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Language Log
Bird, boy, girl, dog, recorder: etymology unknown
"Five common English words we don’t know the origins of – including ‘boy’ and ‘dog’", Francesco Perono Cacciafoco*, The Conversation (7/4/24)
[*See the author's extraordinary academic profile here.]
The author begins by describing the act of naming items in the world, the etymological study of words, the comparative method, the relationship of English to Germanic and thence to the Indo-European family, and how their vocabularies are all connected.
However, the process doesn’t always work. The English lexicon includes some terms known as “proper words”, which today apparently exist only in English. Cognates for them cannot be found in any other language.
These are very simple and common words but being unique, we cannot apply the comparative method to them and therefore cannot reconstruct their origins. These “proper words” represent an exciting puzzle of the English language. Here are five examples. 1. Bird
“Bird” sounds Germanic, but doesn’t have cognates in any other Germanic language. It can be found in Old English as a rare variant of bridd, indicating a “young bird”.
Old English speakers used fugel, as in “fowl”, as a standard term for bird. Up to the 15th century, “bird” was used not only to describe a young bird, but also a young animal in general – even a fish or a child. 2. Boy
Who (or what) was, originally, a “boy”? No one knows. In the 13th century, a boie was a servant, but already in that time the provenance of the word was obscure. A century later, the term started being used to indicate a male child. The word doesn’t sound Germanic, but it’s not clear whether it was imported to England by the Normans either. One interpretation traces back the term to an unattested vulgar Latin verb, *imboiare (in etymological notation, the asterisk indicates a word that has been reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method, rather than found in source material), possibly connected with the Latin boia, meaning yoke or collar, and with the concept of slavery. 3. Girl
Since the 14th century, gyrle was a word used to indicate a child, with no gender distinction. Despite the apparent simplicity of the term, so far nobody has been able to reconstruct its origins. Some scholars have connected it with the Old English word gierela, meaning garment, with a semantic transition presumed from “child’s apron (garment)” to, simply, “child”. Others think that “girl” belongs to a set of words that also includes “boy”, “lass” and “lad”, which could have derived from other terms that cannot be directly linked to them any more. Whatever the truth is, the mystery of “girl” persists. 4. Dog
“Dog” comes from Old English docga, a very rare word later used in Middle English to depict a specific, strong breed – the mastiff.
In Old English, hund was the general Germanic word until the term docga replaced it almost completely in the 16th century. Now, “hound” is semantically specialised and indicates a hunting dog. So far, nobody has been able to reconstruct the etymological root of docga, and no ancient English word appears to be related to it.
“Dog” is therefore a true lexicological mystery of the English vocabulary. Probably the breed it was originally indicating became popular enough to be identified with the notion of “dog” in itself, but this doesn’t explain the provenance of the word.
The same puzzling origins are shared by other zoological terms in the English lexicon, like “pig, "stag” and “hog”, which are all etymologically unclear. Interestingly, the widespread word for “dog” in Spanish, perro, is also completely obscure in its origins. 5. Recorder
“Recorder” is something of an intruder in this list of etymological oddities, because we know its origins. It comes from the Middle French verb “reco[...]
Language Log
The evolution of verbal interpolations
Philip Castle, "Quelles sont les expressions les plus utilisées dans la langue française courante?", Quora 6/20/2024:
On va commencer par voilà. O-bli-ga-toi-re ! Il faut parsemer votre discours de "voilà", sans trop vous préoccuper de leur place ni de leur utilité dans la phrase, bien au contraire. Exemple : "Je me suis dit que voilà ce serait bien de voilà faire des efforts pour voilà améliorer mon français". Il faut aussi garder à l'esprit que ce mot merveilleux peut tout remplacer, y compris une fin de phrase. Exemple entendu ce matin sur France Inter : "En fait, le SMIC à 1600 €, je suis patron alors voilà". Vous avez compris le principe, il n'est pas nécessaire de terminer votre phrase, votre interlocuteur la finira lui même en remplaçant le voilà par ce qu'il veut.
We'll start with "voilà". O-bli-ga-to-ry! You need to sprinkle your speech with (instances of) "voilà", without worrying much about their place or their use in the phrase, in fact the opposite. Example: "Je me suis dit que voilà ce serait bien de voilà faire des efforts pour voilà améliorer mon français". You also need to keep in mind that this marvelous word can replace anything, including the end of a phrase. An example heard this morning on France Inter: "En fait, le SMIC à 1600 €, je suis patron alors voilà". You've understood the principle, it's not necessary to end your phrase, your interlocutors will finish it for themselves, replacing the "voilà" with whatever they like. Voilà is etymologically "look there", long since generalized to a wider range of uses, so that "voilà X" can be translated into English as something like
(here|there|this|that|these|those is|are X)
and plain "voilà" as something like "that's it" or "there you have it".
The entry in Wiktionnaire notes that
Ce mot est de plus en plus employé de manière holophrastique à l’oral aujourd’hui et prend une fonction cognitive de regroupement.
