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Frederik Kortlandt

Studies in Germani c,
Indo-Eu ropean
and Indo-U ralic
Studies in Germanic,
Indo-European
and Indo-Uralic
LE!DENSTUDIESININDO-EUROPEAN 17
Series edited by

R. S.P. Beekes
A. Lubotsky
J.J.S. Weitenberg
Studies in Germanic,
Indo-European
and Indo-Uralic

Frederik Kortlandt

Amsterdam- New York, NY 2010

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of"ISO
9706: 1994, Information and documentation- Paper for documents-
Requirements for permanence"

ISBN: 978-90-420-3135-7
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3136-4
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam- New York, NY 2010
Printed in The Netherlands
To the memoryofDirk Boutkan (1964-2002)
 CONTENTS

PREFACE •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• xi

INTRODUCTION

The spread of the Indo-Europeans ............................................................................. 1

General linguistics and Indo-European reconstruction ......................................... 7
On Russenorsk ............................................................................................................ 21
The origin of the Goths ............................................................................................. 27
C.C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, Uralic and Caucasian ................................... 31
An outline of Proto-Indo-European ........................................................................ 37
Schleicher's fable ........................................................................................................ 47

INDO-EUROPEAN PHONOLOGY

*H.o and *oH•.............................................................................................................. 51

Proto- Indo-European glottalic stops: The comparative evidence ........................ 53
Proto-Indo-European tones? .................................................................................... 67
An Indo-European substratum in Slavic? ................................................................ 73

INDO-EUROPEAN MORPHOSYNTAX

1st sg. middle *-H•....................................................................................................... 81

Proto-Indo-European verbal syntax ......................................................................... 91

GREEK

Greek numerals and Proto- Indo-European glottalic consonants ....................... 10 5

The Aeolic optative .................................................................................................... n1
The Greek 3rd pl endings ........................................................................................ 117

INDO- IRANIAN

Glottalic consonants in Sindhi and Proto- Indo-European ................................. 121

Archaic ablaut patterns in the Vedic verb .............................................................. 125
Accent and ablaut in the Vedic verb ........................................................................131
The origin of the Indo-Iranian desiderative .......................................................... 139
viii Contents

TOCHARIAN

On the development of Proto-Indo-European fmal syllables in Tocharian ...... 143

The Tocharian word for 'woman' ............................................................................149
The fate of the sigmatic aorist in To char ian ........................................................... 151
A note on the Tocharian dual .................................................................................. 155
The To char ian imperfect ......................................................................................... 159

GERMANIC PHONOLOGY

Vestjysk st0d, Icelandic preaspiration, and PIE glottalic stops ........................... 165
Proto-Germanic obstruents ....................................................................................169
Kluge's law and the rise of Proto-Germanic geminates ........................................ 175
Labials, velars and labiovelars in Germanic .......................................................... 179
Preaspiration or preglottalization? ......................................................................... 185
Germanic *e, and *e•.................................................................................................189
Proto-Germanic obstruents and the comparative method ................................. 193
English bottom, German Boden, and the chronology of sound shifts ................ 197

GERMANIC VERB CLASSES

The Germanic first class of weak verbs .................................................................. 201

The Germanic third class of weak verbs ............................................................... 20 5
The Germanic seventh class of strong verbs ........................................................ 209
The Germanic fifth class of strong verbs ............................................................... 211
The Germanic sixth class of strong verbs .............................................................. 215
The Germanic fourth class of weak verbs .............................................................. 219
Old Norse taka, Gothic tekan, Greek rera:ywv...................................................... 221

GERMANIC VERBAL INFLEXION

The Germanic weak preterit ................................................................................... 227
The Proto-Germanic pluperfect ............................................................................. 235

GERMANIC NOMINAL INFLEXION

The inflexion of the Indo-European a- stems in Germanic ................................ 239
The inflexion of the Germanic n-stems ................................................................. 343

GERMAN
Old High German umlaut ...................................................................................... 2.47
The High German consonant shift. ....................................................................... 2.49
The origin of the Franconian tone accents ............................................................ 255
Contents ix

ENGLISH

The origin of the 0 ld English dialects ...................................................................259

How old is the English glottal stop? ...................................................................... 265
The origin of the Old English dialects revisited................................................... 26 9
Anglo- Frisian ............................................................................................................ 275

SCANDINAVIAN
The Old Norse i-umlaut. .......................................................................................... 285
On breaking.............................................................................................................. 289
Glottalization, preaspiration and gemination in English and Scandinavian .... 293
Early Runic consonants and the origin of the younger fu thark ......................... 29 9
Bjorketorp and Stentoften ....................................................................................... 305
The origin of the vestjysk s1:0d ................................................................................ 313
Vestjysk st0d again ................................................................................................... 317

ALBANIAN

Proto-Indo-European *sin Albanian ..................................................................... 319

Proto-Indo-European *j in Albanian ..................................................................... 325
Reflexes oflndo-European consonants in Albanian ........................................... 329

ARMENIAN
Armenian ewl 'oif ..................................................................................................... 333

BALTO-SLAVIC

The Baltic word for 'in' ............................................................................................. 335

Alfs well that ends wel1 ............................................................................................ 337
Balto-Slavic accentuation revisited ......................................................................... 341
Lithuanian zinoti 'to know' ...................................................................................... 359

ITALO-CELTIC

More on the chronology of Celtic sound changes ................................................ 361

ANATOLIAN
Initiallaryngeals in Anatolian ................................................................................. 365
Hittite ammuk 'me' .................................................................................................. 369
Hittite hi-verbs and the Indo-European perfect ................................................... 373
Stative and middle in Hittite and Indo-European ................................................ 383
X Contents

INDO- URALIC

Eight Indo- Uralic verbs? .......................................................................................... 387

The Indo- Uralic verb ............................................................................................... 391
Nivkh as a Uralo-Siberian language ...................................................................... 405
Indo- Uralic consonant gradation .......................................................................... 40 9
Indo-Uralic and Altaic ............................................................................................. 415
Indo- Uralic and Altaic revisited .............................................................................419

APPENDIX

A parasitological view of non-constructible sets ................................................. 429

The origin and nature of the linguistic parasite .................................................... 435

REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 439

INDEX ......................................................................................................................... 493

 PREFACE

This book contains most of what I have written about Germanic, Indo-
European and Indo-Uralic. It is complementary to the earlier volumes on
Armenian (K194), Celtic (K239) and Baltic (K263, see the references under
Kortlandt). Together they represent the bulk of my scholarly output with the
exception of studies on Slavic and general linguistics.
The red thread which runs through my work is a quest for relative
chronology of linguistic developments. A methodological advantage of this
approach is that it offers the possibility of considering the compatibility of
different solutions before assessing their correctness, which enhances the
motivation to integrate different views. Moreover, the probability of a
reconstruction can be judged against the background of the transitions which it
implies for the linguistic system as a whole. This is of special importance when
the gap between the results of internal reconstruction and the comparative
evidence is huge, as it is in the case of Slavic accentuation or Indo- Uralic.
Another point which I would like to emphasize here is that my
reconstructions are always bottom-up, never top-down. Thus, my
reconstruction of preglottalized stops in Proto-Germanic is based on
preglottalization in English and Danish, preaspiration in Scandinavian,
affrication in High German, and various types of gemination in all West and
North Germanic languages. It is independent of any reconstruction of Indo-
European. Similarly, my reconstruction of glottalic stops in Proto-Indo-
European is based on glottalization in Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic and
Germanic and indirect evidence from Greek and Latin, not on typological or
other general considerations. The same holds for my reconstruction of
morphological systems in their chronological perspective. The method of
"forward reconstruction" may be useful as a heuristic device but can easily put
one on the wrong track and lead to circular reasoning. It follows that the
chapters on Germanic can be read without reference to the Indo-European
background and that the Indo- Uralic part of the book can be left out of
consideration if one does not want to look beyond Proto-Indo-European.
The initial chapters of the book may serve as an introduction to the
background and methodology of my reconstructions. One point which deserves
special attention is the necessity to limit the number of possibilities. It is easy to
posit a distinction between palatovelars, plain velars and labiovelars for Proto-
Indo-European. However, such a reconstruction does not explain why the plain
velars are largely in complementary distribution with the other series (cf. Meillet
1894> Steensland 1973), nor why we fmd many dozens of examples of alternation
xii Preface

between different series (e.g. Cekman 1974). These distributional properties of

the system are explained by a reductionist approach. Similarly, it is easy to posit
five short and five long vowels in the proto-language to cover any possible
correspondence between the daughter languages. However, this way of
reconstructing yields an enormous amount of complementary distribution in
combination with the Indo-European laryngeals. If one takes the laryngeal
theory seriously, it follows that *i and *u were resonants with vocalic and
consonantal variants on a par with *r, *l, *n, *m, that the colored variants of *e
before and after the laryngeals were distinct from later *a and earlier *o, and that
the Proto-Indo-European long vowels originated as phonetic variants of short *e
and *o (cf. Wackemagel 1896: 66-68). In a similar vein, it is pointless to
reconstruct a large number of grammatical categories for the proto-language
without considering the lack of evidence for the implied possibilities in the
daughter languages.
A fmal note on the transcription: following Oettinger (1979) I write h forb
but s, not s in Hittite. For the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals I avoid the
symbol *h, which suggests the wrong phonetics. In my earlier work I used to
write *H, *H., *H3; I now prefer *l, "5, ?, which represent the most probable
phonetic realization (at least for the non-Anatolian branch of Indo-European),
or *q,, *q., *q3, which suggest any back articulation from post-velar to laryngeal
In view of the different contexts, I have decided against a uniform transcription
for all chapters. From a structural point of view, one might expect a larger
number oflaryngeals on the basis of the number of velar obstruents, but there is
no comparative evidence to support their reconstruction. For Old Norse I have
most often followed Heusler's spelling (1967).
In the course of the past decades I have profited much from scholarly
discussions with Robert Beekes, Camelis Ruijgh, Alexander Lubotsky, Jorundur
Hilmarsson, Dirk Boutkan, Rick Derksen, Leonid Kulikov, Michiel de Vaan,
Martine Robbeets, Alwin Kloekhorst, Tijmen Prank. Guus Kroonen, Michael
Peyrot, Lucien van Beek and other colleagues at various stages of my work. It
goes without saying that they cannot be held responsible for any mistakes in the
following pages.
Leiden, April 1st, 2010
 THE SPRJlAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS

The publication of Mallory's book (1989) has rendered much of what I had to
say in the present contribution superfluous. The author presents a carefully
argued and very well written account of a balanced view on almost every aspect
of the problem. Against this background, I shall limit myself to a few points
which have not received sufficient attention in the discussion.
First of all, the relation between archaeology and linguistics is a precarious
and asymmetrical one (cf. already Schmitt 1974). Mallory's lucid discussion of
the problem (1989: 164-168) should be required reading for anybody who
ventures into this realm of shadows. It is a methodologically legitimate activity
to look for archaeological traces of a linguistic group, but the converse does not
hold. Speculations about the linguistic affmity of a prehistoric culture are futile
because it is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of prehistoric linguistic
groups have vanished without leaving a trace. Thus, it is certainly attractive to
assign the ancestors of the speakers of Proto-Tocharian to the Manasievo
culture (cf. Mallory 1989: 62 and 225), but we must never forget that the very
existence of the Tocharian texts which have survived is a purely accidental fact
of history, due to a number of factors which happened to concur thousands of
years after the eastward migrations of the Indo-Europeans. It is not merely
possible, but very probable that many groups of Indo-Europeans migrated
eastward before the ancestors of the Indo- Iranians, and that the distinguishing
feature of the Tocharians is merely the preservation of their historical records. If
the differences between East and West Tocharian lead us to date Proto-
Tocharian to the second half of the first millennium BC, this still leaves a gap of
two or three millennia after the purported arrival of the Indo-Europeans in the
area. Many things may have happened in the meantime.
The real argument for an early eastward migration of the ancestors of the
Tocharians is the remarkably archaic character of the attested languages (see
Penney 1989 for a point of particular importance). It has often been argued that
Tocharian has special connections with the western Indo-European languages.
In my view, this is the result of a methodological bias in our way of
reconstructing Proto-Indo-European. As Mayrhofer has noted (1983), the
history of reconstruction can be described as a gradual shift away from the
languages on which the reconstruction is primarily based. The similarities
which link Tocharian to the western Indo-European languages reflect precious
archaisms which were obscured by more recent developments affecting the
dialectal area from which Greek and Indo- Iranian were to evolve. The bias is
strengthened by the presence of later parallel innovations in the latter two
2. Introduction

branches, e.g. in the development of the middle voice (cf. Ko44: 130 and K239:
151-157).
Similarly, Mallory's inconclusiveness about the westward Indo-European
migrations (1989: 257) appears to result from a search for archaeological
evidence beyond what can be motivated from a linguistic point of view. If we
follow the traditional opinion and assign the ancestors of the speakers of Celtic
and Germanic to the La 'Thne and Jastorf cultures, respectively, this again leaves
us with a gap of two millennia after the Corded Ware horizon to which the
ancestors of the western Indo-Europeans may have belonged. Here again, we
can be sure that a lot of things happened in the meantime, and it is most
probable that many linguistic groups were irretrievably lost
This leads me to the second point I want to make. There seems to be a
general tendency to date proto-languages farther back in time than is warranted
by the linguistic evidence. When we reconstruct Proto- Romance, we arrive at a
linguistic stage which is approximately two centuries later than the language of
Caesar and Cicero (cf. Agard 1984: 47-60 for the phonological differences).
When we start from the extralinguistic evidence and identify the origins of
Romance with the beginnings of Rome, we arrive at the eighth century BC,
which is almost a millennium too early. The point is that we must identify the
formation of Romance with the imperfect learning of Latin by a large number of
people during the expansion of the Roman empire. Similarly, we may identify
the formative period of Proto-Indo- European with the earliest expansions of the
Indo-Europeans.
The issue involved here is partly terminological. Elsewhere I have presented
a relative chronology of 2.2. stages for the phonological developments which
characterize the formation of Old Irish (K035; K239: 6-17 and 14of.). All of these
developments are posterior to the Ogam inscriptions, which lack the
characteristic features of the Old Irish language. If we use the term "Primitive
Irish" for the period before the apocope (my stage 15) and the term "Archaic
Irish" for the period between the apocope and the syncope (my stage 19), we
may wonder about the applicability of the term "Irish" to the Ogam inscriptions;
it may be more appropriate to speak of the variety of Insular Celtic spoken by
the ancestors of the Irish. In any case, no reconstruction of Proto- Irish on the
basis of Old Irish and later materials comes close to anything resembling the
language of the Ogam inscriptions. Since the latter can hardly be older than the
beginning of the Christian era and the syncope may be dated to the sixth
century, it will be clear that I have little confidence in a theory which relegates
Proto-Indo-European to the fifth or sixth millennium BC. The radical changes
which embody the formation of Irish in the first half of the first millennium AD
are probably due to imperfect learning by speakers of an unknown substrate
language which was lost forever.
The spread of the Indo-Europeans 3

