Papers by Piotr Gąsiorowski
The paper reconsiders the fate of medial *-sr-in Germanic, especially in the context of Verner‖s ... more The paper reconsiders the fate of medial *-sr-in Germanic, especially in the context of Verner‖s Law. It is argued that the epenthesis of *-t-took place later than the voicing of *-s-by Verner‖s Law and did not apply to the Vernerian variant *-zr-. Instead, I propose that the pre-rhotic *z was lost, resulting, when possible, in a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. Several novel etymologies are offered to support this proposal, and some of its ramifications are explored, including the derivation of the word for-spring‖ in Latin and Germanic and the structure of the Germanic words for the four cardinal points. 1 1. The-spring‖ word Old Icelandic vár-spring‖ (a neuter a-stem) is so similar to Lat. vēr-both exhibiting what looks like a shared phonological irregularity-that it is tempting to reconstruct something like *u̯ ēr-and label it an Italo-Germanic innovation (cf. Pokorny 1174). The PIE word for-spring‖ can be reconstructed as an acrostatic neuter: *u̯ ḗs-r̥ , gen. *u̯ és-n̥-s (→ *u̯ és-nos), loc. *u̯ és-n-i ~ *u̯ és-r-i (Av. vaŋri), 2 hence such deadverbial adjectives as *u̯ esni-no-(OCS vesnьnъ) and *u̯ esri-no-, the latter producing Lat. vernus-(belonging to) spring. ‖ via syncope or haplology: *u̯ esrino-> *u̯ ezr̥ 2 no-> *u̯ ererno-> vernus. 3 When compared with the usual form of the 1 I wish to thank the editors of this volume and the anonymous reviewer of this paper for corrections, incisive comments and helpful suggestions that have led to numerous improvements incorporated in the final draft. Needless to say, any remaining flaws and errors are exclusively my own. 2 Also (post-PIE) *u̯ es-en-i ~ *u̯ es-er-i, with *e introduced on the analogy of accentually mobile stems. The *ē : *e ablaut (Schindler‖s acrostatic type I) seems necessary to explain the non-attestation of the zero grade *us-. It is possible that *u̯ es-r/n-is deverbal, from *u̯ es-graze, feed‖, tentatively classified in LIV (Rix-Kümmel et al. 2001: 692) as a Narten verb, i.e. a root present with an underlying long vowel; cf. Hitt. wešiya-graze‖ < *u̯ és-i̯ e/o-, Goth. wisan-feast‖ < PGmc. *wes-a-/*wis-i-, perhaps Lat. vēscor-take food‖, and a number of nominal derivatives, e.g. Hitt. weštara-< *u̯ és-tōr-shepherd‖, Toch.A *wäsri (obl.pl. wsäryās)-grassy area‖ < *u̯ es-tr-ih 2 , OIr. fess, OIc. vist-food‖ < *u̯ es-tah 2 , etc. The original meaning of *u̯ es-r/n-would then be-(the onset of) the grazing season‖. 3 *r̥ 2 > Lat. er stands for a secondary syllabic rhotic in pre-Latin, in this case from *ri before a coronal. stem, *u̯ es-r/n-, and its derivatives (Gk. ἔαρ, OCS vesna, etc.), vēr, gen. vēris looks strange indeed. However, rather than accept an irregular cluster reduction at an indeterminable date, I suggest that we are dealing with a rather trivial case of paradigmatic levelling in Old Latin. The expected post-rhotacism reflexes of the PIE forms would have been *vērer (vel sim.), gen. *vēnis (< pre-Lat. *u̯ eznes). Suppose that the *-n-of the oblique cases was analogically replaced by the *-r-of the nominative/accusative ("Stage III" in (1) below). The resulting new oblique stem vēr-was identical with the initial part of *vērer. Subsequently, the synchronically unmotivated termination was dropped and the paradigm became completely normalised: (1) PIE *u̯ ḗs-r̥ : *u̯ és-n-(e/o)s Stage I *u̯ ēzer : *u̯ eznes Stage II *u̯ ērer : *u̯ ēnes Stage III *u̯ ērer : *u̯ ēres Latin vēr : vēris Since, under this scenario, vēr is a fairly recent form and cannot be regarded as an Italo-Germanic innovation, Germanic *wēra-has to be explained otherwise. The possibility (referred to in Pokorny) that it represents a reflex of *u̯ es-r-remodelled on *i̯ ēr-year‖, i.e. PIE *(h 1/2)i̯ e/oh 1-r-(> PGmc. *jēr-a-year‖) is not supported by anything except the vague phonetic resemblance of both words. *(h 1)nŕ̥-tero-*núr-tero-*nur-þera-*nurþ-(r)a-*s[h 2 ]u̯ ń̥-tero-*sún-tero-*sun-þera-*sunþ-(r)a-*u̯ é-k (w) sp-ero-*u̯ ésp-ero-*wes-tera-*west-(r)a-*h 2 áu̯ [s]s-r-o-*áu̯ s-ro-*aus-(t)ra-*aust-(r)a
Indogermanische Forschungen, 2006