In spontaneous speech today, this word is increasingly used holophrastically and takes on a cognitive function of grouping.
…with a link to G. Col et al., "Eléments de cartographie des emplois de voilà en vue d'une analyse instructionnelle", Revue de Sémantique et de Pragmatique 2015:
Voilà est une unité dont l’usage se répand rapidement en français oral aujourd’hui. […] Voilà se caractérise par deux comportements essentiels ([VOILÀ + pause] et [VOILÀ + entités/procès]) et deux groupes de valeurs /statuts associés : valeur de balisage + statut d’interjection ; valeur prédicative + statut de pivot.
Voilà is an element whose usage is expanding rapidly in today's oral French. […] Voilà is characterized by two essential structures ([VOILÀ + pause] and [VOILÀ + entities/processes]) and two groups of associated values/functions: boundary marking + interjection; predication + pivot.
(Commenters will probably be able to suggest a better translation for the last sentence…)
Similar English words and phrases (look, look here) can also be used as filler words or discourse markers or interpolations or punctors or whatever term you prefer for such things. And it's common across languages for words and phrases to gradually lose their original syntactic function and semantic interpretation, evolving in the way described for voilà in the Quora post. We described such an evolution for like in "Divine ambiguity" (1/4/2004) and “‘Like’ youth and sex” (6/28/2011), quoting some analogous sprinklings of like from Muffy Siegel's 2002 paper "Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics":
She isn't, like, really crazy or anything, but her and her, like, five buddies did, like, paint their hair a really fake-looking, like, purple color.
They're, like, representatives of their whole, like, clan, but they don't take it, like, really seriously, especially, like, during planting season.
I[...]
Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Language: Score from open play
In this football language post we look at the phrase 'Score from open play' after France yet again managed to qualify without scoring a goal from open play at the 2024 Euros.
The post Euro 2024 Football Language: Score from open play appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
charge with
If someone is charged with a crime, they are officially accused of committing it.
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Word of the Day
overweening
Definition: (adjective) Unrestrained, especially with regard to feelings.
Synonyms: extravagant, exuberant, excessive.
Usage: It may be all right, sir, but I have no overweening reliance on the faith of these marquesses, or marquis, as they call themselves.
Discuss
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bee, Arnold J. 1954b. “Official Languages and Scripts.” In A Study of History, pt. VI: Universal States, sec. C: Universal States as Means, II: Services and Beneficiaries, d: The Serviceability of Imperial Currencies, 1, vol. 7[A], 239–55. London: Oxford University Press.
Vachek, Josef. 1939. “Zum Problem der geschriebenen Sprache.” Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 8: 98–104. (Repr. in his Prague School Reader in Linguistics [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964], 441–52; rev. Eng. trans. in his Written Language Revisited [Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989], 103–16.)
Wachter, Rudolf. 1991. “Abbreviated Writing.” Kadmos 30(1): 49–80.
Selected readings
* "Script origin and typology, part 1" (7/1/24)
* "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22)
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gyptian values? What the evidence seems to suggest is that the consonantal abjad is the product of very slight acquaintance with Egyptian writing. Anything better would not have resulted in the great innovation.
I already explained how the creation of the Greek alphabet was also the result of limited knowledge of the language of the Phoenician model. If the Greek scribe could speak Phoenician well, the laryngeal letters would not have been heard as vowel-initial, and there would have been no alpha, epsilon, eta, iota, omicron, or upsilon.
Lastly, does this way of looking at script transfer illuminate the difference-within-similarity of Egyptian and Sumerian? Did the Egyptian proto-scribes learn enough about Sumerian to get the idea of associating phonetic and semantic complements to logographic symbols, but miss the point that one wasn’t supposed to write all the different forms of a word with the same word-sign? Or is Egyptian not really so different from Sumerian after all: Sumerian does not evidence internal flexion in its word forms; a single sign suffices for all occurrences of a single morpheme; similarly in Egyptian (as expressed already by Alfred Schmitt), a single sign represents all occurrences of a single morpheme, but the ablaut relations among those forms mean that only the consonants remain constant in the readings of the sign. Thus the signs are taken to represent consonants only, even when they are used for their phonetic value only. So perhaps the difference-within-similarity of Egyptian and Sumerian is not so much of a difference at all.
In seeking the origins of writing, our predecessors have left us strikingly little speculation. Toynbee does not consider the question at all; as far as I can tell, he doesn’t even mention the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet. He is astonishingly aware and insightful on the social and political conditions surrounding the spread and adoption of official languages and scripts. Gelb considers briefly the cultural circumstances surrounding the origins of writing in his “up to seven” possible independent events, rightly recognizing that phoneticism is not so unusual as to require monogenesis (he was hampered, of course, by the lateness of the decipherment of Maya glyphs, and missed an opportunity to learn of the successes that had been achieved by 1984). Denise Schmandt-Besserat takes her limited data much too far: without any understanding of what the individual shapes of “tokens” represented, or indeed with no guarantee that any particular shape had a uniform interpretation throughout the time and space in which the tokens are found, they cannot be connected with the shapes of proto-cuneiform. But her account of the invention of numerals—quite a different proposition from the invention of writing—is indeed attractive.