Perhaps the best example of a disintegrating proto-language is furnished by

the Slavic materiaL Apart from the rise of x, all the major developments which
differentiate Slavic from its Baltic prototype are usually dated to the first
millennium AD (e.g. Shevelov 1964, Ko58). The earliest dialectal divergences
within Slavic which have survived into historical times can hardly be older than
the fourth century, and the last shared innovations of the entire group, such as
the rise of the neo-acute tone, may be dated to the ninth century. The modem
dialectal situation is essentially the same as it was in the twelfth century. When
we reconstruct Proto-Slavic, the result can largely be identified with the
language of the ninth century, apart from the dialectal differentiation which
started half a millennium earlier, apparently in connection with the earliest
expansion of the Slavic territory. It is reasonable to assume that many dialects
arose and disappeared at earlier stages, but it is not obvious that the term
"Slavic" is appropriate before the expansions of the frrst millennium AD.
This brings me to the third point I want to make here. If a proto-language
can be dated to the period of its expansion, the mechanism of this process must
be examined in detaiL It comprises two phases, each of which has its own
dynamics. First, a number of people have to move from their original homeland
to a new territory. Second, a larger number of people must find it expedient to
adopt the language of the intruders. Both developments are determined by
specific social and economic circumstances.
Population movements are determined by three factors. Firstly, there must
be a reason to leave one's homeland. This factor has rightly been stressed by
Anthony, who observes that people living along the boundary between the
poorer lowland steppe and the richer upland forest "risked periodic exposure to
severe stress, for small variations in precipitation, temperature, population
density, or deforestation rate would dramatically alter the local distribution of
critical resources in these fragile borderland communities" (1986: 292). This
periodic exposure to severe stress prompted expansion when the opportunity
presented itself. Secondly, there must be a place where life seems to be better in
order to make the journey worth while. This is a reason to expect migrations
toward rather than away from more developed areas such as Assyria in the third
and second millennia BC. Thirdly, the cost of the journey must not be
prohibitive. It is now generally recognized that the domestication of the horse
played a crucial part in reducing the cost of physical mobility.
The expansion of Indo-European presupposes not only the migrations of
Indo-Europeans, but also the adoption of Indo-European languages by local
populations. With respect to this issue Mallory refers to Barth's work (1981) in a
discussion which is really too short The complexity of the problem is illustrated
by the following passage, which I cannot refrain from quoting at some length
(Mallory 1989: 26of.):
4 Introduction

"Barth examined the linguistic relations between the Pathans and Baluchi on the
Afghan- Pakistan border. The Pathans were the more numerous, the wealthier,
better armed, and even possessed a better military reputation. Nevertheless, it is
the Baluchi who have been making the sustained linguistic assimilation of the
Pathans. The Baluchi social structure is hierarchic and encourages vertical
relationships between local leaders and clients. The various bands offer
opportunities for social advancement within these hierarchies, and displaced
Pathans in a frontier situation are attracted individually and in groups to join
Baluchi communities. On the other hand, the more egalitarian society of the
Pathans was ill-suited to absorb foreigners who could only enter it either in roles
despised by the Pathans or by undertaking a more complicated process to being
admitted as an equal in Pathan society. The nub of the issue here is not weapons,
wealth or population size but the social permeability of the competing social
organizations. As numerous historical instances testify, pastoral societies
throughout the Eurasian steppe are typified by remarkable abilities to absorb
disparate ethno-linguistic groups. Indo-European military institutions may have
encouraged membership from local groups in the form of clientship which
offered local populations greater advantages and social mobility."
This must have been the decisive force in the spread of the Indo-European
languages.
Starting from the linguistic evidence and trying to fit the pieces into a
coherent whole, we arrive at the following picture. The best candidate for the
original Indo-European homeland is the territory of the Sredny Stog culture in
the eastern Ukraine. The attested languages reflect a number of waves of
migration to the east, north of the Caspian Sea (Tocharian, Indo-Iranian), to the
south, west of the Black Sea (Anatolian, Greek, Armenian, Albanian), and to the
west, south of the Baltic Sea (Italo-Celtic, Germanic). As Mallory notes, there
may have been a fourth, abortive wave of migration to the southeast, west of the
Caspian Sea, which is not reflected in the linguistic records, perhaps because the
Indo-Europeans were assimilated to the local population at an early stage. The
earlier migrations yielded the peripheral languages (Tocharian, Anatolian, Italo-
Celtic), which did not take part in the late Indo-European innovations of the
central dialects (Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic, Balta-Slavic, etc.). Some
innovations affected only a part of the central dialects, such as the assibilation of
the palatovelars (which did not reach Greek and Germanic). Other
developments had a more local character. An interconsonantallaryngeal voiced
the following stop in North Iranian (Avestan, Sogdian) dugdar- 'daughter, but
not in its Persian and Indic cognates. This must have been a very early
development It appears that Phrygian was rather closely related to Greek (cf.
Lubotsky 1988b), Thracian to Armenian (cf. Ktm), and Venetie to Italic. The
position of Illyrian remains unclear.
The spread of the Indo-Europeans 5

The Indo- Europeans who remained after the migrations became speakers of
Balta-Slavic. If the speakers of the other satem languages can be assigned to the
Yamnaya horizon and the western Indo-Europeans to the Corded Ware horizon,
it is attractive to assign the ancestors of the Balts and the Slavs to the Middle
Dnieper culture. If the origin of this culture "is to be sought in the Sredny Stog,
Yamnaya and Late Tripolye cultures" and this phase is "followed by a middle
period where the classic Corded Ware amphorae and beakers appear" (Mallory
1989: 2.48), the course of events corresponds nicely with the development of a
satem language which was drawn into the western Indo-European sphere of
influence. The disintegration of Balta-Slavic is closely parallel to that of Indo-
European: the Slavs migrated to the west, the south, and the east, the Latvians to
the north, and the Prussians were assimilated to the Germans. The deceptively
archaic character of the Lithuanian language may be compared to the calm eye
of a cyclone.
The resulting picture can be summarized as follows.
Eastward migrations:
1 Tocharian
2.a Indic
2.b South Iranian
2.C North Iranian
(3 East Slavic)
Southward migrations:
1 Anatolian
2.a Greek
2.b Phrygian
2.C Armenian
2.d Thracian
2.e Daco-Albanian
(3 South Slavic)
Westward migrations:
1a Italic
1b Venetie
1c Celtic
2. Germanic
(3 West Slavic)
Once again it must be emphasized that many linguistic groups may have
vanished without leaving any historical record.
We must now examine how the view developed here can be related to
Gimbutas' theory of two homelands and three waves of migration into the
Balkans. The main objection which can be raised against Gimbutas' scheme (e.g.
6 Introduction

1985: 198) is that it starts from the archaeological evidence and looks for a
linguistic interpretation. As a consequence, the scheme does not fit the linguistic
evidence very well. It seems to me that we arrive at a much better representation
if we start from the linguistic side and try to fmd an archaeological
corroboration. The natural solution then is to link Gimbutas' first wave
(4400-4200 BC) to the ancestors of the Anatolians, her second wave (3400-3200
BC) to the ancestors of the Greeks and the Phrygians, and her third wave
(3ooo-28oo BC) to the ancestors of the Armenians and the Thracians. If this
identification is correct, the satemization process can be dated to the last
centuries of the fourth millennium. It is possible that the speakers of Italo-Celtic
must be assigned to the Globular Amphora culture, and that Germanic grew out
of a later component of the Corded Ware horizon. Since the beginnings of the
Yamnaya, Globular Amphora, Corded Ware, and Manasievo cultures can all be
dated between 36oo and 3000 BC, I am inclined to date Proto- Indo-European to
the middle of the fourth millennium, and to recognize Proto-Indo- Hittite as a
language which may have been spoken a millennium earlier.
If we can identify Indo-Hittite and Indo-European with the beginning and
the end of the Sredny Stog culture, respectively, it will be clear that the linguistic
evidence from our family does not lead us beyond Gimbutas' secondary
homeland and that the Khvalynsk culture on the middle Volga and the Maykop
culture in the northern Caucasus cannot be identified with the Indo-Europeans.
Any proposal which goes beyond the Sredny Stog culture must start from the
possible affmities of Indo-European with other language families. It is usually
recognized that the best candidate in this respect is the Uralic language family,
while further connections with the Altaic languages and perhaps even Dravidian
are possible. The hypothesis that Indo-European is genetically related to a
Caucasian language family or to Afro-Asiatic seems much less probable to me.
What we do have to take into account is the typological similarity of Proto-
Indo-European to the North-West Caucasian languages. If this similarity can be
attributed to areal factors, we may think of Indo-European as a branch of Uralo-
Altaic which was transformed under the influence of a Caucasian substratum. It
now appears that this view is actually supported by the archaeological evidence.
If it is correct, we may locate the earliest ancestors of the speakers of Proto-
Indo-European north of the Caspian Sea in the seventh millennium (cf. Mallory
1989: 192f.). This is essentially in agreement with Gimbutas' theory (cf. also
Kn2).
 GENllRAL LINGUISTICS AND INDO-EUROPEAN RECONSTRUCTION

I
Denmark has always been a superpower in linguistics. There is no need to list all
famous scholars who worked in this country and left their imprint on the
history oflinguistics, but there are two names which I want to mention here, viz.
Otto Jespersen and Holger Pedersen. The point is that we have a lesson to learn
from these two great scholars in connection with the relation between general
linguistics and Indo-European reconstruction.
Otto Jespersen was not only a great phonetician, but is regarded by some as
the founder and by others as the forerunner of modern syntax. His Philosophy of
Grammar is a classic for linguists of very different theoretical persuasions. The
point I want to emphasize here is that Jespersen was very well informed about
the comparative linguistics of his time, and was therefore in a very good
position to hold strong views about what his colleagues were and were not
doing.
Holger Pedersen was perhaps the greatest comparative linguist of all time.
But he also had a keen sense of scholarly atmosphere, as is evident from his
history of 19th century linguistics. One of the characteristic features of his work
is the insistence on comparison with what is actually observed in living
languages, and on the role of naturalness in what is expected of linguistic
development He simply was a very good general linguist.
The fast-growing body of scholarly literature in the field of linguistics and
the concomitant rise of specialization have led to a regrettable disintegration of
the community of linguists. This is not to say that things were in all respects
better in the past. Scholars were not always very nice to each other in former
days, as can easily be gleaned from older issues of linguistic journals. There are
many more jobs around nowadays. Yet I think that the discipline of linguistics
has suffered from a fragmentation which could and should have been avoided.
It is clear that nobody can read more than a very small percentage of the
total scholarly output in linguistics nowadays. This raises a fundamental
question: how to choose what to read? The answer is simple: there is no general
way to choose, because you never can tell where to fmd the unexpected clue.
One can only try and look. It is therefore most important to have a general idea
of what colleagues are doing elsewhere in the field.
A fair assessment of what general and comparative linguistics have to offer
each other can only be reached if there is some consensus about the goals of the
linguistic enterprise. The comparative linguist is in search of a picture which
mirrors as closely as possible a historical reality, whereas the general linguist is
primarily concerned with predicting the unknown. It is far from obvious that
8 Introduction

the former's reconstructions should conform to the latter's predictions. In the

following I shall give a few examples of how these two lines of inquiry do not
run parallel.
Perhaps the most common objection against a proposed reconstruction
which is raised time and again on general grounds, is that a linguistic form is
impossible because it does not conform to typological expectations. The classic
example is Brugmann's reconstruction of nasalis sonans in 1876, e.g. in the first
syllable of *kmtom 'hundred~ Brugmann published his article in a journal of
which Curtius had made him co-editor before going on a journey. When the
latter read the article after his return, he became so enraged that he dissolved the
journal and started a new one, without Brugmann (cf. Pedersen 1962: 293). The
new reconstruction has now been part of the communis opinio for over a
century.
The case of the nasalis sonans is particularly instructive because the new
theory soon gained general acceptance. The same cannot be said of the
hypothesis that the Indo-European proto-language had no more than a single
vowel. It is therefore important to compare the two cases in order to establish
the reason for the different treatment. Note that I am not primarily concerned
with the correctness of the reconstructions but with their reception by the
scholarly community. If we can fmd out what motivates our colleagues to agree
or to disagree, it may be possible to save a lot of time when trying to convince
them.
There are two types of objection against the reconstruction of a single vowel
for Proto-Indo-European. On the one hand, it is claimed that not all of the
material can be explained from such a reconstruction. On the other hand, it is
argued that there can be no such thing as a language with no more than one
vowel. Both arguments have their counterparts in the reconstruction of the
Proto-Indo-European syllabic resonants.
In the case of the nasalis sonans, there were two factors which rendered the
new reconstruction more palatable. While the concept of syllabic nasal was an
innovation, the syllabic liquids l and r were familiar from Czech and Sanskrit.
The new theory did not therefore affect the idea of syllabicity as a vocalic
property but only its distribution. Moreover, the class of possible reconstructed
forms was not greatly affected because Brugmann recognized, beside the zero
grade vocalism of the syllabic resonants, a reduced grade vocalism which could
be invoked for those instances where others might see counter-evidence. It can
be argued that the real victory of the Sonantentheorie was eventually achieved by
the elimination of the reduced grade. That was a development which took much
longer than the acceptance of the nasalis sonans.
The reconstruction of a single Proto-Indo-European vowel is a natural
consequence of the laryngeal theory. It differs from the Sonantentheorie in two
respects. Firstly, it strongly reduces the class of possible reconstructed forms. As
General linguistics and Indo-European reconstruction 9

a result of this much higher predictive power, it much more easily generates a
class of counter-examples. Secondly, the way out which the reduced grade
offered in the case of the Sonantentheorie is blocked by the fact we are now
dealing with the vowel system itself. What is remarkable here is not that the new
reconstruction of the vowel system met with a lot of opposition, which is only
natura~ but that it found any acceptance at all.
The far-reaching consequences inherent in the new reconstruction of the
vowel system render the impact of the typological argument all the more
important. It has been claimed that languages with less than two vowels are
unattested or even impossible. This objection has been countered by the
observation that there is a consensus among specialists of North-West
Caucasian languages about the existence of minimal vowel systems, matched by
extremely large consonant inventories, in that area. This shows the weakness of
the typological approach: it causes a bias toward what is regular, norma~ or
frequent in the languages of the world and thereby renders the reconstruction of
deviant patterns impossible (cf. Kuipers 1968: 78f.). The range of animal species
living today would not allow us to reconstruct a dinosaur.
The typological argument against the reconstruction of a minimal vowel
system for Proto-Indo-European is particularly regrettable because typological
evidence could actually be used to support such a reconstruction. According to
what probably is the majority view, the original homeland of the Indo-
Europeans must be situated in the South Russian steppe. The non-Indo-
European language family which is closest to that area is precisely the North-
West Caucasian. If we start from the assumption that the Proto-Indo-European
sound system resembled that of its neighbours, with which it may have formed a
Sprachbund, the North-West Caucasian system is as close as we can get from a
typological point of view. Moreover, we know that the area around Majkop,
which is Circassian territory, was a cultural center in the formative years of the
Indo-European proto-language. It is therefore easily conceivable that the Indo-
European sound system originated as a result of strong Caucasian influence.
In fact, the typological argument is not only weak and ambiguous, but can
even be harmfuL It has long been recognized that cognate languages tend to
develop along similar lines after the dissolution of their ancestor. The Romance
languages of today resemble each other much more closely than any of them
resembles Latin. As a consequence, the history of Indo-European reconstruction
shows a gradual shift away from the principal languages (cf. Mayrhofer 1983). If
Bopp's Indo-European resembled Sanskrit, and Brugmann's Indo-European
resembled Sanskrit no more than Greek, and Cowgill's Indo- European
resembled Sanskrit and Greek no more than Hittite, it is to be expected that
future reconstructions will diverge more widely from our traditional image of
what an Indo-European language should look like, and thus move farther away
from our typological expectations.
10 Introduction

