show, for completeness, what the evidence of the other IE languages points to, but our PBSl entries can easily indicate this by reference to PIE roots / words. --Tropylium (talk) 17:43, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

PBS o/a

Some authors reconstruct the merged o/a vowel in PBS as *a (Jasanoff, etc.), and others as *o (Mažiulis, etc.), and even others as two distinct phonemes (Derksen). @CodeCat, Tropylium, et al, any thoughts on using *ọ here on en.Wikt as a compromise? --{{victar|talk}} 00:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I'd like to see evidence that they were still distinct in the case of Derksen, and in the case of Mažiulis, that the phoneme was rounded. It is generally accepted that Pre-Slavic had *a and not *o, and we see *a throughout the Baltic languages as well. That strongly suggests the ancestral phoneme was also unrounded. Moreover, I am not aware of any post-PBS sound change that lets us distinguish these two phonemes, meaning we can't reliably reconstruct the distinction based on the descendants. What do we do then with PBS lexemes that are well-established within the BS group, but have no known PIE origin? —Rua (mew) 09:25, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: I think, as @Tropylium deduces, Derksen's distribution is purely etymological, but I haven't looked much into it. Mažiulis claims the quality of the merged a/o was [ɔ], which tensed to [o] in Slavic and fronted elsewhere, as seen in Lithuanian /a/ [ɐ]. --{{victar|talk}} 10:11, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

There is evidence both within Slavic and outside it that the vowel was not rounded, though. There is the lengthening and metathesis that happened in the early history of South and part of West Slavic, which changed *al into *lā. Such a change is unexplainable if *ā was not simply a longer version of *a the time. There are instances of borrowing into Slavic that show foreign short a being borrowed as *a and then later rounding into *o, e.g. the Slavic name for Thessaloniki. Then there are instances of Slavic words being borrowed into languages that distinguished a from o, such as Byzantine Greek, which have a in place of Slavic *a, e.g. Sklabēnoi, Sklauēnoi for *Slověne. All of this suggests that the Slavic vowel became rounded quite late in the Proto-Slavic period. —Rua (mew) 10:23, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Well I think that's what's being suggested as well. Compare perhaps also PBS *ā (or *ọ̄) [ɔː] > Lithuanian /o/ [ɔː]. --{{victar|talk}} 10:29, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Using *ọ and *ọ̄ when we can just keep using *a and *ā seems like an overcomplication. Notation systems don't have to be phonetically accurate or even reflect phonetics at all, just look at PIE laryngeals, or Finnic and Germanic *b, *d and *g (which were usually fricatives). —Rua (mew) 11:11, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

My point wasn't to make it more phonetically accurate -- it's to ask if *ọ̄ wouldn't be a good compromise between two orthographic standards. --{{victar|talk}} 19:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Well in short, no. It's worse than either alternative and will likely just confuse everyone. —Rua (mew) 19:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

That's a fair enough opinion. I'm not convinced however that it's the worst option. --{{victar|talk}} 19:56, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

*ọ for [ɔ], if that has been considered, is confusing at least because in the Slovene tonemic orthography the dot signifies the vowel being the closed one. Fay Freak (talk) 10:20, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

And Czech uses an acute accent to annotate vowel length. Proto languages will always be at odds with the orthography of some of their descendants. --{{victar|talk}} 15:41, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I don’t know though where the sign ọ is else used or where you have seen it. I only know it from Slovene. Fay Freak (talk) 15:47, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

We use *ọ in Proto-Brythonic, and in academic transcriptions of Vulgar Latin to express [ɔ].--{{victar|talk}} 05:21, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Long diphthongs

Is there any evidence for the retention of long diphthongs (ex. *āi vs *ai) in PBS? They look to have already been short in pre-PSl. --{{victar|talk}} 17:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It's uncertain. See the case of *mḗns. —Rua (mew) 18:12, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: Sorry, how does *mḗns relate? I do think long vowels indeed existed in PBS. --{{victar|talk}} 18:25, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It contains a long diphthong. —Rua (mew) 19:43, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: Meh. Do you have a non-nasal diphthong example? --{{victar|talk}} 19:51, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

PBS *z

@Rua, Tropylium Why are we not transcribing voiced *s as *z in PBS, ex. *mazgen? Derksen, Orel, (Nikolaev =P,) and Fraenkel all do, and we do so for virtually all reconstructed child branches of PIE, i.e. PII *mazǰʰā́, PG *mazgą, etc. --{{victar|talk}} 22:01, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

*z is a distinct phoneme in Proto-Germanic, and occurs in most environments independently. In PBS on the other hand, it's an allophone of *s that occurs only before voiced obstruents. —Rua (mew) 16:12, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: You could say the same thing for PII. But either way, to my point, most scholars transcribe it as *z. I can only think of Kim that doesn't. --{{victar|talk}} 17:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

It's not a phoneme in PBS. I can't say whether it is one in PII, but I suspect it isn't one there either. —Rua (mew) 17:37, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rua: In the end, it's irrelevant, really. The question is how do we transcribe it, and per most scholars, I say *z. --{{victar|talk}} 17:56, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it's very relevant, and we shouldn't be using non-phonemic symbols. —Rua (mew) 18:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

We're at odds. I guess I need to start a vote. --{{victar|talk}} 03:05, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Loss of final -t(i) in 3rd person sing. praes.