* * *
And now, for a suitable peroration, I turn to an observation by an earlier eminent American, one more than any other associated with this city, nearly a century earlier than Lincoln. In 1768, Benjamin Franklin devised a phonetic spelling system, and wrote a letter using it (but transcribed here) that includes the following observations:
If Amendments [to English orthography] are never attempted, and things continue to grow worse and worse, they must come to be in a wretched condition at last; such indeed I think our Alphabet and Writing already in; but if we go on as we have done a few Centuries longer, our words will gradually cease to express sounds, they will only stand for things, as the written words do in the Chinese Language, which I suspect might originally have been a literal Writing like that of Europe, but through the changes in Pronunciation brought on by the Course of Ages, and through the obstinate Adherence of that People to old Customs and among others to their old manner of Writing, the original Sounds of Letters and Words are lost, and no longer considered.
And as he’d written in Poor Richard’s Almanack back in 1750,
What an admirable Invention is Writing[...]
rds by saying the names of the letters (since vowels missing from inscriptions are most likely to be the vowel of the first syllable of the name of the letter for the consonant that’s missing its vowel).
I must thus conclude that it was not the need to notate metrical patterns of Greek verse that inspired the creation of the alphabet, still less the manifestation of Aryan genius as used to be suggested, but it was simple, almost inevitable (given the nature of acquisition of second language phonology), and accidental (because of the difference between the Phoenician and Greek consonant inventories).
* * *
Thus having disposed of the two origins of writing that are most usually discussed (and of the origins of syllabary and abjad as well), I can turn to the origins of the other types of writing: the abugida and the “featural.” (The term was first used in print by Geoffrey Sampson with reference to Korean, but it had been introduced a few years earlier by Chin-Wu Kim.)
The gentle progress from Aramaic through Iranian to Altaic was one of two journeys eastward made by writing. The other one, better known, is characterized by wrenching changes in inner form and the invention of new types. It begins in, probably, the third century bce, with not one but two abugidas coming into use in the Indian Subcontinent: Kharoṣṭhi in the northwest, and Brahmi, slightly later, everywhere else. The forms of Kharoṣṭhi clearly derive from those of an Aramaic script. Appendages are added to the consonant letters to mark each vowel quality except a. Brahmi is seriously geometricized, though its affinity to a Semitic script can still be discerned. Its appendages mark both quality and quantity of the following vowel. There are not many consonant ligatures as yet, because in their early days both Kharoṣṭhi and Brahmi were used for Prakrit, not Sanskrit, and in Prakrit consonant clusters are rare.
Kharoṣṭhi died out, but Brahmi found success and diversified throughout India and wherever the Buddhist missionaries took it; its shapes were ever elastic, but it retained its inner form throughout: even Javanese with its greatly reduced Austronesian phonological inventory still uses basic letter forms for the consonant plus a, with subscript versions of the consonants for the limited number of clusters that can occur.
But then, a change is found in Tibet: Tibetan is an isolating language. It seems to be more important to delimit syllables—the sounds of the language, in fact—than to achieve compactness and economy of writing. In Tibetan, a dot is placed after each syllable, and only a few of the components of a cluster actually have reduced subscript—or superscript—forms. But Tibetan still places its markings of vowels other than a above or below the line of characters that basically moves from left to right.
Another change: Mongol emperor Genghis Khan commissions the Tibetan monk hPags pa to design a script suitable for all the languages of the empire. Well, it ends up being used mostly for Mongolian, but it has letters for Chinese as well; its forms, though, are taken from Tibetan. For the first time a script in the Brahmi line of descent does not use appendages around the letters to mark the vowels other than a; it places those vowel characters directly into the column of characters, always following, that is below, the consonant to which it belongs. There is no explicit indication of consonant clusters, no way to distinguish a consonant with a from a consonant with no vowel. And there is no demarcation of syllables. Well, Mongolian is an agglutinative language, and clusters and syllable boundaries are not so important there.
Yet another change: Korean king Sejong promulgates a new script (in connection with his avowal of Buddhism), because Chinese characters, which work well for the isolating, at the time monosyllabic language, are not so well suited to the agglutinating Korean, where content-less syllabic characters are wanted for the grammatical morphemes (in Old Korean, the aff[...]
Language Log
The meaning of bracket symbols
Today's xkcd:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/bracket_symbols_2x.png
Left out: the IPA's convention that slashes are used for strings representing abstract phonemic symbol sequences, while square brackets are used for strings representing instances (or types) of phonetic performance, e.g.
'tenth' /tɛnθ/ [tʰɛ̃n̪θ]
The distinction is sometimes called "broad" vs. "narrow" transcription, which of course allows for indefinitely many gradations of breadth.