What has just been said must not be taken as a plea against the use of
typological evidence. On the contrary, I think that typological considerations
are most useful as a heuristic device. They must never take the place of the
evidence, however. In practice, the typological argument has too often served as
a rationalization of traditional prejudice. Curtius' reaction to Brugmann's nasalis
sonans is a case in point. I shall give two more examples of such unwarranted
generalization about possible sound systems.
In Bella Coola, a Salish language, there are words consisting entirely of
voiceless consonants, e.g. t'xt 'stone'. When Boas reported about this hitherto
unknown phenomenon, his article is said to have been rejected by the editor of a
journal because everyone knows that it is impossible to have words without
vowels (cf. Hockett 1955: 57). On the basis of my own fieldwork I can testify to
the existence of the same word structure in Heiltsuk, an unrelated, Wakashan
language, which is also spoken on the Canadian Pacific coast, e.g. qqs 'eye'. Here
again, it appears that the typological argument can indeed be harmful
According to Jakobson's Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze,
there can be no language without nasal consonants. The fundamental
oppositions vowel- consonant and oral- nasal must be present everywhere: "sie
sind die einzigen die nirgends fehlen diirfen" (Jakobson 1941: 34). Unfortunately,
the existence of consonant systems without nasals has been reliably reported for
Quileute and for Duwamish and Snoqualmie, languages which are spoken in the
state of Washington and which belong to two different language families (cf.
Hockett 1955: 119). This counter-evidence subsequently led Jakobson to replace
his "universals" by "near-universals': without, incidentally, mentioning the
languages which forced his theoretical retreat (Jakobson 1962: 526). Here again,
typological reasoning had an adverse effect on the progress oflinguistics.
Since the universal character of the opposition between oral and nasal
consonants has been disproved, we may wonder if the same can be done for the
opposition between consonants and vowels. This has actually been achieved by
Pulleyblank in his analysis of Mandarin Chinese, which is not a minor language.
Pulleyblank treats all vowels as syllabic variants of glides with which they
alternate (1984: 57). Since the vowels are derived by rules of syllabification, all
morpheme structures consist of consonants only. In comparison with this
analysis, the reconstruction of a single vowel for Proto- Indo-European looks
rather conservative.
This raises the question whether our reluctance to admit certain possibilities
may be a consequence of the tools we have been accustomed to use. In
particular, is it possible that our conception of vowels and consonants is
conditioned by our use of the Latin alphabet? Here it may be appropriate to have
a look at the Japanese syllabary, which offers an instructive parallel
Unlike the well-known Semitic and Indic scripts, the Japanese syllabary
does not offer the possibility to denote a consonant without a following vowel
General linguistics and Indo- European reconstruction 11

Consequently, it is impossible to describe the language in terms of stems ending

in a consonant followed by suffixes beginning with a vowel Thus, the paradigm
of the verb 'to speal(, indicative hanasu, infmitive hanasi, imperative hanase,
subjunctive hanasoo, negative hanasanai, cannot be described as a consonantal
stem hanas- followed by a variety of suffixes, but only as an alternating stem
hanasu, -si, -se, -so-, -sa-, which may be followed by other syllabic elements. This
is indeed what is done in traditional Japanese grammar, where the verb belongs
to the so-called godan-katuyoo, or five- step conjugation.
The problem of notation as an obstacle to progress is not limited to
linguistics, as any mathematician can testify. Consider the multiplication of 19
by 44. Accustomed as we are to the system of Arabic figures, we immediately see
that 20 times 44 is 88o, and when you subtract 44 you get 836, which is the
correct answer. But now suppose that you live in Rome, two thousand years ago,
then you have to multiply XIX by XLII II in order to arrive at DCCC'VI. There
can be little doubt that this is a more cumbersome procedure.
Against this background, we may wonder if the difficulty of analyzing
Japanese verbs with a consonantal stem in terms of the syllabary has a parallel in
languages with an alphabetic script. In fact, it is not difficult to fmd examples.
Take the English noun house and the verb to house. The latter is derived from
the former by voicing the fmal consonant. It would therefore be appropriate to
write the voicing feature as a suffix, if the writing system allowed us to do so.
Conversely, the noun use is derived from the verb to use by devoicing the fmal
consonant Note that the direction of the derivation is different here: we can
have a house without housing someone, but we cannot do any housing without a
house; however, the use of something presupposes somebody using it, whereas
we may use something without invoking the abstract notion of 'use~ While a
traditional analysis must treat these instances in terms of stem alternation, a
generative analysis may postulate an underlying sufftx. Such a sufftx does not
necessarily correspond to the sufftx which a comparative linguist would
reconstruct.
The example of house and use brings us to the problem of markedness. It is
not always evident which of the two members of a pair must be considered the
marked one. Since this may have consequences for linguistic reconstruction, it
will be appropriate to look into the origin of the term. The concept of
markedness as applied to the meaning of morphological categories can be traced
back to Jakobson's essay Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums, which appeared in
1932. Jakobson's original example accompanying the introduction of the term is
the Russian pair of words telenok 'calf' - telka 'heifer' (1932: 75). When he
reprinted the article in his Selected Writings, Jakobson replaced these words by
osel 'donkey' - oslica 'she-ass~ without, incidentally, drawing the reader's
attention to the fact that he changed his prime example (1971: 4). There are two
remarkable things about this. Firstly, it turns out that the example was not very
12. Introduction

well chosen. It thus appears that the concept lacks the clarity which should
render it applicable in an unambiguous way. Secondly, the ill-chosen example
was evidently of no consequence to the theory because it was tacitly replaced by
a different one. This does not inspire great confidence in the usefulness of the
proposal. Since the Urheber apparently had a hard time making up his mind
about the applicability of his theory to his own language, one can hardly blame
others for avoiding the concept of markedness as a tool of analysis.
To summarize our findings thus far, it appears that there is good reason to
be ambivalent about the usefulness of general considerations in linguistic
reconstruction. As a heuristic device, a theoretical framework can certainly be
helpful but the negative potential of aprioristic considerations must not be
underestimated. Since theory can easily embody the reflection of rationalized
prejudice, it is important that comparative work be carried out inductively, as
Holger Pedersen knew a long time ago. The accumulated experience of
comparative linguistics offers a sound basis for a general theory of language
change, which is part of a general theory oflanguage.

II
We may now examine the hypothesis that the traditional voiced stops of the
Indo-European proto-language were actually glottalic. Before the advent of the
laryngeal theory, it was generally assumed that the proto-language had the same
four series of stops as we fmd in Sanskrit, e.g. the dental series *t, *til, *d, *dh.
When it turned out that the voiceless aspirate was rare and must in a number of
cases be derived from an earlier sequence of *t plus a laryngeal consonant, the
inductive generalization that no more than three series can be reconstructed for
the proto-language left scholars with a typologically anomalous consonant
system: *t, *d, *dh. There are two ways out of this intuitively unsatisfactory
situation. On the one hand, one may return to the traditional reconstruction of
four series of obstruents, in spite of the fact that there is insufficient evidence for
the existence of original voiceless aspirates. This possibility does not offer an
explanation for the peculiar asymmetry in the attested material. On the other
hand, one can try to reinterpret the three series of *t, *d, *dh in such a way as to
bring the reconstructed system into agreement with typological expectations.
This research strategy invites scholars to look for additional evidence, which
might change our views of the proto-language in a more radical way.
The first to pursue the latter possibility in print was Holger Pedersen, at the
age of 84. Pedersen argued that there are no reliable Indo-European etymologies
which point to an initial voiced labial stop *b- (1951: 10-16). Since the voiceless
labial stop p- is easily lost in a number of languages, he suggested that Proto-
Indo-European *b was originally voiceless and weak, while the traditional
voiced aspirate *bh may have developed from a voiceless aspirate. He compared
General linguistics and Indo- European reconstruction 13

the interchange of voiced and voiceless stops with the West Armenian
consonant shift. The point to be noted here is the primacy of the empirical
evidence. Typological considerations only served as a heuristic device for
developing an explanatory hypothesis.
Pedersen's article inspired Martinet to propose two years later in a footnote
that the Proto- Indo-European voiced stops could be derived from an earlier
glottalic series without a labial member (1953: 70). He compared the absence of
the labial with the same phenomenon in Proto-Semitic, for which he
reconstructed a glottalic series as the origin of the so-called emphatic stops.
Here again, typological considerations served as a heuristic device. The problem
was posed by the unexpected absence of empirical evidence for the
reconstruction of a labial stop.
A few years later, Andreev proposed an Indo-European proto-language
without distinctive voicedness (1957: 7). He reconstructed voiceless fortes,
voiceless lenes, and voiceless aspirates, corresponding to traditional t, d, dh, and
suggested that this system is apparently preserved in Hittite. He introduced the
incompatibility of fortes and aspirates in the root structure, which he (like
Meillet) explained by an assimilation rule, into the discussion of the consonant
system. His reinterpretation of the consonant shifts in the separate branches
anticipates an argumentation which was put forward much later by the
proponents of the glottalic theory.
A proposal which looks like an integrated view of the hypotheses put
forward by Pedersen, Martinet and Andreev is Swadesh's theory that Proto-
Indo-European and its neighbours had simple, glottalic, and aspirated stops, and
that the difference between voiced and voiceless articulation was a matter of
local variation (1971: 127). Since this theory was published posthumously, its
origin is difficult to determine. Swadesh remarks that the traditional Indo-
European voiced stops are equivalent to the glottalic series of other language
families with respect to sound symbolism (1971: 219).
Twenty years after the publication of Martinet's suggestion that we may have
to reconstruct glottalic stops for Proto- Indo-European, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov
proposed the same (1972: 16), again on the basis of Pedersen's reasoning. Their
proposal became much more widely known, probably because it was put
forward time and again in different places. They explained the absence of roots
with two glottalic stops by a dissimilation rule (1973: 153). They also
reformulated Grassmann's Hauchdissimilationsgesetz as a Proto-Indo-European
rule of allophonic variation (1980: 30-32). Here the primacy of the empirical
evidence has been lost: the glottalic theory is not used to explain Grassmann's
law, but Grassmann's law is adapted in order to serve as evidence for the glottalic
theory. It seems to me that Latin fido 'I trust' < *bheidh- suffices to show that the
argument cannot be used.
14 Introduction

Around the same time, a similar proposal was put forward by Hopper, who
adduced not only the absence of *b and the root structure constraints, but also
the absence of glottalic stops from inflectional afftxes (1973: 157). Here again,
theoretical considerations evidently provided an obstacle to observation of the
material, as is clear from the comparison of Latin quod with Old High German
hwaz 'what; on the basis of which we have to reconstruct a Proto- Indo-
European neuter ending *-d.
On the basis of the proposals by Pedersen and Andreev, Rasmussen derived
traditional *t, *d, *dh from earlier *T, *t, *d, where the first represents any
emphatic stop, however phonetically realized: glottalized, pharyngealized, or
just stronger (1974: n). The same reconstruction is implied in Illic-Svityc's
Nostratic dictionary (1971: 147). The problem with this hypothesis is that there is
no reason to assume an emphatic or otherwise strong character for a glottalic
series. There are many varieties of glottalization, some of them weak, others
strong. The relatively weak character of glottalization in Georgian and
Armenian is evident from the fact that we often fmd glottalic rather than
aspirated stops in loanwords from Russian. This suggests that we have aspirated
fortes and glottalic lenes in these languages. In Avar, a North-East Caucasian
language, there is an opposition between tense and lax voiceless consonants
which is independent of the opposition between plain and glottalic stops and
affricates, e.g. k, k:, k:, k:'. Moreover, there is also an opposition between
geminate and single tense consonants, so that we have e.g. xcisel'winter' vs. tiis:a
'from above' vs. xcis:s:ab 'speciaf (cf. Ebeling 1966: 63).
Thus, it appears that unwarranted generalization on the basis of theoretical
considerations can easily interfere with observation of the facts and lead one
astray in linguistic reconstruction. This can block scholarly progress for many
years. Haudricourt reports (1975: 267) that as early as 1948 he arrived at the
conclusion that the traditional voiced stops of the Indo-European proto-
language were in fact glottalic and that the original pronunciation has been
preserved in East Armenian. His argumentation was based on the types of
phonetic development attested in the Far East. The negative attitude of Bloch
and Kurylowicz toward his view apparently kept him from publication. If
Haudricourt, Pedersen, Martinet, Andreev and Swadesh had met at a conference
in the late 'forties, the glottalic theory might have become popular a generation
earlier than it actually did.
I conclude that the typological argument has too often been invoked as a
constraint on linguistic reconstruction rather than as a device to broaden the
horizon of possibilities. As a result, our reconstructions tend to have a strong
bias toward the average language type known to the investigator. The more
deviant the structure of the proto-language actually was, the stronger the bias
and the larger the difference between reality and reconstruction we should
expect. We must therefore first and foremost pay attention to the comparative
General linguistics and Indo-European reconstruction 15

evidence, which remains the ultimate basis for choosing between alternative
options in linguistic reconstruction. It is remarkable that the comparative
evidence has largely been left out of consideration in the discussion of the
glottalic theory.