Is there an explanation why the hypotetical BSl verb ending -t(i) in 3rd person sing. present tense has disappeared from today's Baltic languages but is present in Proto-Slavic? I've even seen some reconstructions where such an ending is excluded. Ентусиастъ (talk) 19:28, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

@Ентусиастъ: Окончанието -т се среща и до днес в рупските говори. Кръсте Мисирков дори е предлагал -т да бъде книжовната форма за 3л. / ед. ч. за македонския език. Относно разликата между двете - маркерът *-tь e привзет от др.-ИЕ "активно" склонение (в стр.-бълг. е заместено с -тъ вероятно по подобие на местоимението *tъ), а окончанието без '-т' може да е било заето от "статичното" склонение. Не е задължително да е фонетично развитие. Тъй като 3л. по принцип носи нюанс на безличност, е възможно "статичното" окончание (смис. X-e ≈ 'в неутрално състояние на Х') да се е привнесло в "активнато" склонение (X-e-tь ≈ 'към състояние на Х от този'). Подобно развитие напр. се наблюдава в балтийските езици, където 3л. (и ед., и мн. ч.) се бележи просто с тематична гласна.

PS Ако ти се чете, Kortlandt обсъжда темата с глаголните склонения в Thematic and athematic present endings in Balto-Slavic and Indo-European. (Bezimenen) 86.6.108.34 16:12, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Bezimenen Благодаря ти много! :) Ентусиастъ (talk) 08:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

*ō

Sometimes an *ō can be noticed in some entries. Such a grapheme can't be used because in PBSl have existed probably only *a and in this regard *ā. Thus I'm replacing *ō with *ā anytime I notice it. Even in Wikipedia's article on PBSl there was noted that the vowels *a and *ā were used for similar-sounding words to be differed. Cf. *ślawa (“word”) and *ślā́ˀwāˀ (“glory”). @Gnosandes:, @Victar:, @Rua:. Ентусиастъ (talk) 19:03, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ентусиастъ: Hi. You're confusing this with *o. Gnosandes ❀ (talk) 19:05, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Gnosandes: How could it that be? The long discussions here on this talk page were about whether any kind of *o existed or not and the majority of users here kind of agree that probably no such did exist. Ентусиастъ (talk) 19:58, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Gnosandes: Ah, maybe, indeed you're right, but anyway how can *ō have existed if there wasn't any type of *o in the first place. The said *ō can also be found in the ending for the masc. pl. gen. case: -ōn. In my opinion no type of o existed in PBSl in any position. Ентусиастъ (talk) 20:06, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ентусиастъ: Don't be sad. We were taught at uni that there is *o in Balto-Slavic. But, I like Kim's reconstruction more :D Gnosandes ❀ (talk) 22:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ентусиастъ: The Baltic branch distinguishes *ā (> Lith. o, Latv. ā) from *ō (> Lith. uo, Latv. o). Compare Lithuanian obuolỹs (“apple”), Lithuanian ābols (“id.”) < Proto-Balto-Slavic *āˀbōl. Slavic distinguishes them in auslautgesetze, e.g. in the sg. dative case of o-stems (*-u < *-õi) and a-stems (*-ě < *-ãi). Note that short PIE *a was virtually absent from the phonetic system of pre-Balto-Slavic, so the merge of *o and *a was grammatically easier. Long *ā and *ō on the other hand beared grammatical opposition, so apparently they didn't merged so quickly. 86.6.108.34 20:15, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Ah, that could be it indeed, thank you, anon :) Ентусиастъ (talk) 20:21, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Stress

@Victar Can we remove these from the pagename? Often it is not possible to reconstruct the place of the accent with certainty, so we end up having both entries with and without it, which is not a good idea - seems much more logical to give the accent in the headword, and to keep it out of entry names. Thadh (talk) 19:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

@Thadh: With @Rua gone, @ZomBear and @Sławobóg probably care more about it than me, tho my preference would be to keep. --{{victar|talk}} 19:49, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that in PBS page names the stress should be removed. Having done the same as in Proto-Slavic. ZomBear (talk) 20:02, 11 October 2023 (UTC)