To the extent that there's a genuine conceptual difference, it's the idea that
1. the phonological system of a given (variety of a) language makes a limited number of qualitative symbolic distinctions in the lexical representation of word pronunciations, so that information about the claims that a given word makes on sound can be represented by an IPA string (leaving out many issues such as syllable (sub-)structure, underspecification, super- or auto-segmental organization,, etc.);
2. In contrast, a specific articulatory and acoustic performance of a given word involves gradient variation, which can be (very crudely) described using more elaborate IPA strings.
See "Towards Progress in Theories of Language Sound Structure", 2018.
Also "On beyond the (International Phonetic) Alphabet", 4/19/2018; "Farther on beyond the IPA", 1/18/2020.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
nod off
If you nod off, you fall asleep without meaning to.
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Word of the Day
lanate
Definition: (adjective) Having or consisting of woolly hairs.
Synonyms: woolly.
Usage: The woolly aphid has a lanate coat resembling cotton.
Discuss
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load.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Washington_October_2016-6.jpg/175px-Washington_October_2016-6.jpg The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., U.S., built between 1848 and 1884 to commemorate George Washington, is an obelisk topped by an isosceles pyramidion.
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Language Log
Charon's obol
Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-fifty-first issue: "Placing Western Coins Near the Deceased in Ancient China: The Origin of a Custom," by Pin LYU. https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp351_coins_burial_ancient_china.pdf
ABSTRACT
This article traces the custom in ancient China of placing Western coins in proximity to corpses during burial. Academic attention has focused on the origin of the custom since Marc Aurel Stein initially connected the finding in Turfan of Western coins placed in the mouths or on the eyes of the corpses with Charon's obol, the ancient Greek coin that, similarly placed, paid Charon to ferry the dead to the underworld. Some scholars agreed with Stein's proposal, while others suggested that it was instead a traditional Chinese funerary ritual, unrelated to Greece. This article moves away from over-reliance on written sources and aims at uncovering the patterns underlying this custom, through the collection and analysis of available archaeological material. Results indicate that the custom possibly originated in the Hellenistic practice of Charon's obol and then traveled to China with Sogdian immigrants, developing into a regional funeral ritual in Turfan.
Keywords: Western coins; burial customs; Charon's obol; Sogdians; Turfan
—–
All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/
================================================ Charon
In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon (/ˈkɛərɒn, –ən/ KAIR-on, -ən; Ancient Greek: Χάρων) is a psychopomp, the ferryman of the Greek underworld. He carries the souls of those who have been given funeral rites across the rivers Acheron and Styx, which separate the worlds of the living and the dead. Archaeology confirms that, in some burials, low-value coins known generically as Charon's obols were placed in, on, or near the mouth of the deceased, or next to the cremation urn containing their ashes. This has been taken to confirm that at least some aspects of Charon's mytheme are reflected in some Greek and Roman funeral practices, or else the coins function as a viaticum for the soul's journey. In Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid, the dead who could not pay the fee, and those who had received no funeral rites, had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river. Charon also ferried the living mortals Heracles and Aeneas to the underworld and back again.
(Wikipedia) obol
An obol is an ancient Greek coin that has one-sixth the value of a drachma. (source)
[drachma] late 14c., dragme, "ancient Athenian coin," the principal silver coin of ancient Greece; mid-15c. as the name of a coin used in Syria, from Old French dragme, from Medieval Latin dragma, from Latinized form of Greek drakhme, an Attic coin and weight, probably originally "a handful" (of six obols, the least valuable coins in ancient Athens), akin to drassesthai "to grasp," a word of uncertain origin, perhaps Pre-Greek. Arabic dirham, Armenian dram are from Greek.
Middle English also used the word in the "weight" sense, as a unit of apothecary's weight of one-eighth of an ounce, which became dram.
(Etymonline)
Cf. obelisk:
From Middle French obelisque, from Latin obeliscus (“obelisk”), from Ancient Greek ὀβελίσκος (obelískos), diminutive of ὀβελός (obelós, “needle”). Compare obelus.
(architecture) A tall, square, tapered, stone monolith topped with a pyramidal point, frequently used as a monument. [from mid 16th c.]
(typography) Synonym of obelus (historical) A symbol resembling a horizontal line (–), sometimes together with one or two dots (for example, ⨪ or ÷), which was used in ancient manuscr[...]