III
Glottalization is found in five out of the ten surviving branches of Indo-
European, viz. Indic, Iranian, Armenian, Baltic, and Germanic. This is not the
place to reconsider the comparative value of the evidence in the separate
branches, which is very uneven (cf. Ko75). My point is methodological: can we
establish the circumstances under which certain facts are admitted as evidence
for a reconstruction? The answer to this question is far from obvious.
There are two varieties of st0d in Danish. As a rule, standard Danish st0d
appears in monosyllabic words which have pitch accent 1 in Swedish and
Norwegian. Though the distribution of the st0d has partly been obscured by
analogical developments, it seems clear that it developed from a falling tone
movement. I shall leave the standard Danish st0d out of consideration in the
following.
The so-called vestjysk st0d is an entirely different phenomenon because it is
characteristic of originally polysyllabic words, which have accent 2 in Swedish
and Norwegian. It cannot possibly be connected with the Jylland apocope
because it is also found in the northeastern part of vestfynsk dialects, where the
apocope did not take place. While the vestjysk st0d is clearly linked to a
following plosive which represents an earlier voiceless stop, it does not represent
original gemination because it distinguishes e.g. the verbs dampe [dam'b] 'to
steam', kante [kan'd] 'to border' from the nouns damp [damb] 'steam', kant
[kand] 'edge, which never had a geminate (cf. Ejskjrer 1990: 64). As the
glottalization in the infinitive vente [ven'd] 'to wait' is absent from the imperative
vent [vend] 'wait!' (Ejskjrer 1990: 65), it looks like a feature of the following stop
which was lost in word-fmal position. This leads us to consider the possibility
that it may reflect some kind of Proto-Germanic glottalization.
In his monograph on the vestjysk st0d, Ringgaard concludes that "the v-st0d
is only found immediately before the plosives p, t, k, and that it is found
wherever these stand in an original medial position, following a voiced sound in
a stressed syllable. The exceptions to this are certain types ofloan-words from a
later period" (1960: 195). He dates the rise of the vestjysk st0d to the 12th century
because it is characteristic of "all then existing medial plosives" (1960: 199). The
view that the vestjysk st0d is a spontaneous innovation of the westernmost
dialects of Danish, which Jespersen had in fact proposed almost half a century
earlier already (1913: 23), can hardly be called an explanation. Moreover, it does
not account for the vestjysk st0d in the isolated pocket of dialects on the island
16 Introduction

of Fyn, which suggests that it is a retention rather than an innovation. The

hypothesis of a local origin also neglects the parallel development of
preaspiration in Icelandic.
Preaspiration is not only found in Icelandic, but also in Faroese, Norwegian,
and the Gaelic dialects of Scotland. Phonetically, the preceding vowel is cut
short and continued as a whisper, while a preceding resonant is partly or wholly
unvoiced. The distribution of preaspiration in Icelandic is the same as in the
Norwegian dialect of Jreren (cf. Oftedal1947). We can therefore conclude that it
is "an example of a feature taken to Iceland by the original settlers" (Chapman
1962: 85).
Marstrander has argued that the preaspiration in Scottish Gaelic is due to a
Norse substratum (1932: 298). He advances the hypothesis that the Norwegian
preaspirated stops represent a retention of the clusters hp, ht, hk, which
developed into geminates elsewhere (1932: 302). This theory implies three
developments, viz. ht > tt in East Norse, tt > ht in West Norse, and t > ht in West
Norse in those positions where the preaspirated stop does not reflect a cluster,
e.g. Icelandic epli 'apple, vatn 'water: mikla 'to increase: hjalpa 'to helP, verk
'work'. Here the preaspirated plosives correspond to the traditional voiced stops
of the Indo-European proto-language.
Both the vestjysk st0d and the preaspiration receive a natural explanation if
we assume that early Proto-Germanic possessed a series of preglottalized voiced
stops 'b, ii, g (cf. Ko75: 196, K1o2: 8). Devoicing yielded a series of late Proto-
Germanic sequences 'p, 't, 'k, the glottal element of which was lost under various
conditions. Weakening of the glottal stop in West Norse yielded preaspiration
while its assimilation to the following plosive gave rise to a series of geminates in
East Norse, with the exception of Danish, where the sequences were subject to
lenition and the glottal stop was preserved in the vestjysk dialects. It is difficult
to escape the impression that the reluctance of earlier investigators to take the
vestjysk st0d and the Icelandic preaspiration seriously as comparative evidence
in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic deprived them of an insight which
could have changed our view of Proto-Indo-European. What was the cause of
their restraint? What kept them from regarding preglottalization and
preaspiration as evidence on a par with other features? Was it the Latin alphabet
which constrained their thinking?
Apart from the straightforward explanation of the vestjysk st0d and the
Icelandic preaspiration, the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic preglottalized
stops has the advantage of accounting in a principled way for the existence of
several layers of gemination, which can now be viewed as retentions rather than
innovations (cf. K1o2: 7). Firstly, it is possible that the unexplained gemination
in Swedish, e.g. in vecka 'weel(, droppe 'drop: skepp 'shiP, reflects a dialect which
escaped an early loss of the glottal stop, in contrast with Old Norse vika, dropi,
skip, Old English wice, dropa, scip. Secondly, mp, nt, nk yielded pp, tt, kk in the
General linguistics and Indo- European reconstruction 17

larger part of Scandinavia. This development becomes understandable if we

assume that the nasal consonant was devoiced by the preaspiration of the
following plosive and subsequently lost its nasal feature. Thirdly, *k was
geminated before *j and *w, e.g. in Old Norse bekkr 'brool(, rrakkr 'dark'.
Similarly, *twas geminated before *j in a limited area, e.g. Swedish siitta 'to set'.
(West Germanic geminated all consonants except r before *j and is therefore
inconclusive.) Fourthly, the stops p, t, k were geminated before land r in West
Germanic, e.g. English apple, bitter, cf. Gothic baitrs. The same development is
found sporadically in Scandinavia, which suggests that we are dealing with the
loss of an archaic feature rather than with an innovation. Here again, the
geminate may have originated from the assimilation of a glottal stop to the
following plosive.
In fact, the evidence for Proto-Germanic preglottalized stops is not limited
to Scandinavian, but can also be found in English and German. It is common
knowledge that standard English inserts a glottal stop before a tautosyllabic
voiceless plosive, e.g. sto'p, tha't, kno~k, wa'tch, also lea'p, soa'k, hel'p, pin'ch (cf.
Brown 1977: 27). There is no reason to assume that this is a recent phenomenon.
The High German sound shift yielded affricates and geminated fricatives, e.g.
Old High German pfad 'path; werpfan 'to throW, affan 'oped, zunga 'tongue, salz
'sal~ wazzar 'watei, kind, chind 'child; trinkan, trinchan 'to drinl(, zeihhan 'token'.
These reflexes suggest a complex articulation for the Proto-Germanic voiceless
plosives from which they developed. The origin of the gemination is
unexplained in the traditional doctrine. If we start from the assumption that the
Proto-Germanic plosives were preceded by a glottal stop which is preserved in
the vestjysk st0d and the English glottalization, the High German sound shift
can be explained as a lenition of the plosives to fricatives with a concomitant
klusilspring of the preceding glottal stop. Note that the High German sound shift
has a perfect analogue in the English dialect of Liverpool, where we find e.g.
[kx] in can't, back (Hughes and Trudgill 1987: 66), which again remains
unexplained in the traditional doctrine.
Thus, it appears that there is a whole range of phenomena which receive a
natural explanation when we assume that glottalization is ancient in Germanic.
The methodological question is: why have scholars been reluctant to identify the
vestjysk st121d with the English glottalization, which according to Ringgaard gives
the same auditory impression and apparently has the same articulation, as a
historical reality which may have been inherited from the proto-language? Is
there an implicit assumption that unwritten features must not be ancient? Is this
the same factor which made Curtius reject Brugmann's nasalis sonans, in spite of
the fact that we have a syllabic nasal in standard English words such as button
and in the standard German infinitive ending of most verbs, e.g. lei ten 'to lead;
where both examples end in [tn]? Is it all the result of our Latin upbringing,
18 Introduction

which Jespersen blamed for our lack of insight into the grammar of modem
English?

IV
It will be clear from what has been said that I am not particularly impressed by
the contribution of theoretical reasoning to historical linguistics. Both Jespersen
and Pedersen emphasized time and again that linguistics is an inductive
enterprise, and I agree whole-heartedly. This does not mean that the
comparative linguist can disregard what is going on in general linguistics,
however. It rather means that we must look at those branches of linguistics
which deal with language change in progress. Language is the interface between
society and the individuaL and sociolinguistics is the area of research where we
can expect results which may be of immediate relevance to linguistic
reconstruction. Rapid linguistic change in bilingual communities of nomadic
traders and ethnically mixed groups offers a test-case for historical linguistics.
There is no reason to assume that the sociolinguistic conditions of prehistoric
linguistic development were very different from what can be observed today
among comparable groups.
The remarkable spread of the Indo-European languages was determined by
specific social and economic circumstances. It presupposes that a number of
people moved from their original homeland to a new territory. As is now
generally recognized, the domestication of the horse played a crucial role in the
increase of physical mobility. However, the Indo-European expansions required
not only the migration of Indo-Europeans, but also the adoption of Indo-
European languages by local populations. This implies that a large number of
people must have found it expedient to adopt the language of the intruders. As
Mallory has pointed out, "pastoral societies throughout the Eurasian steppe are
typified by remarkable abilities to absorb disparate ethno-linguistic groups.
Indo-European military institutions may have encouraged membership from
local groups in the form of clientship which offered local populations greater
advantages and social mobility" (1989: 261). This must have been the decisive
factor in the spread of the Indo-European languages.
When we look at language interference in bilingual communities, it appears
that there is a marked difference in the ease of linguistic borrowing between
grammar and lexicon, between bound and free morphemes, and between verbs
and nouns. As a result, the older strata of a language are better preserved in the
grammatical system than in the lexical stock, better in morphology than in
phonology or syntax, better in verb stems and pronouns than in nouns and
numerals. The wide attestation of the Indo-European numerals must be
attributed to the development of trade which accompanied the increased
mobility of the Indo-Europeans at the time of their expansions. Numerals do
General linguistics and Indo- European reconstruction 19

not belong to the basic vocabulary of a neolithic culture, as is clear from their
absence in Proto- Uralic and from the spread of Chinese numerals throughout
East Asia.
The inequality between different parts of the language in linguistic
borrowing is of particular importance when we are dealing with distant affmity.
In a beautiful and convincing article which appeared a number of years ago
(1988), Michael Fortescue has demonstrated on the basis of case sufftxes,
pronouns and verbal morphology that Eskimo and Aleut are genetically related
to Yukagir, which is most probably related to the Uralic language family. His
reconstructions support the possibility that Tungus and Japanese also belong to
the same language stock. It is clear that such affmity could never be
demonstrated by the mere comparison of words.
In a study of the earliest contacts between the Indo-European and Uralic
language families (1986), Redei lists 64 words which were supposedly borrowed
from Indo-European into Uralic at an early date. The material is divided into
three groups: 7 Indo-European words which are attested in both Finno- Ugric
and Samoyedic, 18 Indo-European or Indo-Iranian words which are attested in
Finno-Ugric but not in Samoyedic, and 39 Indo-Iranian words which are not
found either in Ugric or in Samoyedic. Now it turns out that the number of
verbs in the oldest material is too large to support the hypothesis that they were
borrowed: verbs constitute 43% of the first group, 28% of the second group, and
5% of the third group. This is strong evidence for the thesis that the oldest layer
was in fact inherited from an Indo- Uralic proto-language. Though the material
is very small, the case for an original genetic relationship is particularly strong
because we are dealing with basic verbs, meaning 'to give, 'to wash', 'to bring, 'to
drive, 'to dO, 'to lead: 'to take' (cf. K112). Moreover, it is difficult to see how
Proto-Indo-European words could have been borrowed into Proto-Uralic if the
Indo-Europeans lived in the South Russian steppe when the ancestors of the
Finno-Ugrians and the Samoyeds lived on the eastern side of the Ural
mountains. The earliest contacts between Indo-European and Uralic languages
must probably be identified with the eastward expansion of the Indo-Iranians
and the simultaneous spread of the Finno-Ugrians to the southwest.
Thus, it appears that we do not need a large number of obvious cognates,
which cannot be expected in the case of distant linguistic affinity, in order to
establish genetic relationship between languages. What we need to fmd are
morphological correspondences and a few common items of basic vocabulary
because these are the elements which are least likely to be borrowed. We can
then try to match the linguistic evidence with what can be gathered from
anthropological and archaeological sources. In my view, the last decade has
brought decisive proof of genetic relationship between the whole range of
languages from Indo-European to Eskimo. The next step should comprise an
establishment of chronological layers in the material and a specification of the
2.0 Introduction

connections with the Altaic language family. The role of general linguistics in
this enterprise is to provide an idea of what can be expected in linguistic
development, not by theoretical reasoning but by inspection of what actually
happens in situations of language contact. Language is a social phenomenon,
and linguistic change must be examined in its social and historical context.

NOTE

This is the revised text of a paper read at the Institute of general and applied
linguistics, University of Copenhagen, on December 2., 1993.
 ON RUSSENORSK

The concept of mixed language has recently gained some popularity, to my

mind for no good reason. It is unclear how a mixed language can be
distinguished from the product of extensive borrowing or relexification. I
therefore think that the concept only serves to provoke muddled thinking about
linguistic contact and language change. Note e.g. that Munske adduces German
as an example "because the author is a professor of German linguistics and
because the phenomenon oflanguage mixing can be explained better in relation
to a language on which a large amount of research has been done than, for
example, in relation to pidgin and creole languages" (1986: 81).
Peter Bakker and Maarten Mous claim that "extreme borrowing never
exceeds roughly 45% of the lexicon, whereas in some of the mixed languages
discussed the proportion of 'foreign' lexical elements is closer to or over 90%,
and this figure is the same whether one counts types or tokens. There do not
seem to be languages with a proportion of borrowed items between 45% and
90%, so that there is no continuum between languages with heavy borrowing
and mixed languages" and that "in the mixed languages most of the core
vocabulary tends to be foreign" (1994: 5). When we look at the short text in
Bakker's prime example of a mixed language, Michif (1994: 28-30), we fmd the
following distribution of French and Cree items:
- French elements: un vieux 'an old: un matin 'a morning, ses pieges 'his traps:
une tem~te 'a storm: pas moyen 'no way' (2x), son shack 'his cabin' (2x), le vieux
'the old: d'un gros arbre 'at a big tree, une bonne place 'a good place, le loup de
bois 'the timber wolf: le loup 'the wolf' (4x), sa bouche 'his mouth: son bras 'his
arm: dans la queue 'by the tan: par la queue 'by the taif.
- Cree stems: 'trap' (2x), 'wake uP, 'be sick' (2x), 'want-go-see; 'leave, 'be busY,
'bad-weather: 'find' (2x), 'be losf, 'walk' (2x), 'play ouf, 'sit uprighf, 'die' (2x),
'think of; 'see, 'ruti, 'wait for; 'look af, 'come-thus-run; 'sif, 'open' (2x), 'want-
take; 'push forward; 'take froni, 'pull inside ouf, 'run back go home'.
-Cree words: 'and' (3x), 'stiiT, 'this' (4x), 'meantime, 'there' (2x), 'here; 'it is said:
'that' (2x), 'where, 'again'.
-Cree affiXes: so instances (12 prefiXes and 38 suffiXes).
It is clear that Bakker's prime example does not fulfil his own criteria of mixed
languages and that we are simply dealing with heavy borrowing of French nouns
into Cree. French articles and possessives are treated as prefiXes which were
borrowed together with the head noun.
2.2. Introduction

In the following I shall discuss another example of a mixed language, viz.

