In my previous post I gave a list of some Sanskrit-Russian cognate verbs which showed a remarkable phono-semantic affinity. This closeness also extends to grammatical endings. I would like to demonstrate it here taking as an example one Sanskrit verb jīvati ‘lives, is or remains alive’. For Russian I chose a less used form живать živat‘ which in modern Russian is predominantly used with prefixes e. g. про–живать pro–živat‘. It is an exact analogue of Sankrit jīvati and Avestan ǰvaiti. To make the comparison more obvious I also included Lithuanian and Latin cognates. Hopefully, this comparison is self-explanatory.
Some notes:
There are many theories on the nature of verbal systems in the ancient dialects that are commonly referred to as ‘Indo-European’ and ‘proto-Indo-European’. As I have already written in the comments, I do not accept the idea of a uniform ‘proto-language’. I do use these terms but only as ‘umbrella terms’ meaning a certain simplified generalisation.
There is a general consensus that ‘Indo-European’ verbs were conjugated (at least in the present tense) by person (First, Second and Third) and by number (Singular, Dual and Plural). These grammatical categories were expressed by means of special endings which were added to the verbal stem . It should be noted that ‘verbal stem’ as well as ‘verbal root’ are abstractions. For example, ancient Sanskrit grammarians did not single out the root. Instead they operated with dhātu ‘constituent part, ingredient, element’. The notion of a verbal root was brought in by Western scholars inspired by Semitic monosyllabic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) roots. So when we see in a modern dictionary a root jīv, according to Pāṇini, this would be a dhātu jīva ‘living, existing, alive’. From the point of Western linguists it would be viewed as a CVC root jīv + a so-called ‘thematic vowel‘ –a. Together they would form a ‘stem’ which may be taken as an equivalent of dhātu. For convenience I mark the root in italic, thematic vowel in blue and the personal ending in red. I also added hypothetical (reconstructed) thematic vowels and personal endings based on a more traditional interpretation of Fortson (Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell Publishing. 2004).
Transliteration:
Sanskrit j is [ɟ͡ʝ] (similar to j in jam], ḥ is a visarga ‘sending forth, letting go, liberation, emission, discharge’. It is a voiceless ‘breath out’ like an energetic [h]. In certain positions at words conjunctions visarga becomes /s/ or /r/. Long vowels are marked with a bar above so ī is [i:]. Because Russian stressed vowels are primarily characterised by length, I transliterate them in the similar manner so ā is a stressed a . By the way, Sanskrit a अ should be pronounced as [ɐ] or [ə] which exactly corresponds to the Russian unstressed a.
I transliterate here Cyrillic using the same system of Latin transliteration as commonly used for Devanāgarī so Russian ш [ʂ] commonly transliterated as š or sh, appears here as ṣ. This is particularly justified because Sanskrit ṣ is also a retroflex sibilant. Also I transliterate here ж [ʒ] (ž or zh) as j. However, Lithuanian j is [j]. Lithuanian g is [g] and y is [iː].
| Singular | Hypothetical “IE” | Plural | Hypothetical “IE” | |||
| 1st (I) | Skr. | jīvāmi |
*-oh₂ | 1st (we) | jīvāmaḥ | *-omos |
| Rus. | jivāyu | jivāem | ||||
| Lith. | gyvoju |
gyvuojame | ||||
| Lat. | vīvō | vīvimus | ||||
| 2nd (you) | Skr. | jīvasi | *-esi | 2nd (you) | jīvatha | *-ete |
| Rus. | jivāeṣ | jivāete | ||||
| Lith. | gyvuoji | gyvuojate | ||||
| Lat | vīvis | vīvitis | ||||
| 3rd (he/she/it) | Skr. | jīvati | *-eti | 3rd (they) | jīvanti | *-onti |
| Rus. | jivāet | jivāyut | ||||
| Lith. | gyvuoja | gyvuoja | ||||
| Lat. | vīvit | vīvunt |
borissoff 
4 comments
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January 19, 2013 at 20:09
PasserBy
This is a great post (!), but you forgot to say how Lithuanian ‘g’ is pronounced. It’s like the never-ending story of cognates – semantic only?
January 19, 2013 at 22:21
borissoff
Thanks! Lithuanian g is pronounced [ɡ]. As for your other question — not just semantic. Look at this genetic map from Kivisild, T. ‘The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations’ The American Journal of Human Genetics, 2003, Volume 72, Issue 2, 313-332.
February 7, 2013 at 20:35
PasserBy
Thanks a lot! To add to the basket – what continues to amaze me for long time now: How, ‘the deuce’, can a ‘zh’ sound turn into ‘g’, and the other way round – the sounds are not close enough, I would not be personally satisfied with the explanation of gradual ‘gliding’ or shifting.
It’s like with the word for ‘snow’ and it’s versions in IE languages and reconstructions – what would cause the French lose initial ‘s’ and replace the ‘g’ sound for ‘zh’ – their peculiar way of backward Satemization from the original Centum European style?
Such processes push towards the idea that written form of languages was influencing the way how words written became pronounced, which is rejected by mainstream for the moment.
February 7, 2013 at 23:41
borissoff
It is not easy to respond to this question in a blog. I can only point out the general direction. Sounds of a language do not exist separately. They are part of a phonetic system. One may approach this system in many ways. There is a structuralist approach which imagines this system as a “pattern” where each phoneme is a combination of “distinctive” features. In technical terms this may be paralleled with the notion “digital”. The alternative approach is physiological. In respect of the “digital” method it may be dubbed “analogue”.