Idiom of the Day
jump at the chance (to do something)
To accept or seize with alacrity an opportunity (to do something). Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
run-in
a serious argument or problem with someone
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t's also normal for many words and phrases to undergo analogous changes in a given language at the same time, although the endpoints are typically different in both discourse-structural and social dimensions. For some observations on the social dimension, see e.g. Charlyn Laserna et al., "Um . . . Who Like Says You Know: Filler Word Use as a Function of Age, Gender, and Personality", 2014. And for some examples of varied function, see e.g. Kerry Mullan, "Et pis bon, ben alors voila quoi! Teaching those pesky discourse markers." International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning 2106:
Discourse markers have been described as “nervous tics, fillers, or signs of hesitation”, and are frequently dismissed as features of lazy or inarticulate speech. Yet in fact they have a number of crucial functions in spoken interaction, such as buying time, managing turn taking, linking utterances, introducing a new topic and indicating the degree of speaker involvement. Discourse markers are said to be used more in conversational speech than in any other form of communication. For this reason, it is essential that we teach our language students how to recognise, understand and use these markers in spoken interaction. […]
The ubiquity of discourse markers in spoken discourse cannot be overestimated. French is no exception. As seen in this title of this paper (borrowed from Auchlin, 1981), French speakers can create a meaningful utterance with nothing more than a string of discourse markers. And yet, while often dismissed as semantically empty, discourse markers are essential to language and culture, and so to intercultural competence. As Wierzbicka says (1991, p. 341):
There are few aspects of any language which reflect the culture of a given speech community better than its particles. Particles are very often highly idiosyncratic: “untranslatable” in the sense that no exact equivalent can be found in other languages. They are ubiquitous, and their frequency in ordinary speech is particularly high. Their meaning is crucial to the interaction mediated by speech; they express the speaker’s attitude towards the addressee or towards the situation spoken about, his assumptions, his intentions, his emotions. If learners of a language failed to master the meaning of its particles, their communicative competence would be drastically impaired.
For the phrase in the title of Auchlin 1981, Mullan suggests the approximate translation:
Mais heu, pis bon, ben alors voilà quoi!
But er, then, well there you have it!
The interpolations most often featured here have been UM and UH:
"Young men talk like old women", 11/6/2005
"Fillers: Autism, gender, age", 7/30/2014
"More on UM and UH", 8/3/2014
"UM UH 3", 8/4/2014
"Male and female word usage", 8/7/2014
"UM / UH geography", 8/13/2014
"Educational UM / UH", 8/13/2014
"UM / UH: Lifecycle effects vs. language change", 8/15/2014
"Filled pauses in Glasgow", 8/17/2014
"ER and ERM in the spoken BNC", 8/18/2014
"Um and uh in Dutch", 9/16/2014
"UM / UH in German", 9/28/2014
"Um, there's timing information in Switchboard?", 10/5/2014
"Trending in the Media: Um, not exactly…", 10/7/2014
"UH / UM in Norwegian", 10/8/2014
"On thee-yuh fillers uh and um", 11/11/2014
"Labiality and feminity", 12/16/2014
"UM/UH accommodation", 11/24/2015
"UM/UH update", 12/13/2015
Some UM /UH comparisons across (varieties of) languages can be found in "Variation and change in the use of hesitation markers in Germanic languages", 2016.
See also "I mean, you know" (8/19/2007) and "You know, I mean" (8/14/2016).
Even in English, there are many un- or under-studied "interpolations" — and the situation in other languages and cultures is even more open.
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Learn English Through Football
Euro 2024 Football Language Day 22: Last-Gasp Winner
Euro 24 Football Language Phrase (Day 16): Whimper Spain and Germany played out a thrilling match, which went into extra time. We focus on this game and the phrase last-gasp winner. Don’t forget we have hundreds more explanations of football language in our football glossary and we also have a page full of football cliches. […]
The post Euro 2024 Football Language Day 22: Last-Gasp Winner appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Idiom of the Day
jungle telegraph
An informal means of communication or information, especially gossip. Used most commonly in the phrase "hear (something) on the jungle telegraph." (Analogous to "hear (something) through the grapevine.") Primarily heard in UK. Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
axe | ax (1)
to dismiss someone from a job (v.) | dismissal from a job (n.)
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, by which a Man may communicate his Mind without opening his Mouth, and at 1000 Leagues Distance, and even to future Ages, only by the Help of 22 letters, which may be joined 5852616738497664000 Ways, and will express all Things in a very narrow Compass. ‘Tis a Pity this excellent Art has not preserved the Name and Memory of its Inventor.
Bibliography
[Repeated from the end of part 1.]
Bühler, Georg. 1898. On the Origin of the Indian Brāhma Alphabet, together with Two Appendices on the Origin of the Kharoṣṭhī Alphabet and the Origin of the So-Called Letter-Numerals of the Brāhmī. 2nd ed. Strassbourg: Trübner.
Daniels, Peter T. 1990. “Fundamentals of Grammatology.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 110: 727–31.
Daniels, Peter T. 1992. “The Syllabic Origin of Writing and the Segmental Origin of the Alphabet.” In The Linguistics of Literacy, edited by Pamela Downing, Susan D. Lima, and Michael Noonan, 83–110. Typological Studies in Language 21. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Daniels, Peter T. 1999. “Some Semitic Phonological Considerations on the Sibilants of the Greek Alphabet.” Written Language and Literacy 2(1): 57–61.
Franklin, Benjamin. 1987. Writings, edited by J. A. Leo Lemay. Library of America 37. New York: Literary Classics of the United States.
Gelb, I. J. 1952. A Study of Writing: The Foundations of Grammatology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (2nd ed., 1963.)
Henning, W. B. 1958. “Mitteliranisch.” In Iranistik, 20–130. Handbuch der Orientalistik I/4.1. Leiden: Brill. (Unpub. English translation by Peter T. Daniels available.)