Russenorsk, a pidgin which was spoken by Norwegian and Russian fishermen
along the Arctic coast of Norway in the 19th century. Our major source of
information on this language is Brach & Jahr 1984; other important
contributions are Lunden 1978 and Peterson 198o. Note that Russenorsk was a
'seasonaf language, not used continuously throughout the year but only during
part of the summer fishing season (Lunden 1978: 2.13). It cannot therefore be
compared with a natural language but illustrates the process of language mixing
in a situation where creolization never had a chance.
Following Olaf Brach, Lunden lists three salient features of Russenorsk
which are frequently quoted in the literature:
(1) the use of moja and tvoja as 1st and 2nd sg. personal pronouns,
( 2.) the use of the preposition polpa as a general marker of oblique relations,
(3) the development of a verbal marker -om, e.g. kapitan paa kajuta slipom 'the
captain is asleep in his cabin'.
Since these features serve as a kind of shibboleth, they may reflect "a case of
speaking "the way foreigners speak': rather than speaking "the other man's
language"': as Lunden puts it (1978: 2.15). It follows that we must distinguish
between a person speaking his own language, a person simplifying his own
language in order to make himself understood, and a person trying to use his
interlocutor's language. We should therefore expect to fmd six components of
Russenorsk, depending on the nationality of the speaker and his three types of
linguistic performance. The effort which goes into "speaking the way foreigners
speak" beside "speaking the other man's language" accounts for the fact that
both partners may believe that they are actually speaking each other's language.
I shall now test this hypothesis by analyzing a dialogue recorded by A.WS. Brun,
cited and translated by Peterson (1980: 253f.), and reproduced by Brach & Jahr
(1984: 13of.). The speakers are abbreviated as Nor[wegian] and Rus[sian];
unambiguous Norwegian and Russian words are indexed by subscript N and R
while German, Dutch, English and ambiguous words remain unmarked (in
accordance with Peterson 1980); the orthography follows Brach & Jahr (1984)
except for re and aa, which are replaced bye and o.
Nor: Kjraf'N IN seika, treskaR> tiksa ON balduska? "Are you buying pollack, cod,
haddock, and halibut?" The speaker uses his own language, except for the fact
that the fish names are apparently language- independent
Rus: DaR> daR - mojaR kopomR altsammaN, davaiR po skif'N komN. "Yes, yes - I'll
buy all of it, come on board." The speaker adapts his own language moja kopom
and switches to Norwegian altsamma, po skip kom.
On Russenorsk 23

Nor: SpasibaR! harN IN mokkaR, harN N groppaR? "Thank you! Do you have flour,
do you have grain?" The speaker uses his own language, except for the word of
thanks and for the names of the commodities he wants to purchase.
Rus: DaR. daR! DavaiR po skiPN komN, bratR. po tjeiR drikiN. "Yes, yes! Come on
board, brother, drink some tea." The speaker clearly tries to speak Norwegian,
though the interjections da, davai, brat are Russian.
Nor: BlagdaruR pokornaR! KokR tvojaR betalomN forN seika? "I humbly thank you!
What are you paying for pollack?" The speaker now tries to adopt the simplified
language of his interlocutor, tvoja betalom echoing moja kopom, but the main
verb and focus of the message is still Norwegian betalom for seika.
Rus: PetR pudofR seika 1 pudR mokiR- "Five poods of pollack for one pood of
flour:' This is Russian.
Nor: KorN iN tykj~ ~ d~ lagaN? IN mON gjerN d~ billiarN! "How the hell is that
figured out? You have to make it cheaper!" This is pure Norwegian.
Rus: KakR sprek? Moj~ nietR forstON. "What did you say? I don't understand."
Again, the speaker adapts his own language and uses verbs from the language of
his interlocutor.
Nor: DorgoR. dorgloR Rusmai~ - prosjaiR! "Expensive, expensive, Russian -
goodbye!" The speaker uses Russian words without any sentence structure.
Rus: NietsjevoR! sjetiriR- gallN! "Okay! four- and a half!" This is Russian, except
for the focus of the message, which is in Norwegian.
Nor: DavaiR firN - nietsjevoR ve"igodN. "Make it four, okay, good." Apart from
the interjections davai and nietsjevo, this is Norwegian.
Rus: NjetR. bratR! KudaR mojaR selomN desjevliR? Grot djurN mokkaR po RusleienN
deinN OtN. "No, brother! Where can I sell it cheaper? Flour is very expensive in
Russia this year." The speaker adapts his own language and substitutes the
Norwegian verb, then switches to Norwegian in the second sentence.
Nor: TvojaR nietR sainferdiN sprek. "You're not telling the truth." The speaker
imitates the simplified language of his interlocutor but the focus of the message
is in Norwegian.
Rus: Jes, grot sainferdiN, mojaR nietR lugomN, djurN mokkaR. "Yes, it's very true, I'm
not lying, flour is expensive." The speaker tries to answer in Norwegian, adapts
his own language and uses Norwegian words in the three foci of the message.
Nor: KakR tvojaR kopomR - davaiR firN pudp,; kakR tvojaR nietR kopomR - soN
prosjaiR! "If you want to buy - four poods; if you don't want to buy - then,
24 Introduction

goodbye!" The speaker imitates the simplified language of his interlocutor, but
the focus of the message fir is still Norwegian.
Rus: NON, nietsjevoR bratR> davaiR kladiR po dekN. "Wel~ okay brother, put the fish
on the deck." This is essentially a Russian sentence.
When we evaluate the evidence, it is clear that there is a substantial difference in
linguistic behavior between the two parties of the dialogue. The Norwegian uses
his own language; when he adopts simplified Russian expressions from his
interlocutor, the focus of the message always remains Norwegian. The Russian
on the other hand simplifies his own language for the sake of his interlocutor
and switches to Norwegian all the time, the only exceptions being his first offer
pet pudofseika 1 pud moki and his fmal consent nietsjevo brat, davai kladi po dek.
There is no mixed language here but a dialogue between a Russian speaking
foreigners' talk and limited Norwegian and a Norwegian speaking his own
language and imitating the Russian's foreigners' talk. The focus of the messages
is always in Norwegian, whether the speaker is Norwegian or Russian. It follows
that Russenorsk is a variant of Norwegian with an admixture of Russian
foreigners' talk.
While the concept of mixed language seems to have originated from
underanalysis of linguistic data, the putative grammar of Russenorsk appears to
result from linguistic overanalysis. The alleged nominal suffiXes -a and -i (Brach
& Jahr 1984: 43f., 63) are simply the Russian sg. and pl. endings which were
borrowed as part of the names of the merchandise. When a Norwegian asks in
Russian foreigners' talk:
Nogoli dag tvoja reisa po Archangel otsuda? "How many days did you travel
from/to Archangel to/from here?" (nogoli dag < mnogo li dag, R. otsuda 'from
here'), the Russian says in Norwegian:
/a po madam Klerck tri daga lige ne. "I lay three days at Mrs. Klerck's:: with the
regular ending -a after the Russian numeral tri (Brach & Jahr 1984: 113, uS).
The adjectival -a is the Russian feminine and unstressed neuter ending which
was borrowed as part of the adjectives. The verbal ending -om represents the
Scandinavian hortative ending -om, not only because the preceding verb stem is
usually Germanic and because over so% of the instances are introduced by davai
or vrersego (Brach & Jahr 1984: 47), but especially because it is pronounced
[urn], as is clear from the manuscripts, and cannot therefore be of Slavic origin.
There are only four Russian verbs in -om, viz. kopom 'buY, robotom 'worlc,
smotrom 'see: kralom 'steal'; the isolated form podjom 'let's go' does not count
because it is not attested in a sentence. Russian verb forms are usually
imperatives or infmitives; the form vros '(you) lie' is not 2nd sg. but uninflected:
On Russenorsk 25

moja njet vros (lygom) 'I do not lie~ Thus, there is no trace of Russian grammar
in the language.
I conclude that Russenorsk is a variant of Norwegian with an admixture of
Russian foreigners' talk and elements from the native language of the speaker.
The concept of mixed language is misleading because there is a fundamental
asymmetry between the two parties in the dialogue, both of whom essentially
speak Norwegian. There is no Russian element in the grammar, which is
Norwegian, though not limited by the standard language but full of pragmatic
variation, especially topicalization. The attested material illustrates the regular
mechanism of language change through imperfect learning.
 THE ORIGIN OF THE GOTHS

Witold Manczak has argued that Gothic is closer to Upper German than to
Middle German, closer to High German than to Low German, closer to German
than to Scandinavian, closer to Danish than to Swedish, and that the original
homeland of the Goths must therefore be located in the southernmost part of
the Germanic territories, not in Scandinavia (1982, 1984. 19878-. 1987b, 1992). I
think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes' classic
view that the Goths came from Scandinavia. We must therefore reconsider the
grounds for adopting the latter position and the reasons why it always has
remained popular.
The reconstruction of Gothic history and the historical value of Iordanes'
Getica have been analyzed in detail by Peter Heather (1991: 3-67). As he points
out about this prime literary source (p. 5): "Two features have made it central to
modern historical reconstructions. First, it covers the entire sweep of Gothic
history. [...] Second, there is a Gothic origin to some of the Getica's material,
which makes it unique among surviving sources." Iordanes' work draws heavily
on the lost Gothic histories of Ablabius and Cassiodorus, who "would seem to
have been in the employ of Gothic dynasts and had to produce Gothic histories
of a kind that their employers wished to hear" (Heather 1991: 67). As to the
origin of the Goths and their neighbours, the Gothic migrations and the great
kings of the past, oral history is the most likely source of the stories. This
material must therefore be handled with particular care: "Oral history is not
unalterable, but reflects current social configurations; as these change, so must
collective memory" (Heather 1991: 62). It appears that Iordanes knew of several
alternative accounts of early Gothic history, and Heather concludes (1991: 66):
"There was thus more than one version of Gothic origins current in the sixth
century. Jordanes, as we have seen, made his choice because he found written
confirmation of it, but this is hardly authoritative: the Scandinavian origin of the
Goths would seem to have been one sixth-century guess among several. It is also
striking that Jordanes' variants all contained islands: Scandinavia, Britain, 'or
some other island'. In one strand of Graeco- Roman ethnographic and
geographic tradition, Britain, Thule, and Scandinavia are all mysterious
northern islands rather than geographical localities. 'Britain' and 'Scandinavia'
may well represent interpretative deductions on the part of whoever it was that
recorded the myths. The myths themselves perhaps referred only to an
unnamed, mysterious island, which the recorder had then to identify. The
Scandinavian origin-tale would thus be similar to much else in the Getica,
depending upon a complex mixture of material from Gothic oral and Graeco-
Roman literary sources."
2.8 Introduction

If we are to maintain continuity between the Baltic Gutones of the tst and
2nd centuries and the Pontic Goths of the 3rd and 4th centuries, this only
reflects the tradition of the ruling clans (cf. Wolfram 1979: 6-7). The historical
evidence suggests that the Scandinavian Goths came from the south across the
Baltic Sea rather than the other way round (cf. Hachmann 1970: 454-457 and
465). The Lithuanian name Gudai 'Byelorussians' < *-dh- has nothing to do with
the Goths< *-t- but must be derived from Prussiangudde 'woods: like the Polish
place names Gdansk and Gdynia (cf. Fraenkel 1950: 64). There is no
archaeological evidence for a large-scale migration of Goths from the Baltic to
the Black Sea (cf. Heather 1991: 6 and Hachmann 1970: 467). In fact, there are
several reasons why such a migration is highly unlikely. First of all, there is a
clear discontinuity between the Przeworsk culture in Poland and the Cernjahov
culture in the Ukraine which are identified with the Goths before and after the
migration, respectively (see the map of Green 1998: xiv). The only reason to
assume that the Goths followed the rivers Bug or San and Dniestr is that "the
terrain did not offer many alternatives between a common starting-point and a
shared goal" (Green 1998: 166). Secondly, the territory between these two areas
north of the Carpathian mountains is precisely the homeland of the Slavs, who
do not appear to have stirred before the arrival of the Huns in the fourth
century. This can hardly be reconciled with a major migration of Goths through
their territory. Thirdly, the periodic exposure to severe stress in the fragile
borderland communities of the steppe prompted westward population
movements toward areas of more stable climatic conditions. An eastward
migration of Goths from the richer upland forest into the poorer lowland steppe
was both unmotivated and difficult to realize against the natural forces to be
encountered. Fourthly, the expected direction of a migration is toward more
developed areas where life seems to be better, which in the present context
means toward the nearest border of the Roman Empire. We would therefore
expect the Goths to move to the south through the Moravian Gate toward the
Danube, as did the Slavs a few centuries later. Fifthly, there is little reason to
assume that the Goths behaved differently from the Burgundians, the Vandals,
the Marcomanns and the Langobards, all of whom crossed the upper Danube at
some stage. It therefore seems probable to me that the historical Goths followed
the course of the Danube downstream and entered the Ukraine from the
southwest. The Gepids may have lagged behind on this journey, which accounts
for Iordanes' etymology of their name (cf. Heather 1991: 5).
Putting the pieces together, I think that the most likely chain of events is the
following. The Gutones, like their East Germanic brethren, moved south toward
Italy and the riches of the Roman Empire until they reached the river Danube.
They may have adopted the speech of Alemannic tribes which had arrived there
from the west, where these had been in close contact with the Romans for a
longer period of time. It is possible that Gothic ethnogenesis actually took place
The origin of the Goths 29

in Lower Austria when East Germanic tribes from the north met with West
Germanic tribes from the west and, having been prevented from entering the
Roman Empire in large numbers, joined forces in their quest for a place to cross
the lower Danube. This scenario is well-motivated in terms of pressures and
attractions. It renders the southern origin of the Gothic language compatible
with the northern origin of the name. The 'Gothicization' of large numbers of
non-Goths was not brought about by "the predominance of 'true Goths"'
(Heather 1991: 327) but by the absence of major linguistic differences between
the Germanic tribes of the md century. It is only to be expected that the most
prestigious Germanic dialect was spoken close to the border of the Roman
Empire and largely taken over by the newcomers. The Gothic majority did not
exist at the outset but came into being as a result of the process of assimilation as
the groups adapted to one another.
The scenario outlined here has the additional advantage of accounting for a
number of peculiar characteristics of the Gothic language in comparison with its
closest relatives. Gothic phonology resembles that of Latin and Romance more
than that of the other Germanic languages ( cf. K1o2.: 8-9 and K138: 54). Though
Gothic is more archaic than its sisters, its morphology appears to have been
regularized to a large extent. The Latin sufftx -iirius was evidently productive in
Gothic bokareis 'scribe, laisareis 'teacher: liupareis 'singer: motareis 'toll-taker:
sokareis 'disputer'. The Gothic words siponeis 'disciple, kelikn 'tower, alew 'oif,
lukarn 'lamp' were probably borrowed from the Celts in Moravia (cf. Green
1998: 156-158), which explains their limited distribution in Germanic. The word
for 'vinegar' is of particular interest because it has seven different variants in
Germanic (cf. Wollmann 1990: 52.6-542):
1. Gothic aket, akeit;
2..Swiss German (Wallis) achiss;
3. Old High German ezzih;
4. Middle Low German etik;
5· Middle Dutch edic;
6. Old English eced, Old Saxon ekid;
7. Icelandic edic, Swedish attika, which were apparently borrowed from
Low German.
It is clear that the Gothic word came from Alemannic in the 1st century before
viticulture spread to the Palatinate and the middle Rhine in the 2nd century (cf.
Wollmann 1990: 540). The words Kreks 'Greek' and datpl. marikreitum 'pearls'
also betray the influence of an Upper German dialect without voiced obstruents
(cf. K1o2.: 9).
Furthermore, Greek words usually appear in their Latin form in Gothic (cf.
especially Jellinek 192.6: 179-183 and 188-194), which points to a western origin of
the Goths, e.g. aipistula 'letter' (but aipistaule 'Pauline epistle'), drakma
30 Introduction

'drachma: paurpura 'purple, gen.sg. sinapis 'mustard: dat.pl Rumonim 'Romans:

Saurim 'Syrians: also aikklesjo 'congregation; aiwaggeijo 'gospet aiwaggelista
'evangelisf, diabulus 'devil' (but diabaulus in St. John), Marja 'Mary' (but Maria
in St. Luke), and Jesus Xristus. It seems to me that gen.pl skaurpjono 'scorpions'
almost suffices to show that the Goths entered the Balkans from the west, not
from the north. Most important is that Greek o-stems are inflected as u-stems in
Gothic, e.g. Iudaius 'Jew; gen.sg. -aus, datpl. -um, acc.pl. -uns, but as i-stems in
nom.pl. Iudaieis, gen.pl. -e (Jellinek 1926: 108), which can only be explained by
Latin transmission. Other pieces of evidence are cultural loans such as aurali
'napkin' and kubitus 'reclining (company) at a meal' and loan translations, e.g.
armahairtei 'mercf, which were taken from Latin orarium, cubitus, misericordia,
not from their Greek equivalents. A fmal point to be noted is that Baltic
loanwords from Gothic were transmitted through Slavic (cf. Stender-Petersen
1927: 134 and Green 1998: 172-174), which suggests that the Balts never had
direct contact with the Goths but were separated from them by the Slavs.
 C.C. UHLENBECK ON INDO-EUROPEAN, URALIC AND CAUCASIAN