Hans Sauer & Piotr P. Chruszczewski (eds.), Mostly Medieval: In Memory of Jacek Fisiak. San Diego, CA: Æ Academic Publishing, 2020
The phonemicisation of the voiced allophones of the Old English anterior fricatives, /f, θ, s/, w... more The phonemicisation of the voiced allophones of the Old English anterior fricatives, /f, θ, s/, was a long and complicated process. The handbook description of the three phonemes as a natural class which underwent a round of duplication, giving rise to /v, ð, z/ at the same time for the same reasons, is incompatible with the Middle English evidence. A re-examination of the data and a critical analysis of the proposed scenarios of the emergence of the voiced fricative series leads to conclusions which endorse those of Minkova (2011): the phonemicisation was gradual and proceded in a non-parallel fashion. The influence of French, mediated by the massive importation of French loanwords into Middle Eglish, played a greater role than any native systemic pressures.
Proceedings of the LSA, 2020
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had two grammatical genders (common and neuter); the feminine was a sha... more Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had two grammatical genders (common and neuter); the feminine was a shared innovation of the non-Anatolian part of the family. Using comparison with Modern Nepali, we argue that the puzzling feminine forms of the numerals '3' and '4' in Celtic and Indo-Iranian, and possibly also some similar constructions in Latin and Old Irish, are survivals of a system of numeral classifiers predating the full gender system. They contain the feminine element *-s(o)r-, grammaticalized as a numeral classifier in PIE. A similar situation is attested in Nepali, where grammatical gender occurs alongside numeral classifiers. Analogies between numeral phrases in PIE and Nepali help elucidate the historical development in question.
Ex Oriente Lux: How Nepali Helps to Understand Relict Numeral Forms in Proto-Indo-European, 2020
The feminine forms of the numerals '3' and '4' in Celtic and Indo-Iranian have attracted much att... more The feminine forms of the numerals '3' and '4' in Celtic and Indo-Iranian have attracted much attention and inspired numerous efforts to make sense of their phonological shape and morphological structure. This article examines various aspects of their reconstruction and attempts to throw new light not only on the irregular sound changes that affected them, but also on the original functions of their constituent morphemes. In search of insight provided by functional analogies, the behaviour and properties of the Proto-Indo-European numerals in question are compared with the expression of feminine reference in modern Nepali, a language possessing grammatical gender as well as numeral classifiers due to contact with neighbouring Tibeto-Burman languages. The morphosyntactic and semantic analogies between numeral phrases in Nepali and Proto-Indo-European help to determine the role of internal and external factors, such as inherited typology and language contact, in the rise and loss of morphosyntactic complexity.
Folia Linguistica, issue Historica, 2017
The origin of the Germanic suffixes forming occupational titles and agent nouns – masculine *-āri... more The origin of the Germanic suffixes forming occupational titles and agent nouns – masculine *-ārijaz (the ancestor of Modern English -er) and its feminine counterpart reflected in Old English as -estre and in Modern as -ster – is an old problem in Germanic historical morphology. The masculine “agentive” suffix, which occurs in all the subgroups of Germanic, is generally presumed to be of Latin origin, though it occurs mostly with native derivational bases even in the earliest attested Germanic languages; the latter is believed to be native, but has no accepted etymology, and its limited range of occurrence in Germanic remains unexplained. It will be argued that the two suffixes are etymologically connected in a hitherto unsuspected way, that the traditional opinion about the origin of *-ārijaz should be revised, and that both suffixes have interesting Indo-European cognates outside Germanic.