Kara, György. 1996. “Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages.” In The World’s Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, 536-58. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lincoln, Abraham. 1859. “Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, Jacksonville, Illinois.” In Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 2 vols., edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher, 2, 3–11. Library of America 45–46. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989.
Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing Systems. London; Stanford: Hutchinson; Stanford University Press. (Corrected pbk. reprint, London, 1987.)
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. 1992. Before Writing. 2 vols. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Schmitt, Alfred. 1954. “Die Vokallosigkeit der ägyptischen und semitischen Schrift.” Indogermanische Forschungen 61: 216–27.
Schmitt, Alfred. 1980. Entstehung und Entwicklung von Schriften, edited by Claus Haeber. Cologne: Böhlau.
Skjærvø, P. Oktor. 1996. “Aramaic Scripts for Iranian Languages.” In The World’s Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, 515–35. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stuart, George E. 1992. “Quest for Decipherment: A Historical and Biographical Survey of Maya Hieroglyphic Investigation.” In New Theories on the Ancient Maya, edited by Elin C. Danien and Robert J. Sharer, 1–63. University Museum Monograph 77, University Museum Symposium Series 3. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.
Toynbee, Arnold J. 1939a. “Lingue franche.” In A Study of History, pt. V: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, sec. C: The Process of the Disintegrations of Civilizations, 1: The Criterion of Disintegration, d: Schism in the Soul, 6: The Sense of Promiscuity, γ, vol. 5, 483–527. London: Oxford University Press.
Toynbee, Arnold J. 1939b. “Archaism in Language and Literature.” In A Study of History, pt. V: The Disintegrations of Civilizations, sec. C: The Process of the Disintegrations of Civilizations, 1: The Criterion of Disintegration, d: Schism in the Soul, 8: Archaism, γ, vol. 6, 62–83. London: Oxford University Press.
Toynbee, Arnold J. 1954a. “The Administrative Geography of the Achaemenian Empire.” In A Study of History, pt. VI: Universal States, sec. C: Universal States as Means, II: Services and Beneficiaries, c: The Serviceability of Imperial Installations, 3: Provinces, Annex, vol. 7[B], 580–689. London: Oxford University Press.
Toyn[...]
ixes were simply omitted and only the content words rendered with Chinese characters). Sejong’s new script is an alphabet, with symbols, some similar to corresponding hPags pa letters, for consonants and for vowels; but it is more than that: phonetically similar segments have visually related symbols—and the symbols themselves are designed to represent the vocal organs that produce them. Hence the label “featural.” Furthermore, the letters making up each syllable are combined into syllable blocks, with the initial consonant at the upper left, the linear vowel to the right or below, and the final consonant or consonants again below. The visual effect is reminiscent of the Chinese characters with which they are still combined (though characters are less frequent than in Japanese, which developed two true syllabaries by simplifying a selection of Chinese characters).
How can we account for the two different ways that writing has been transmitted across Asia: the gentle transfers from Aramaic through Iranian all the way to Manchu, or from Brahmi throughout Buddhistdom; versus the abrupt changes in type, adapting successfully to the Indic type, to Tibetan, and to Korean? I think it is not a coincidence that it was these three civilizations that possessed an indigenous grammatical tradition, while the Iranian and Mongolian civilizations, as literary as they were, did not. (Sibawayh was a Persian, but he analyzed only the grammar of Arabic.) Scholars who were already in the habit of conscious awareness of the structure of their language found ways to shape the graphic, phonographic, materials they received into garments well fitted to clothe the languages that bore them.
But maybe the inventors of the Indic scripts had a little prompting within the Aramaic model itself. Without identification of the particular varieties that underlie the Indic creations, we cannot be sure; but if the use of matres lectionis was nearly as pervasive as it became in the following centuries in Aramaic and, following it, Iranian, then nearly every letter that wasn’t followed by a vowel letter (ʾalep, waw, or yod) represented a consonant followed by a short a or a consonant followed by no vowel. One can see how the pandits schooled in Pāṇinian analysis of Sanskrit could understand the consonant letters as legitimately representing consonant plus a; so that they would see their innovation as the differentiation of the mid vowels from the high vowels, and the reduction of the vowel letters to appendages to the consonant letters: so that the Eastern analysis represents the reversal of the eventual Western analysis that takes the vowels, or sonants, as the heart of the syllable and the consonants as auxiliaries to the vowels.
I mentioned that the script progression across Inner Asia could be called “gentle.” I contrasted it with the South Asia sequence, which involved encounters with grammatical traditions. But there have been other sorts of script transfers that did not involve grammatical traditions, but that were not so gentle. Only at less-than-gentle transitions do changes in script direction come about: the inherited but somewhat awkward right-to-left direction was maintained throughout the Northwest Semitic array of scripts. It takes some sort of shock—such as adaptation to a quite different language—to change this, often through a boustrophedon stage. It happened going from Sogdian to Uyghur, from Tibetan to hPags pa, from Etruscan to Latin. It seems also to take a different sort of shock—a major discontinuity of the tradition—to bring about a deep change in inner form.