In his early years, C. C. Uhlenbeck was particularly interested in the problem of

the Indo-European homeland (1895, 1897). He rejected Herman Hirt's theory
(1892) that the words for 'birch; 'willoW, 'spruce, 'oal(, 'beech' and 'eef point to
Lithuania and its immediate surroundings and returned to Otto Schrader's view
(1883, 1890) that the original homeland must rather be sought in southern
Russia and may have included some of the later Germanic and Iranian
territories. It is clear that the Mediterranean region and the area around the
North Sea can safely be excluded because the arrival of the Indo-Europeans was
comparatively recent here, as it was in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. It is
difficult to be more specific within the limits of central and eastern Europe and
central Asia. Uhlenbeck was impressed by the lexical correspondences between
Indo-European and Semitic which had been adduced in favor of an eastern
homeland but pointed out that borrowings from Semitic may have reached the
Indo-Europeans through an intermediary. He agrees that the Indo-European
words for trees and animals point to a moderate climate but questions the
possibility of a more specific localization as well as the concept of homeland
itself.
Uhlenbeck identifies the Slavic word for 'dog pt~Sb with the Indo-European
word for 'livestock' *peR:u and its original meaning as 'domestic animaf. Unlike
Hirt (1895), he recognizes that the Indo-Europeans were pastoralists before they
became agriculturalists, as is clear from the absence of common words for
'plough: 'field; 'grain' and suchlike. While Armenian shares many agricultural
terms with the languages of Europe, these are absent from Indo- Iranian. The
common Indo-European vocabulary reflects a stage of development when
weaponry was made of stone, wood, bones and hides (cf. Schrader 1890:
320-346). It includes words for 'cart' (oxoi;,), 'wheef (~<:odoi;,), 'axle' (~wv), 'yoke'
({vy6v), 'carpenter' (re~<:rwv), '(wooden) house' (86ftOi;,), 'vessef (vaiii;,), 'to plait'
(me~<:w), 'to weave' (t}(patvw), 'to spin' (vew), 'garment' (elfta) and 'to clothe'
(f.Vviiftl).
The population of Denmark and Scandinavia did not speak an Indo-
European language before the advent of pastoralism, which puts these countries
beyond the original homeland. The introduction of the cart was evidently more
recent than the domestication of cattle, which were used as draught animals. All
Indo-European languages have the same words for 'o'x, 'sheeP, 'goa~ 'horse' and
'swine; but not for tame birds, which had not yet been domesticated, nor for
'donkeY, which came from the south. The ancient character of cattle-breeding is
corroborated by the words for 'livestoclc, 'to herd; 'herd' (trwv), 'herdsman'
(trOlft~V), 'cow' (floiii;,), 'to milk' (aft.€A.yw), 'butter' (lA.troi;,) and 'bulf. The word
32 Introduction

steer (ravpo~, Latin taurus) is probably an early Indo-European borrowing from

Semitic denoting 'wild bult as is indicated by Lithuanian taiiras 'aurochs' and
Old Prussian tauris 'wisenf, while ox is the old word for 'domesticated bulf.
Cattle were the most important animals in prehistoric pastoralism, as is clear
from such Vedic expressions as 'desire of cows' for 'struggle' and 'cattle-master of
horses' for 'lord' and from the peculiar Greek word imrof3ovK.6Ao~ 'horse-
cowherd' for 'horse-herd'. Other domesticated animals included sheep, as is also
clear from the words for 'woof and 'lamb; and goats and horses, but not
donkeys, chicken, ducks and geese, which were domesticated more recently (cf.
Schrader 1890: 390).
While the Indo-European vocabulary contains an abundance of words
reflecting a pastoral society, there is no common agricultural terminology. The
Indo- Iranians evidently belonged to a different cultural unity when the
languages of Europe, including Armenian, developed their agricultural
terminology (cf. now Kuz'mina 2.007). The Latin word granum originally meant
'grain of coni, as is also clear from its Germanic, Baltic and Slavic cognates,
while hordeum 'barley' may have designated a wild variety. The Sanskrit cognate
of the word for 'field' ajras means 'plain' while the word vapati means both
'throws' and 'sows'. The European words for 'seed' (Latin semen), 'to mow'
(apaw), 'to milf (Latin molere), 'to plough' (apow) and 'plough' (ltporpov) are
absent from Indo-Iranian (cf. Schrader 1890: 410). These etyma can now be
identified with Hittite sai- 'to throW, iins- 'to wipe, malla- 'to grind' and ha"a-
'to crush; respectively (cf. Kloekhorst 2.008). The word for 'wine' has an Indo-
European etymology (cf. Beekes 1987) but was limited to the Mediterranean
countries (Italy, Greece, Asia Minor), from where it spread to northern and
eastern Europe and to the Middle East The original Indo-European word
probably denoted 'vine' rather than 'wine' because this is the meaning of Basque
ayen, aihen (cf. also Beekes 2.010: 1059).
Though metallurgy was unknown to the Indo-Europeans, they had words
for gold, which is cognate with yellow and has been preserved in Germanic,
Baltic, Slavic and Indo-Iranian, 'silver' (Latin argentum), cognate with 'bright'
and preserved in Celtic, Italic, Greek. Armenian and Iranian, 'copper' (Latin
raudus 'piece of brass'), which is cognate with red and has been preserved in
Italic, Germanic (where it may also be represented by lead), Slavic and Indo-
Iranian, and ore, which became the word for 'brass, bronze' in Italic (Latin aes),
Germanic and Indo-Iranian. There were no common Indo-European terms for
'iron; 'lead' and 'tin'. The original words for 'gold' and 'silver' were apparently
replaced with the advent of metallurgy, the first in Italy (Latin aurum), from
where the new term spread to Baltic, Celtic and eventually Basque, and the
second in Spain (Celtiberian silapur, Basque zillar), from where the new term
spread to Germanic, Baltic and Slavic. The latter word cannot be separated from
Berber ap-ej'silver' and ~arif'alum', where a- is a nominal prefix. Here the word
C.C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, Uralic and Caucasian 33

for 'alum' is evidently a borrowing from Punic and can be derived from the
Semitic root ~rp, Akkadian ~arapu 'to refme (metals by firing); Hebrew ~a rap 'to
smelt (metal)' (see Boutkan & Kossmann 2001 for references).
I conclude that Uhlenbeck was well ahead of his time in his discussion with
Hirt and Schrader. He recognized that it is necessary to distinguish between two
components of Indo-European language and culture, an older common
inheritance which reflects a pastoral society and a later European complex with
a common agricultural vocabulary, both of them dating from before the
introduction of metallurgy. It is interesting that before the end of the 19th
century he had already reached the position which has now become dominant
among Indo-Europeanist scholars and is supported by the archaeological
evidence (cf. Mallory 1989). The major point which he did not see is the crucial
role of the domesticated horse in the Indo-European expansions (but see
below).
The tentative localization of the Indo-European homeland was logically
followed by the question if the proto-language could be related to other
language families. Uhlenbeck remarked that the identity between the
nominative and the accusative in the neuter, both singular and plura~ points to
an original absolutive case ("Passivus") which was identical with the bare stem
(except in the o-stems), whereas the subject of transitive verbs was in an ergative
case ("Aktivus"), marked by a sufftxed *-s which he identified with the
demonstrative pronoun *so (1901). His student Nicolaas van Wijk argued that
the nominal genitive singular in *-s was identical with the original ergative
(1902). Among other things, he adduced such constructions as Latin miseret me
'I feel pity, pudet me 'I am ashamed: where the logical subject is in the genitive
case. Uhlenbeck claimed that the Indo-European proto-language was
characterized by polysynthesis, sufftxation and inftxation and drew attention to
its typological similarity to unrelated languages such as Basque, Dakota and
Greenlandic. He also observed that the Indo-European mediopassive voice is
reminiscent of the verbal construction with an incorporated dative and an
object in the absolutive case which is found in Basque and North American
languages. In a later study (1904), he adduced the strong resemblance between
Basque and Indo-European nominal composition as an example of typological
similarity between unrelated languages ("Sprachen zwischen welchen man selbst
keine entfernte Verwandtschaft nachzuweisen verma(, cf. also Uhlenbeck 1913).
While he considered a common origin of Eskimo and Aleut with the Uralic
languages probable (1905a), he rejected the possibility that Basque is related to
Uralic and Altaic and suggested that it might rather be of Mro-Asiatic
provenance (1905b). After a detailed examination of the available evidence,
Uhlenbeck concluded that a genetic relationship between Basque and Caucasian
languages cannot be established (1923), but later he changed his opinion and
34 Introduction

considered the latter to be highly probable (de onmiskenbare verwantschap met

het Kaukasisch': 1946: 17), regarding the Afro-Asiatic elements as borrowings.
Holger Pedersen has listed numerous examples of Russian impersonal
sentences with an inanimate agent in the instrumental case, e.g. teleniem ego
poneslo nazad 'the current carried him baclc, vetrom sneslo kryfu 'the wind blew
off the roof~ and similar constructions in Iranian, Celtic and Germanic (1907:
134-140). He argues that this sentence type is older than the rise of grammatical
gender in Indo-European and compares it with the ergative construction in
North Caucasian languages, where the subject of a transitive verb is in the
instrumental or in the genitive, as it is in Tibetan and Eskimo, and in the
Armenian 1-preterit, where it is in the genitive. For the Indo-European proto-
language he proposes that the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a
transitive verb were in the absolutive (unmarked) case while the subject of a
transitive verb was in the genitive when the agent was animate but in the
instrumental when it was inanimate (1907: 152). Mter the differentiation
between the ergative and the genitive, the former came to be used for the subject
of intransitive verbs in the case of animate individuals, as distinct from
collectives and inanimates. This three-way distinction was subsequently
grammaticalized as masculine, feminine and neuter gender. In a later study,
Pedersen argues that a comparison of the Indo-European and Uralic
grammatical systems leaves no doubt about their genetic relationship ('Es liegt
hier eine Summe von tJbereinstimmungen vor, die den Zufall ausschliesst':
1933b: 309) and proposes that athematic presents (rteruu 'I put') were originally
transitive while thematic presents (rpepw 'I carry') and perfects (ol8a 'I know')
were originally intransitive, which is reminiscent of Hungarian varom 'I wait for
him' versus varok 'I waif.
In the meantime, Uhlenbeck's doubts about the reality of an Indo-European
proto-language had grown. He now defmed the proto-language as the group of
dialects spoken by the original community of Indo-European conquerors. Since
the conquests of non-Indo-European territories took place at different times, the
language of the later conquerors was no longer identical with the original proto-
language. While the separate branches of Indo-European arose when the
language of the invaders was adopted by local populations speaking quite
different substratum languages, Uhlenbeck claims that Proto-Indo-European
itself already consists of two unrelated groups of elements, which he calls A and
B (1933, 1934a, 1937b). Here A contains pronouns, verbal roots and derivational
suffixes whereas B contains isolated words which are not related to verbal roots,
such as numerals, some kinship terms, and many names of body parts, animals
and trees. Uhlenbeck compares A with Uralic and Altaic and attributes irregular
features such as heteroclitic inflection and grammatical gender to B, for which
one might think of Caucasian languages. The relation between Indo-European
and Uralic can be extended to Eskimo (cf. Uhlenbeck 1905a, 1906, 1907, 1934b,
C.C. Uhlenbeck on Indo-European, Uralic and Caucasian 35

193/cl. 1941, 1942). This is in accordance with the view that the Indo-Europeans
arrived in southern Russia from the Asian steppes east of the Caspian Sea, where
they allegedly led a nomadic life with horses, chariots and large herds of cattle.
Since such words as kinship terms and names of body parts are usually
regarded as belonging to the basic vocabulary of a language, Uhlenbeck rejected
the terms "genetic relationship" for A and "borrowing" for B and presented
Proto-Indo-European as a "mixed language': an idea which had first been put
forward by Sigmund Feist (1910). This is an unfortunate notion which is based
on underanalysis of the data and can easily lead to muddled thinking about
linguistic contact and language change (cf. K197). The point is that the two
components A and B have an entirely different status. The situation is
reminiscent of Michif, which has been adduced as a prime example of a mixed
language. Here we fmd numerous French nominal stems which were borrowed
together with their determiners, e.g. le loup 'the wolf; sa bouche 'his mouth', son
bras 'his arm; while the verbal stems and grammatical elements are purely Cree
(cf. K197: 123). Uhlenbeck himself adduces the Sanskrit influence on Indonesian,
the French influence on English and the Romance influence on Basque as
parallels (1941: 204f.). He appears to have realized his mistake because he later
returned to an analysis in terms of genetic relationship and borrowing (1946).
The two major fmdings which Uhlenbeck has contributed to Indo-
European linguistics are the reconstructed ergative (which was established
independently by Pedersen (1907: 157), who provided the comparative evidence)
and the twofold origin of the vocabulary. Both discoveries have been slow in
their acceptance by the scholarly community. Andre Vaillant has identified the
Indo-European ergative in *-s as an original ablative, the animate accusative in
*-mas a lative (casus directivus), and the neuter pronominal ending *-t with the
instrumental ending in Hittite and the ablative ending of the o-stems in the
other Indo-European languages (1936). The ending *-m was originally limited to
animate individuals, like the preposition a in Spanish, e.g. veo a Pedro 'I see
Peter' (see Pottier 1968 for details). Robert Beekes has shown that the entire
paradigm of the o-stems was built on an ergative case form in *-os (1985).
Blissfully ignorant of the data and unaware of the comparative evidence, Alan
Rumsey has argued on typological grounds that there cannot have been a Proto-
Indo-European ergative because this case is absent from the neuter paradigm
(198/cl, 1987b). Since his objection was effectively answered by Pedersen a
hundred years ago (1907), there is no reason to return to the matter here. It
illustrates how a tool which in itself is useful becomes harmful in the hands of
the unskilled (cf. also K130).
The idea of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic has
become fairly well accepted among specialists (e.g. Collinder 1965, 1974).
Gimbutas's theory that the Indo-Europeans moved from a primary homeland
north of the Caspian Sea to a secondary homeland north of the Black Sea (e.g.
 Introduction