For copyright reasons I can only upload a small teaser here. For a free full copy, contact me by e-mail: gpiotr@wa.amu.edu.pl
Yearbook of the Poznań Linguistic Meeting, 2017
The notion of HEAD is reflected in the basic lexicon of all known languages; the identification o... more The notion of HEAD is reflected in the basic lexicon of all known languages; the identification of the head as a distinct and vitally important body part, labelled with a simplex word, seems to be a cross-cultural universal. Thanks to their high frequency of use and their "basic concept" status, words meaning 'head' tend to be diachronically stable and therefore important for comparative reconstruction. Their expected retention rate – as estimated on the basis of data from several uncontroversial language families – is on a par with words meaning 'heart' or 'foot'. On the other hand, culture-specific factors may lead to the proliferation of secondary meanings, the rise of stylistically marked near-synonyms, and consequently to locally accelerated lexical evolution. This seems to have happened repeatedly in the Indo-European family, in which not only the oldest recon-structible 'head' word, *ḱreh₂-but also secondary, branch-specific terms have often been subject to lexical replacement. This unusual variability of words for HEAD in Indo-European contrasts with the remarkable conservatism of words for several other body-part concepts, such as EYE, EAR, TOOTH and HEART. In this paper, we shall attempt to identify recurrent patterns of semantic change in the emergence of new synonyms and the polysemic development of inherited 'head' words. Insights derived from recent studies of "embodiment" will be used to explain the observed tendencies.
Stanisław Puppel and Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (eds.). Multis vocibus de lingua. Pp. 29-38.
The paper discusses the phonological status of s+stop clusters, their phonotactic properties, and... more The paper discusses the phonological status of s+stop clusters, their phonotactic properties, and their typological relevance.
""The purpose of this article is to show that the variety and irregularity of the Indo-European '... more ""The purpose of this article is to show that the variety and irregularity of the Indo-European 'crane' words is apparent rather than actual, and that their derivational history is in fact quite simple. In brief, they can be reduced to only a couple of related PIE lexemes, rather than a whole constellation of 'dialectal' forms.
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2391
http://www2.filg.uj.edu.pl/ifo/kjasis/sec/store/sec-18.pdf
The paper reconsiders the fate of medial *-sr- in Germanic, especially in the context of Verner's... more The paper reconsiders the fate of medial *-sr- in Germanic, especially in the context of Verner's Law. It is argued that the epenthesis of *-t- took place later than the voicing of *-s- by Verner's Law and did not apply to the Vernerian variant *-zr-. Instead, I propose that the pre-rhotic *z was lost, resulting, when possible, in a compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. Several novel etymologies are offered to support this proposal, and some of its ramifications are explored, including the derivation of the word for 'spring' in Latin and Germanic and the structure of the Germanic words for the four cardinal points.
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/1990
"This article tries to explain the anomalous properties of the Proto-Indo-European verb *gʷíh₃u̯e... more "This article tries to explain the anomalous properties of the Proto-Indo-European verb *gʷíh₃u̯e|o- ‘live’, its relation to the adjective *gʷih₃u̯ó- ‘living’ and further etymological connections. One of the ideas resulting from the discussion is a new etymology of *gʷou̯- ‘cow, head of cattle’.
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2419
This article discusses the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ in early English. The traditio... more This article discusses the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ in early English. The traditional belief that the dominant pronunciation in Old and Middle English was [r] (an apical trill) is still supported by some authors, but there is growing consensus that there was a fairly wide range of /r/ realisations already in early Germanic, and that the pronunciation of /r/ in Old English was about as variable as it is in present-day English. The article defends this view and goes a step further, suggesting that the modern distribution of variant rhotic pronunciations in British English reflects to some extent the distribution of very similar sounds in Old English.
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2383
This article explores the origin of English dog (OE *docga), generally regarded as a word of unkn... more This article explores the origin of English dog (OE *docga), generally regarded as a word of unknown origin. It is argued, on the basis of its morphology, that the word is a hypocoristic derivative of <dox>, an Old English colour adjective. The article suggests that the relation between OE <frox> and <frocga> ‘frog’ is not an isolated irregularity but an example of a derivational process represented also by <dox : *docga> and possibly by other such pairs in Old English (e.g. <fox: *fogga>).
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2479
The article discusses the shortening of some instances of /ɔː/ (the THOUGHT vowel) in the normati... more The article discusses the shortening of some instances of /ɔː/ (the THOUGHT vowel) in the normative variety of (Late Modern) British English and the possible selective impact of spelling on that process.