If the elusive “West Semites” who devised the first abjad or consonantary had learned their Egyptian well, why wouldn’t they have simply brought all the resources of Egyptian writing into the writing of Semitic languages—as happened when Akkadian came to be recorded in the Sumerian tradition? If they knew a little about Egyptian, why wouldn’t the monoconsonantal signs they supposedly borrowed have brought with them their E[...]
Language Log
Script origin and typology, part 2
[This is a guest post by Peter T. Daniels, to follow part 1 (7/1/24)]
That, then, is my account of the origin of writing. It might be supposed that my next topic must be the origin of the alphabet. But it is not; for me, the origin of the alphabet is accidental and practically inevitable, given the constellation of circumstances surrounding the event.
No; what must be celebrated, if not explained, is the origin of the abjad. Previously, writers wrote sounds; subsequently, writers wrote parts of sounds. All the evidence in favor of the syllable as the basic unit of speech is also evidence against the likelihood of discovering the segment. The Egyptians didn’t discover the segment, even though they wrote only consonants and didn’t identify the vowels of the syllables of their language; as explained by Alfred Schmitt, Egyptian hieroglyphic signs never ceased to be word signs, even when used strictly for their phonetic value.
We have some cuneiform lists of signs that are arranged phonetically. Signs for bu ba bi are brought together, and mu ma mi, and so on; so are signs for ub ab ib, and um am im, and so on; but there is no indication that there was any recognition that the bu ba bi and ub ab ib signs belong together, and so on. It was only that brilliant discovery that brought about economy in writing. Only with the recognition that the single letter b could represent voiced labial closure wherever in a word it appeared did it become possible to successfully write languages that admitted consonant clusters at the beginnings or ends of syllables. (Compare the Greek syllabic orthographies, Linear B and Cypriote, where clusters are resolved either by graphic epenthesis or by omission of a consonant.)
Consonantal or abjadic writing spread to many Semitic idioms that had not previously been written. In the Aramaic scribal tradition, it gradually became standard to indicate the quality of long vowels with the help of letters for associated glides: î and ê with yod, û and ô with waw, â with ʾalep. This system was apparently borrowed by scribes of Hebrew, but it did not enter the Phoenician tradition (except in later Punic, from the last few centuries bce), and I have not yet considered whether I can suggest why. Such vowel letters are called matres lectionis ‘mothers of reading’, and their use increased with time, so that in Mandaic and various Jewish Aramaics short vowels, too, are marked with matres.
Such a script was borrowed eastward from Manichaean Aramaic to serve various forms of Iranian, and in turn via Sogdian, for Turkic Uyghur, and Mongolian, and Manchu—the whole range of Altaic—without affecting the “inner form” of the script, while its appearance grew more and more distant from the source.
But, when the borrowing went westward, it wasn’t Aramaic, but Phoenician that provided the source of the Greek alphabet. How do I know that? Precisely because the inner form of the script changed. If Greek writing had been based on Aramaic, it would simply have taken over the use of matres just the way Iranian did. Instead, whoever cajoled a Phoenician scribe into teaching him or her how to write didn’t speak Phoenician very well, or at all; for they couldn’t hear the consonants that didn’t occur in their native Greek language. They got the consonants pretty well (even the sibilants, now that we have an improved understanding of the phonetics of early Semitic, due to Alice Faber), but Greek has fewer consonants than Phoenician, so there were a number of left-over letters; and to the untutored Greek, those letters would seem to begin with vowel sounds (as words in Greek could do); so the Greek would understand ʾalep as representing not ʾ but a, hê as not h but e, yod as not y but î, and so on. Rudolf Wachter has even uncovered evidence that scribes would sound out their wo[...]
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: surreal
This word has appeared in 570 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Idiom of the Day
jump in (one's) skin
To start or recoil, as from shock, surprise, or fear. Watch the video
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
meathead
a stupid person
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ipts and texts to mark a word or passage as doubtful or spurious, or redundant.
A dagger symbol (†), which is used in printed matter as a reference mark to refer the reader to a footnote, marginal note, etc.; beside a person's name to indicate that the person is deceased; or beside a date to indicate that it is a person's death date.
(Wiktionary)
So how are obol and obelisk related?
The obol (Greek: ὀβολός, obolos, also ὀβελός (obelós), ὀβελλός (obellós), ὀδελός (odelós). lit. "nail, metal spit"; Latin: obolus) was a form of ancient Greek currency and weight.
Obols were used from early times. According to Plutarch they were originally spits of copper or bronze traded by weight, while six obols make a drachma or a handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp. Heraklides of Pontus (died ca. 310 BC) is cited as having mentioned the obols of Heraion and also gives the etymology of obolos (the name of the coin) from obelos (the word for "spit, spike, nail"). Similarly, the historian Ephorus in his equally lost work On Inventions (mid 4th century BC) is said to have mentioned the obols of Heraion. Excavations at Argos discovered several dozen of these early obols, dated well before 800 BC; they are now displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens. Archaeologists today describe the iron spits as "utensil-money" since excavated hoards indicate that during the Late Geometric period they were exchanged in handfuls (drachmae) of six spits; they were not used for manufacturing artifacts as metallurgical analyses suggest, but they were most likely used as token-money. Plutarch states the Spartans had an iron obol of four coppers. They retained the cumbersome and impractical bars rather than proper coins to discourage the pursuit of wealth.