1985) is fully in agreement with the view that their language developed from an
Indo- Uralic proto-system which was modified under the influence of a North
Caucasian substratum, perhaps in the sixth millennium BC (cf. Mallory 1989:
192f., Km, Kw3). Johannes Knobloch has suggested that the thematic vowel
"'-e!o- in the Indo-European verbal inflection represents an earlier object marker
(1953). I have argued that the thematic present and the perfect originally had a
dative subject, reflecting an earlier intransitive construction with an indirect
object (K049). For Proto-Indo-Uralic we can reconstruct a genitive in "'-n,
which is reflected in the oblique stem form of the Indo- European heteroclitics, a
lative-accusative in "'-m, a dative-locative in "'-i, an ablative-instrumental in "'-t,
which is reflected as both -t and-sin Indo-European, plural markers "'-t and "'-i,
dual "'-ki, personal pronouns "'mi 'I~ *ti 'thou~ *me 'we~ *te 'you' and
corresponding verbal endings, reflexive "'u, demonstratives, participles,
derivational suffiXes of nouns and verbs, negative "'n-and interrogative "'k- (cf.
K2o3). The rise of the ergative construction, grammatical gender and adjectival
agreement can be attributed to North Caucasian influence and may have
proceeded as indicated by Pedersen (1907). It is important to note that the
accusative is of Indo-Uralic origin and therefore older than the ergative. This
explains the peculiar construction of Russian vetrom sneslo kryfu 'the wind blew
off the roof, where the inanimate agent is in the instrumental and the object is
in the accusative. While the Indo-Uralic component of the lexicon (Uhlenbeck's
A) has been a focus of research in the past, the identification of the non-Indo-
Uralic component (Uhlenbeck's B) remains a task for the future. In view of the
large number of consonants and the minimal vowel system of Proto-Indo-
European, the northern Caucasus seems to be the obvious place to look (cf.
Starostin 2007).
 AN OUTLINE OF PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN

Indo-European is a branch of Indo- Uralic which was radically transformed

under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum when its speakers moved
from the area north of the Caspian Sea to the area north of the Black Sea (cf.
K247). As a result, Indo-European developed a minimal vowel system combined
with a large consonant inventory including glottalized stops, also grammatical
gender and adjectival agreement, an ergative construction which was lost again
but has left its traces in the grammatical system, especially in the nominal
inflection, a construction with a dative subject which was partly preserved in the
historical languages and is reflected in the verbal morphology and syntax, where
it gave rise to new categories, and a heterogeneous lexicon. The Indo- Uralic
elements of Indo-European include pronouns, case endings, verbal endings,
participles and derivational sufftxes. In the following I shall give an overview of
the grammar of Proto-Indo-European as it may have been spoken around 4000
BC in the eastern Ukraine, shortly after the ancestors of the Anatolians left for
the Balkans (for more recent developments I refer to Beekes 1995). This stage
preceded the common innovations of the non-Anatolian languages such as
*mer- 'to die' < 'to disappear' , *tu « *ti 'thou: *se5- 'to satiate' < 'to stuff,
*dhupter « *dhueptr 'daughter: *5er5W- 'to plough' < 'to crush: *mel 'don't!' <
'say no!; *lekuos « *leku 'horse' (cf. Kloekhorst 2008: 8-10). It also preceded the
rise of the subjunctive and the optative and dialectal Indo-European
developments such as the rise of distinctive voicedness (not shared by
Tocharian), the creation of a thematic middle voice (cf. K239: 151-157), and the
satemization of the palatovelars (cf. K263: 43). The lexicon included words for
'car~ 'wheel; 'axle, 'yoke: 'carpenter: 'house, 'vessef, 'to plai~ 'to weave: 'to spiiT,
'to clothe, 'ox, 'sheep; 'goa~ 'horse, 'swine; 'cow; 'dog, 'to herd; 'to mill(, 'butter;
'woof, 'lamb; 'gold: 'silver, 'copper, 'ore: but not for 'donkeY, 'caf, 'chicken; 'duel(,
'field: 'to soW, 'to moW, 'to milf, 'to plough: 'iron, 'lead; 'tin'. There was no
agricultural or metallurgical vocabulary at this stage.

PHONOLOGY

Proto-Indo-European had two vowels: *e [re] and *o [A], which had long
variants *e and *o in monosyllabic word forms and before word-final resonants
(cf. Wackemagel1896: 66-68). At a later stage, *e was colored by a contiguous *5
or? to *a or *o, respectively (cf. K194: 39-44, 54-56, 75-78 and K2o2, Lubotsky
1989, 1990). Even more recently, *o was colored by a contiguous *5 to *a in Greek
(cf. Ko34). The vowel *a is widespread in borrowings from European
substratum languages, e.g. Latin albus 'white, Greek aA.q~6<;, Hittite alpa- 'cloud'.
PIE *e may represent any Indo-Uralic non-final vowel under the stress, e.g.
 Introduction

*uef!'- 'carry' < *wiqi-, *uedh- 'lead' < *weta-, "5eg- 'drive' < *qaja-, *mesg- 'plunge'
< *moski-, cf. Finnish vie- 'take; veta- 'pulf, aja- 'drive, Estonian moske- 'wash'.
PIE *o has a twofold origin: it developed phonetically from unstressed *u and *e
and was introduced by analogy in stressed syllables (cf. K203: 221, K213: 165).
Proto-Indo-European had six resonants with syllabic and consonantal
allophones: *i, *u, *r, *l, *m, *n. There were twelve stops, one fricative *s, and
three laryngeal consonants *?, "5, "5"'. The distinction between the laryngeals was
neutralized before and after *o (cf. K194> K2o2). The stops were the following:
fortis glottalic lenis
labials *p [p:] *b [p'] *bh [p]
dentals *t [t:] *d [t'] *dh [t]
palatovelars *R [It:] *g [It'] *f [It]
labiovelars *kW [kW:] *F: [kw'] *i:h [kW]
Word-initial *b- had already become *p-, e.g. Vedic pfbati 'drinks; Old Irish ibid,
Armenian ampem 'I drink' (with a nasal inftx, cf. K194: So), Luwian pappaJ- 'to
swallow' (Kloekhorst 2008: 628) with analogical fortis *-p- and Latin bibO with
restoration of initial *b-. A similar rule may account for the absence of PIE roots
with two glottalic stops such as *deg- or *F:eid- because the fortes were almost as
frequent as the lenes and the glottalics together. The opposition between
palatovelars and labiovelars was neutralized after *u and *s and the palatovelars
were depalatalized before *r, *s and laryngeal consonants (cf. Meillet 1894>
Steensland 1973, Villanueva 2009), e.g. Luwian k- < *R- in kar5- 'cut'< *krs-, kis-
'comb' < *ks-, kattawatnalli- 'plaintiff' < *k5et- (cf. Kloekhorst 2008) and
similarly in Vedic cyavate 'moves' < *kfieu-, Greek ae6oftal, Prussian etskl- 'rise'
< *kliei-, Latin cieo (cf. K263: 176) and in Vedic lqayati 'rules'< *tklei-, Avestan
x5-, as opposed to Vedic /qeti 'dwells' < *t!Cei-, Avestan s- (cf. Beekes 2010: 789,
791).
It has been observed that PIE fortis and lenis stops could not co-occur in
the same root, so that roots of the type *teubh- or *bheut- are excluded. It follows
that the distinction between fortes and lenes was a prosodic feature of the root
as a whole, which may be called "strong" if it contained a fortis and "weak" if it
contained a lenis stop. This system can be explained in a straightforward way
from an earlier system with distinctive high and low tones. Lubotsky has shown
that there is a highly peculiar correlation between Indo-European root structure
and accentuation (1988a: 170), which again points to an earlier level tone system.
In any case, the PIE prosodic system was very close to the system attested in
Vedic Sanskrit. I have proposed that the PIE distinction between fortis and lenis
stops resulted from a consonant gradation which originated from an Indo-
Uralic stress pattern that gave rise to strong and weak syllables (K213). It is
probable that the whole inventory of PIE stops and laryngeal consonants can be
An outline of Proto-Indo-European 39

derived from the five Indo- Uralic stops *p, *t, *c, *k, *q with palatalization,
labialization and uvularization under the influence of contiguous vowels (cf.
K203: 220). Note that Proto-Uralic *q (=*x in Sammallahti 1988) is strongly
reminiscent of the Indo-European laryngeals, being lost before a vowel and
vocalized before a consonant in Samoyedic and lengthening a preceding vowel
before a consonant in Finno- Ugric.

NOMINAL MORPHOLOGY

There were four major types of nominal paradigm in Proto-Indo-European:

static, proterodynamic, hysterodynamic and thematic. In the singular, the
proterodynamic paradigm had radical stress in the nom. and ace. forms and
suffixal stress in the loc. and abl forms whereas the hysterodynamic paradigm
had radical stress in the nominative, suffiXal stress in the ace. and loc. forms,
and desinential stress in the ablative, which later adopted the function of
genitive in these paradigms. A comparative analysis of the non-Anatolian
languages leads to the following reconstruction (cf. K263: 104). Here Rsd stands
for radical stress, rSd for suffJ.Xal stress, and rsD for desinential stress; the
accentuation of the inst.sg. forms was probably identical with that of the loc.sg.
forms at an earlier stage. The examples are: Vedic sun(ts 'son~ Old Irish ainm
'name, Greek Ovyar11p 'daughter, Lithuanian piemuo 'shepherd~ and Old Norse
oxe'dx.
nom.sg. sun£ts Rsd *-s ainm Rs *-121
acc.sg. sunum Rsd *-m ainm Rs *-121
gen.sg. sun6s rSd *-s an mae rSd *-s
loc.sg. sun au rS *-121 ainm rS *-121
datsg. sun ave rSd *-i rSd *-i
inst.sg. sununii Rsd *-f Rsd *-f
nom. pl. sunavas rSd *-es an man rSd *-5
ace. pl. sun an Rsd *-ns an man rSd *-5
gen. pl. sununiim rsD *-om an man rsD *-om
loc.pl. sun!4u rsD *-su rsD *-su
datpl. sunubhyas rsD *-mus rsD *-mus
inst.pl. sunubhis rsD *-bhi anmanaib rsD *-bhi