You see, speech apparatus is not a loudspeaker where we have a membrane which reproduces frequency patterns. We have several organs: the larynx, the tongue, the velum, the jaw etc. When we speak we use many muscles directed from several brain centres. It may be compared to an orchestra. As a bio-mechanical system it is bound by certain organic limitations. Also the system has to be arranged in such a way that articulations of a preceding sound were not incompatible with the articulation of the following sound. This is why certain combinations of sounds (or, more precisely, combinations of “kinems” or movements) are not allowed. Usually, all words of a language have been either made or “filtered” through its phonetic system so as to exclude problematic combinations. However, whenever there arises a situation when an articulatory pattern of a preceding sound clashes with the pattern of the following sound the system has to accommodate for this. There are several ways of doing it. The most common processes is assimilation when one of the sounds is adjusted to the other sound to make the pronunciation easier.
Now we come to the crucial question: what is “easy” in pronunciation? Certain Georgian sounds may appear impossibly difficult for a Russian or a Japanese but they are “easy” for a Georgian. So “easy” is a very relative notion. This is because each language has a specific “general articulatory setting”. What is easy within one “setting” may be difficult or impossible in the other “setting”. There are as many settings as there are languages but certain commonalities have been noticed long ago. Isidor of Seville (560 – 636) in his “Etymologiae” made this observation:
“[…] all the Eastern nations press (together) their speech and words in their throats as the Hebrews and the Syrians. All the Mediterranean nations thrust (hit, knock) their speech (on)to the palate as the Greeks and the people of Asia Minor. All the Western nations, break their words on the teeth, as the Italians and the Spaniards”
If we analyse this text we can see three distinct types of articulatory systems: 1) laryngeal-centred or back-centred (Hebrews and the Syrians); 2) dental or fronted (Italians and the Spaniards) and 3) palatal (Greeks and the people of Asia Minor). It is clear that 1) and 2) represent the extremes while 3) is in between. Now compare this with what Baudouin de Courtenay wrote some 13 hundred years later:
“Probably as a result of physical conditions and the specific development of Language itself, some languages tend to make predominant use of the front speech organs, and other languages of the back speech organs. etc. The corresponding difference between the Asiatic and the European branches of Indo-European.”
Now, compare the description of articulatory setting of French, Russian and German by Vasilij Bogorodickij:
“[…] however similar sounds in different languages may appear, in every language they represent different nuances which depend on peculiarities of relative articulations. i.e. of the tongue, lips etc.; but also on peculiarities in their neutral setting which serves as a starting base for articulations of this sound system.” “[…] the system of articulatory settings in French pronunciation is more frontal or more moved forward compared to Russian […]”
As I said, I would not like to tell you the whole story but rather point out the direction of thoughts. How would the sound [g] (voiced velar formed by the contact of the dorsum of the tongue with the velum) behave if we retract not the tongue but the centre of articulation back into the pharynx? What would happen if we concentrate the tongue and pronunciation in the frontal area? The sounds [h – g – ž – z] appear different but, in fact it is the same phoneme pronounced in different settings where [h] is a “throat sound” (back), [g] is velar (neither back nor front], [ž] palatal (more front then velar) and [z] is articulated in the front on the alveoli.
Naturally, a “back centred” language will be prone to use [h] and [g] while a “front centred” language will tend to have more [ž] and [z]. A language with a central setting will tend to use [g] before “backer” vowels like [a, o, u] but change it to [ž] or [z] (palatalisation) to accommodate to “fronter” vowels [i] and iotated je, ja, jo, ju. This is exactly the case with Russian having a regular(!) alternation g – ž – z. The “fronter” the articulatory setting – the more palatalisation is bound to happen and vice versa.
This is a very rough scheme, of course. In reality there are many finer gradations of intermediate stages like [g] and a “soft” [g’] etc. Obviously, there are no unmotivated “mutations” and [g] will never change into [z] on its own. But if we change the very “articulatory setting” this would cause a systemic re-aligning of sounds. Imagine, what would happen if a people with an extremely “backed” setting acquires an inherently “front” centred language. Alternatively, it may happen the other way round.
For some reason, the hypothetical PIE is imagined as an extremely back centred system (number 1 in Isidor of Seville’s scale). Therefore, it is quite logical that there would be no place for [ž] and [z] in it and, as you can see, they are excluded from the hypothetical sound system of PIE. Instead there is postulated a row [gw], [gh], [g] and (not supported by all linguists) [g’].
If you analyse the general direction of the “phonetic change” in IE it is clearly a one way movement from the back centred to the front centred articulatory setting. Never in the opposite direction! If this is true then some intelligible explanation should be put forward. So far the only explanation was offered by Baudouin:
“If one takes the evolutionary point of view, then it should be presupposed that the transition from the linguistic state of an animal to the linguistic state of a human consisted in the general exit of sound-imitative activity from the laryngeal cavity to the buccal cavity and in the appearance of a truly articulated pronunciation.”
In plain words he believed that in the earlier periods of existence of various languages larynx was more active in speech production and he saw remnants of this primordial situation in Arabic and languages of the Caucasus. I would not comment on this assertion as we live in a very “politically-correct” age.
Well, it is getting too long. Hopefully, I gave you some direction in which to look for answers. If you would like to learn more read my MA dissertation. You can find it on the “papers” page.