(Wikipedia)
An obelisk (/ˈɒbəlɪsk/; from Ancient Greek: ὀβελίσκος obeliskos; diminutive of ὀβελός obelos, "spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called tekhenu, the Greeks used the Greek term obeliskos to describe them, and this word passed into Latin and ultimately English.
(Wikipedia)
Returning to Pin Lyu's new SPP, what is particularly interesting about the ritual he meticulously documents is that, not only was this highly specific ritual practice borrowed far to the east from where it originated, the Central and East Asians went to the extreme of using Byzantine and Sasanian coins, which — at such a great remove from their sources — would have been extraordinarily difficult to procure. Yet, in order to ensure the efficacy of the rite, the Western authenticity of the coins was felt to be essential. Selected readings
* "Pyramid vs. obelisk" (4/7/16)
* "Hellenism in East Asia" (12/4/22) — with a bibliography of relevant works by Lucas Christopoulos
Obols through history https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Obol-vert-3.jpg/210px-Obol-vert-3.jpg Six rod-shaped obols discovered at the Heraion of Argos (above). Six obols forming one drachma. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Athens._Circa_594-566.jpg/210px-Athens._Circa_594-566.jpg Silver obol of Athens, dated 515–510 BC. Obv. Gorgoneion Rev. Incuse square. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Charon-obol2.jpg/210px-Charon-obol2.jpg Charon's obol. 5th–1st century BC. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/SNGANS_554.jpg/210px-SNGANS_554.jpg LUCANIA, Metapontion. c. 425–350 BC. Æ 21 mm. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/DemetriusObol.JPG/210px-DemetriusObol.JPG An obol of the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius, 12 mm in diameter https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/2_Ionian_oboli_1819.jpg/210px-2_Ionian_oboli_1819.jpg A 19th-century obol from the British-occupied Ionian Islands
* https://up[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
run to
to ask someone to help or protect you when you should be able to look after yourself
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Word of the Day
ethereal
Definition: (adjective) Characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy.
Synonyms: gossamer.
Usage: The birdwatchers longed to see the smallest and most ethereal of birds but found only a family of common pigeons.
Discuss
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/11/21) — with extensive discussion of Indo-European horse sacrifice
* "Translating the I ching (Book of Changes)" (10/11/17)
* "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20)
* "Headless men with face on chest" (9/28/20)
* "Tattoos as a means of communication" (9/1/12)
* "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics" (5/1/20)
* "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics, part 2" (5/11/20)
* "Revelation: Scythians and Shang" (6/4/23)
* "Paleographers, riches await you!" (10/28/16) — oracle bone script; evidence from Anyang
* "Ashkenazi and Scythians" (7/13/21)
* "Ukrainian at the edge" (10/30/22)
* "Old Ukrainian windmills and Old Sinitic reconstructions"(3/27/22)
* "Where did the PIEs come from; when was that?" (7/28/23)
* C. Scott Littleton, "Were Some of the Xinjiang Mummies 'Epi-Scythians'? An Excursus in Trans-Eurasian Folklore and Mythology." In Victor H. Mair, The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia (Washington D.C. and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 746-766.
* C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor, From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (New York and London: Garland, 1994; rev. pb. 2000). In the British journal, Religion, 28.3 (July, 1998), 294-300, I [VHM] wrote a review in which I pointed out that the celebrated motif of a mighty arm rising up out of the water holding aloft the hero's sword can also be found in a medieval Chinese tale from Dunhuang. That review is available electronically from ScienceDirect, if your library subscribes to it. Otherwise, I think this version on the Web is a fairly faithful copy.
* Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2010)
* Miriam Robbins Dexter and Victor H. Mair, "Sacred Display: New Findings", Sino-Platonic Papers, 240 (Sept. 2013), 122 pages
* Petya Andreeva, Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea: Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE (Edinburgh: University Press, 2024).
* "The 'whole mess' of Old Sinitic reconstruction" (12/14/20)
* Victor Mair, "Reflections on the Origins of the Modern Standard Mandarin Place-Name 'Dunhuang' — With an Added Note on the Identity of the Modern Uighur Place-Name 'Turpan'", in Li Zheng, et al., eds., Ji Xianlin Jiaoshou bashi huadan jinian lunwenji (Papers in Honour of Prof. Dr. Ji Xianlin on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday) (Nanchang: Jiangxi People's Press, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 901-954 (very long and detailed study).
* Victor H. Mair, with contributions by E. Bruce Brooks, " Was There a Xià Dynasty?", Sino-Platonic Papers, 238 (May, 2013), 1-39.
[Thanks to Geoff Wade]
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