Words in -ate and the history of English stress, 1997
The success of the conference and, mutatis mutandis, its result as evidenced by this volume were ... more The success of the conference and, mutatis mutandis, its result as evidenced by this volume were possible because of the enthusiasm was also shared by the organizers, in particular the conference secretary, Mrs. Katarzyna Rogalinska, who skilfully handled all the administrative duties. It is a pleasure to express he re my words of thanks and appreciation for her devotion and efficiency.
... Slavic languages syllabic liquids arose when the short high vowels (" yers") of Pro... more ... Slavic languages syllabic liquids arose when the short high vowels (" yers") of Proto-Slavic, I and ... Whether that happened automatically upon the completion of vowel syn-cope is a disputable matter. ... Its stress had probably evolved into some kind of pitch accent; at any rate it no ...
The parallels between biological and linguistic evolution have been noticed and commented upon fo... more The parallels between biological and linguistic evolution have been noticed and commented upon for well over a century, both by students of language-suffice it to mention August Schleicher's (1863) celebrated tree (Stammbaum) model of the Indo-European family-and by natural scientists, from Charles Darwin's remarks on the subject in The Origin of Species (1859) to a number of contributions, in recent years, by the geneticist Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza.
This article is a study of "aberrant" ablaut types in Proto-Indo-European, including non-ablautin... more This article is a study of "aberrant" ablaut types in Proto-Indo-European, including non-ablauting long vocalism; particular emphasis, however, is placed on alternations exemplified by the so-called "longdiphthong bases" -because of the aura of controversy that has always surrounded them and the lively interest they still inspire in Indo-European studies. Although a number of explanations have been proposed to account for their puzzling vocalism, yet none of them has come to be regarded äs entirely acceptable: what vitiates them is either lack of phonological plausibility or immoderate (that is, insufficiently constrained) recourse to "analogy".
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Papers by Piotr Gąsiorowski
For copyright reasons I can only upload a small teaser here. For a free full copy, contact me by e-mail: gpiotr@wa.amu.edu.pl
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2391
http://www2.filg.uj.edu.pl/ifo/kjasis/sec/store/sec-18.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/1990
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2419
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2383
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2479
For copyright reasons I can only upload a small teaser here. For a free full copy, contact me by e-mail: gpiotr@wa.amu.edu.pl
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2391
http://www2.filg.uj.edu.pl/ifo/kjasis/sec/store/sec-18.pdf
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/1990
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2419
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2383
http://hdl.handle.net/10593/2479
This is not to say that theoretical bias necessarily distorts the evidence or invalidates our inferences. The feedback mechanism involved in scientific reasoning is circular but not viciously so. I shall argue that its role is generally constructive. Hypotheses provide us with insights which enable us to identify further facts consistent with our model and to integrate them with previously gathered evidence within a stabler and more general theoretical framework. Circularity becomes dangerous only if expectations make us ignore potential counterevidence, immunising the model against falsification.
The presentation will focus on two rather different causes célèbres. On of them is a complex of consonant changes in early Germanic (Grimm’s Law, Verner’s Law and “further complications”); the other is the reconstructed verb system of Proto-Indo-European. In both cases we shall see how a large body of important evidence remained for a long time practically invisible simply because it could not be reconciled with the “established wisdom” of the field. It will also be shown, however, how a radical rethinking of theoretical assumptions has made it possible to discover and explore new sources of evidence – including those that have been right under our noses all the time.
Both Krahe’s decomposition of river-names into recurring IE-looking roots with single or multiple suffixes, and the similar combinatorial method employed by Vennemann (yielding morphological elements interpreted as Vasconic), seem to produce reasonable-looking analyses. However, as the two approaches lead to mutually contradictory conclusions, they cannot be both correct at the same time. It will be argued in the present paper that the very notion of “Old European” is too vague to rule out this kind of ambiguity.
As in other areas of historical-linguistic research, no etymology can be regarded as acceptable unless it satisfies the standard criteria of validity: it must account fully for the structure of the analysed item (including its historically documented variants); it must provide it with a semantic interpretation; and it must offer a convincing rationale for that interpretation. It will be shown that even if a river-name (or some other toponym) is demonstrably old enough to be assigned to the “Old European” historical stratum, we can gain more insight from analysing it first conservatively in the light of historically known languages before we turn to vaguely defined pre-stages or extinct substrate languages so hypothetical that there is no tangible evidence to constrain our speculation with regard to their phonology, morphology or semantics."