nom.sg. evya'r'IP piemuo axe Rs *-121

acc.sg. Ovycnepa pfemenj oxa rSd *-m
gen.sg. Ovyarp6c; piemefis oxa rsD *-os
loc.sg. Ovyarpl piemenyje oxa rSd *-i
dat.sg. pfemeniui rsD *-ei
inst.sg. pfemeniu rsD *-el
Exploring the Variety of Random
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consciousness? Would any supposable addition to the degree merely
of those powers which we ascribe to brutes, render them rational
beings, and remove the sacred distinction, which law and reason
have sanctioned, between things and persons? Will any such
addition account for our having—what the brute is not supposed to
have—the pure ideas of the geometrician, the power of ideal
construction, the intuition of geometrical or other necessary and
universal truths? Would it give rise, in irrational animals, to a law of
moral rectitude and to conscience—to the feelings of moral
responsibility and remorse? Would it awaken them to a reflective
self-consciousness, and lead them to form and contemplate the
ideas of the soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God. It seems to
me, that we have only to reflect for a serious hour upon what we
mean by these, and then to compare them with our notion of what
belongs to a brute, its inherent powers and their correlative objects,
to feel that they are utterly incompatible—that in the possession of
these we enjoy a prerogative which we cannot disclaim without a
violation of reason, and a voluntary abasement of ourselves—and
that we must therefore be possessed of some peculiar powers—of
some source of ideas distinct from the understanding, differing in
kind from any and all of those which belong to us in common with
inferior and irrational animals.
But what these powers are, or what is the precise nature of the
distinction between the understanding and reason, it is not my
province, nor have I undertaken, to show. My object is merely to
illustrate its necessity, and the palpable obscurity, vagueness, and
deficiency, in this respect, of the mode of philosophizing, which is
held in so high honour among us. The distinction itself will be found
illustrated with some of its important bearings in the Work, and in
the notes attached to it; and cannot be too carefully studied—in
connection with that between nature and the will—by the student
who would acquire distinct and intelligible notions of what
constitutes the truly spiritual in our being, or find rational grounds
for the possibility of a truly spiritual religion. Indeed, could I succeed
in fixing the attention of the reader upon this distinction, in such a
way as to secure his candid and reflecting perusal of the Work, I
should consider any personal effort or sacrifice abundantly
recompensed. Nor am I alone in this view of its importance. A
literary friend, whose opinion on this subject would be valued by all
who knew the soundness of his scholarship, says in a letter just now
received,—"if you can once get the attention of thinking men fixed
on his distinction between the reason and the understanding, you
will have done enough to reward the labour of a life. As prominent a
place as it holds in the writings of Coleridge, he seems to me far
enough from making too much of it." No person of serious and
philosophical mind, I am confident, can reflect upon the subject,
enough to understand it in its various aspects, without arriving at
the same views of the importance of the distinction, whatever may
be his conviction with regard to its truth.
But, indeed, the only grounds which I find, to apprehend that the
reality of the distinction and the importance of the consequence
resulting from it, will be much longer denied and rejected among us,
is in the overweening assurance which prevails with regard to the
adequateness and perfection of the system of philosophy which is
already received. It is taken for granted, as a fact undisputed and
indisputable, that this is the most enlightened age of the world, not
only with regard to the more general diffusion of certain points of
practical knowledge; in which, probably, it may be so, but in all
respects; that our whole system of the philosophy of mind as
derived from Lord Bacon, especially, is the only one, which has any
claims to common sense; and that all distinctions not recognized in
that are consequently unworthy of our regard. What those
Reformers, to whose transcendant powers of mind, and to whose
characters as truly spiritual divines, we are accustomed to look with
feelings of so much general regard, might find to say in favour of
their philosophy, few take the pains to inquire. Neither they nor the
great philosophers with whom they held communion on subjects of
this sort can appear among us to speak in their own defence: and
even the huge folios and quartos, in which, though dead, they yet
speak—and ought to be heard—have seldom strayed to this side of
the Atlantic. All our information respecting their philosophical
opinions, and the grounds on which they defended them, has been
received from writers, who were confessedly advocating a system of
recent growth, at open war with every thing more ancient, and who,
in the great abundance of their self-complacency, have represented
their own discoveries as containing the sum and substance of all
philosophy, and the accumulated treasures of ancient wisdom as
unworthy the attention of "this enlightened age." Be it so—yet the
foolishness of antiquity, if it be of God, may prove wiser than men. It
may be found that the philosophy of the Reformers and their religion
are essentially connected, and must stand or fall together. It may at
length be discovered that a system of religion essentially spiritual,
and a system of philosophy which excludes the very idea of all
spiritual power and agency, in their only distinctive and proper
character, cannot be consistently associated together.
It is our peculiar misfortune in this country that, while the
philosophy of Locke and the Scottish writers has been received in full
faith, as the only rational system, and its leading principles especially
passed off as unquestionable, the strong attachment to religion, and
the fondness for speculation, by both of which we are strongly
characterized, have led us to combine and associate these principles,
such as they are, with our religious interests and opinions, so
variously and so intimately, that by most persons they are
considered as necessary parts of the same system; and from being
so long contemplated together, the rejection of one seems
impossible without doing violence to the other. Yet how much
evidence might not an impartial observer find in examining the
theological discussions which have prevailed, the speculative
systems which have been formed and arrayed against each other, for
the last seventy years, to convince him that there must be some
discordance in the elements, some principle of secret but
irreconcilable hostility between a philosophy and a religion, which,
under every ingenious variety of form and shaping, still stand aloof
from each other and refuse to cohere. For is it not a fact, that in
regard to every speculative system which has been formed on these
philosophical principles,—to every new shaping of theory which has
been devised and has gained adherents among us,—is it not a fact, I
ask, that, to all, except those adherents, the system—the
philosophical theory—has seemed dangerous in its tendency, and at
war with orthodox views of religion—perhaps even with the
attributes of God? Nay, to bring the matter still nearer and more
plainly to view, I ask, whether at this moment the organs and
particular friends of our leading theological seminaries in New
England, both devotedly attached to an orthodox and spiritual
system of religion, and expressing mutual confidence as to the
essentials of their mutual faith, do not each consider the other as
holding a philosophical theory subversive of orthodoxy? If I am not
misinformed, this is the simple fact.
Now, if these things be so, I would ask again with all earnestness,
and out of regard to the interests of truth alone, whether serious
and reflecting men may not be permitted, without the charge of
heresy in Religion, to stand in doubt of this Philosophy altogether;
whether these facts which will not be disputed, do not furnish just
grounds for suspicion, that the principles of our philosophy may be
erroneous, or at least induce us to look with candour and impartiality
at the claims of another and a different system?
What are the claims of the system, to which the attention of the
public is invited in this Work, can be understood fully, only by a
careful and reflecting examination of its principles in connection with
the conscious wants of our own inward being—the requirements of
our own reason and consciences. Its purpose and tendency, I have
endeavoured in some measure to exhibit; and if the influence of
authority, which the prevailing system furnishes against it, can and
must be counteracted by anything of a like kind—(and whatever
professions we may make, the influence of authority produces at
least a predisposing effect upon our minds)—the remarks which I
have made, will show, that the principles here taught are not wholly
unauthorized by men, whom we have been taught to reverence
among the great and good. I cannot but add, as a matter of simple
justice to the question, that however our prevailing system of
philosophizing may have appealed to the authority of Lord Bacon, it
needs but a candid examination of his writings, especially the first
part of his Novum Organum, to be convinced that such an appeal is
without grounds; and that in fact the fundamental principles of his
philosophy are the same with those taught in this work. The great
distinction especially, between the understanding and the reason, is
clearly and fully recognized; and as a philosopher he would be far
more properly associated with Plato, or even Aristotle, than with the
modern philosophers, who have miscalled their systems by his
name. In our own times, moreover, there is abundant evidence,
whatever may be thought of the principles of this Work here, that
the same general views of philosophy are regaining their ascendancy
elsewhere. In Great Britain there are not few, who begin to believe
that the deep-toned and sublime eloquence of Coleridge on these
great subjects may have something to claim their attention besides a
few peculiarities of language. In Paris, the doctrines of a rational and
spiritual system of philosophy are taught to listening and admiring
thousands by one of the most learned and eloquent philosophers of
the age; and in Germany, if I mistake not, the same general views
are adopted by the serious friends of religious truth among her great
and learned men.
Such—as I have no doubt—must be the case, wherever thinking
men can be brought distinctly and impartially to examine their
claims; and indeed to those who shall study and comprehend the
general history of philosophy, it must always be matter of special
wonder, that in a Christian community, anxiously striving to explain
and defend the doctrines of Christianity in their spiritual sense, there
should have been a long-continued and tenacious adherence to
philosophical principles, so subversive of their faith in everything
distinctively spiritual; while those of an opposite tendency, and
claiming a near relationship and correspondence with the truly
spiritual in the Christian system, and the mysteries of its sublime
faith, were looked upon with suspicion and jealousy, as unintelligible
or dangerous metaphysics.
And here I must be allowed to add a few remarks with regard to
the popular objections against the system of philosophy, the claims
of which I am urging, especially against the writings of the Author,
under whose name it appears in the present Work. These are
various and often contradictory, but usually have reference either to
his peculiarities of language, or to the depth—whether apparent or
real,—and the unintelligibleness, of his thoughts.
To the first of these it seems to me a sufficient answer, for a mind
that would deal honestly and frankly by itself, to suggest that in the
very nature of things it is impossible for a writer to express by a
single word any truth, or to mark any distinction, not recognized in
the language of his day, unless he adopts a word entirely new, or
gives to one already in use a new and more peculiar sense. Now in
communicating truths, which the writer deems of great and
fundamental importance, shall he thus appropriate a single word old
or new, or trust to the vagueness of perpetual circumlocution?
Admitting for example, the existence of the important distinction, for
which this writer contends, between the understanding and reason,
and that this distinction when recognized at all, is confounded in the
common use of language by employing the words indiscriminately,
shall he still use these words indiscriminately, and either invent a
new word, or mark the distinction by descriptive circumlocutions, or
shall he assign a more distinctive and precise meaning to the words
already used? It seems to me obviously more in accordance with the
laws and genius of language to take the course which he has
adopted. But in this case and in many others, where his language
seems peculiar, it cannot be denied that the words had already been
employed in the same sense, and the same distinctions recognized,
by the older and many of the most distinguished writers in the
language.
With regard to the more important objection, that the thoughts of
Coleridge are unintelligible, if it be intended to imply, that his
language is not in itself expressive of an intelligible meaning, or that
he affects the appearance of depth and mystery, while his thoughts
are common-place, it is an objection, which no one who has read his
Works attentively, and acquired a feeling of interest for them, will
treat their Author with so much disrespect as to answer at all. Every
such reader knows that he uses words uniformly with astonishing
precision, and that language becomes, in his use of it—in a degree,
of which few writers can give us a conception—a living power,
"consubstantial" with the power of thought, that gave birth to it, and
awakening and calling into action a corresponding energy in our own
minds. There is little encouragement, moreover, to answer the
objections of any man, who will permit himself to be incurably
prejudiced against an Author by a few peculiarities of language, or
an apparent difficulty of being understood, and without inquiring into
the cause of that difficulty, where at the same time he cannot but
see and acknowledge the presence of great intellectual and moral
power.
But if it be intended by the objection to say simply, that the
thoughts of the Author are often difficult to be apprehended—that
he makes large demands not only upon the attention, but upon the
reflecting and thinking powers, of his readers, the fact is not, and
need not be, denied; and it will only remain to be decided, whether
the instruction offered, as the reward, will repay us for the
expenditure of thought required, or can be obtained for less. I know
it is customary in this country, as well as in Great Britain—and that
too among men from whom different language might be expected—
to affect either contempt or modesty, in regard to all that is more
than common-place in philosophy, and especially "Coleridge's
Metaphysics," as "too deep for them." Now it may not be every
man's duty, or in every man's power, to devote to such studies the
time and thought necessary to understand the deep things of
philosophy. But for one who professes to be a scholar, and to cherish
a manly love of truth for the truth's sake, to object to a system of
metaphysics because it is "too deep for him," must be either a
disingenuous insinuation, that its depths are not worth exploring—
which is more than the objector knows—or a confession, that—with
all his professed love of truth and knowledge—he prefers to "sleep
after dinner." The misfortune is, that men have been cheated into a
belief, that all philosophy and metaphysics worth knowing are
contained in a few volumes, which can be understood with little
expense of thought; and that they may very well spare themselves
the vexation of trying to comprehend the depths of "Coleridge's
Metaphysics." According to the popular notions of the day, it is a
very easy matter to understand the philosophy of mind. A new work
on philosophy is as easy to read as the last new novel; and
superficial, would-be scholars, who have a very sensible horror at
the thought of studying Algebra, or the doctrine of fluxions, can yet
go through a course of moral sciences, and know all about the
philosophy of the mind.
Now why will not men of sense, and men who have any just
pretensions to scholarship, see that there must of necessity be gross
sophistry somewhere in any system of metaphysics, which pretends
to give us an adequate and scientific self-knowledge—to render
comprehensible to us the mysterious laws of our own inward being,
with less manly and persevering effort of thought on our part, than
is confessedly required to comprehend the simplest of those
sciences, all of which are but some of the phænomena from which
the laws in question are to be inferred?—Why will they not see and
acknowledge—what one would suppose a moment's reflection would
teach them—that to attain true self-knowledge by reflection upon
the objects of our inward consciousness—not merely to understand
the motives of our conduct as conscientious Christians, but to know
ourselves scientifically as philosophers—must, of necessity, be the
most deep and difficult of all our attainments in knowledge? I trust
that what I have already said will be sufficient to expose the
absurdity of objections against metaphysics in general, and do
something towards showing, that we are in actual and urgent need
of a system somewhat deeper than those, the contradictions of
which have not without reason made the name of philosophy a
terror to the friends of truth and of religion. "False metaphysics can
be effectually counteracted by true metaphysics alone; and if the
reasoning be clear, solid, and pertinent, the truth deduced can never
be the less valuable on account of the depth from which it may have
been drawn." It is a fact, too, of great importance to be kept in
mind, in relation to this subject, that in the study of ourselves—in
attaining a knowledge of our own being,—there are truths of vast
concernment, and lying at a great depth, which yet no man can
draw for another. However the depth may have been fathomed, and
the same truth brought up by others, for a light and a joy to their
own minds, it must still remain, and be sought for by us, each for
himself, at the bottom of the well.
The system of philosophy here taught does not profess to make
men philosophers, or—which ought to mean the same thing—to
guide them to the knowledge of themselves, without the labour both
of attention and of severe thinking. If it did so, it would have, like
the more popular works of philosophy, far less affinity than it now
has, with the mysteries of religion, and those profound truths
concerning our spiritual being and destiny, which are revealed in the
things hard to be understood of St. Paul and of the beloved disciple.
For I cannot but remind my readers again, that the Author does not
undertake to teach us the philosophy of the human mind, with the
exclusion of the truths and influences of religion. He would not
undertake to philosophize respecting the being and character of
man, and at the same time exclude from his view the very principle
which constitutes his proper humanity: he would not, in teaching the
doctrine of the solar system, omit to mention the sun, and the law of
gravitation. He professes to investigate and unfold the being of man
as man, in his higher, his peculiar, and distinguishing attributes.
These it is, which are hard to be understood, and to apprehend
which requires the exercise of deep reflection and exhausting
thought. Nor in aiming at this object would he consider it very
philosophical to reject the aid and instruction of eminent writers on
the subject of religion, or even of the volume of Revelation itself. He
would consider St. Augustine as none the less a philosopher,
because he became a Christian. The Apostles John and Paul were, in
the view of this system of philosophy, the most rational of all writers,
and the New Testament the most philosophical of all books. They
are so because they unfold more fully, than any other, the true and
essential principles of our being; because they give us a clearer and
deeper insight into those constituent laws of our humanity, which as
men, and therefore as philosophers, we are most concerned to
know. Not only to those, who seek the practical self-knowledge of
the humble, spiritually-minded Christian, but to those also, who are
impelled by the "heaven descended γνωθι σεαυτον" to study
themselves as philosophers, and to make self-knowledge a science,
the truths of Scripture are a light and a revelation. The more
earnestly we reflect upon these and refer them, whether as
Christians or as philosophers, to the movements of our inward being
—to the laws which reveal themselves in our own consciousness, the
more fully shall we understand, not only the language of Scripture,
but all that most demands and excites the curiosity of the genuine
philosopher in the mysterious character of man. It is by this guiding
light, that we can best search into and apprehend the constitution of
that "marvellous microcosm," which, the more it has been known,
has awakened more deeply the wonder and admiration of the true
philosopher in every age.
Nor would the Author of this Work, or those who have imbibed the
spirit of his system, join with the philosophers of the day in throwing
aside and treating with a contempt, as ignorant as it is arrogant, the
treasures of ancient wisdom. He, says the son of Sirach, that giveth
his mind to the law of the Most High, and is occupied in the
meditation thereof, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancient. In
the estimation of the true philosopher, the case should not be
greatly altered in the present day; and now that two thousand years
have added such rich and manifold abundance to those ancient
"sayings of the wise," he will still approach them with reverence, and
receive their instruction with gladness of heart. In seeking to explore
and unfold these deeper and more solemn mysteries of our being,
which inspire us with awe, while they baffle our comprehension, he
will especially beware of trusting to his own understanding, or of
contradicting, in compliance with the self-flattering inventions of a
single age, the universal faith and consciousness of the human race.
On such subjects, though he would call no man master, yet neither
would he willingly forego the aids to be derived, in the search after
truth, from those great oracles of human wisdom—those giants in
intellectual power who from generation to generation were admired
and venerated by the great and good. Much less could he think it
becoming, or consistent with his duty to hazard the publication of his
own thoughts on subjects of the deepest concernment, and on
which minds of greatest depth and power had been occupied in
former ages, while confessedly ignorant alike of their doctrines and
of the arguments by which they are sustained.
It is in this spirit, that the Author of the work here offered to the
public has prepared himself to deserve the candid and even
confiding attention of his readers, with reference to the great subject
of which he treats.
And although the claims of the Work upon our attention, as of
every other work, must depend more upon its inherent and essential
character, than upon the worth and authority of its Author, it may yet
be of service to the reader to know, that he is no hasty or
unfurnished adventurer in the department of authorship to which the
Work belongs. The discriminating reader of this Work cannot fail to
discover his profound knowledge of the philosophy of language, the
principles of its construction, and the laws of its interpretation. In
others of his works, perhaps more fully than in this, there is
evidence of an unrivalled mastery over all that pertains both to logic
and philology. It has been already intimated, that he is no
contemner of the great writers of antiquity and of their wise
sentences; and probably few English scholars, even in those days
when there were giants of learning in Great Britain, had minds more
richly furnished with the treasures of ancient lore. But especially will
the reader of this Work observe with admiration the profoundness of
his philosophical attainments, and his thorough and intimate
knowledge, not only of the works and systems of Plato and Aristotle,
and of the celebrated philosophers of modern times, but of those too
much neglected writings of the Greek and Roman Fathers, and of
the great leaders of the Reformation, which more particularly
qualified him for discussing the subjects of the present Work. If
these qualifications, and—with all these, and above all—a disposition
professed and made evident seriously to value them, chiefly as they
enable him more fully and clearly to apprehend and illustrate the
truths of the Christian system,—if these, I say, can give an Author a
claim to serious and thoughtful attention, then may the Work here
offered urge its claim upon the reader. My own regard for the cause
of truth, for the interests of philosophy, of reason, and of religion,
lead me to hope that they may not be urged in vain.
Of his general claims to our regard, whether from exalted personal
and moral worth, or from the magnificence of his intellectual
powers, and the vast extent and variety of his accumulated stores of
knowledge, I shall not venture to speak. If it be true indeed that a
really great mind can be worthily commended only by those who
adequately both appreciate and comprehend its greatness, there are
few who should undertake to estimate, and set forth in appropriate
terms, the intellectual power and moral worth of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Neither he, nor the public, would be benefited by such
commendations as I could bestow. The few among us who have
read his works with the attention which they deserve, are at no loss
what rank to assign him among the writers of the present age; to
those who have not, any language which I might use would appear
hyperbolical and extravagant. The character and influence of his
principles as a philosopher, a moralist, and a Christian, and of the
writings by which he is enforcing them, do not ultimately depend
upon the estimation in which they may now be held; and to posterity
he may safely entrust those "productive ideas" and "living words"—
those
—— truths that wake,
To perish never,
the possession of which will be for their benefit, and connected with
which, in the language of the Son of Sirach,—His own memorial shall
not depart away, and his name shall live from generation to
generation.
J. M.[13]

[7] President of the University of Vermont, United States, where

his Essay was first published with Dr. Marsh's edition of the 'Aids,'
1829. See Mr. H. N. Coleridge's Advertisement to the Fourth
Edition, ante, p. xii.—Ed.
[8] See pp. 172, 208, 223, &c.—Ed.
[9] Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria,' p. 301, Bohn's edition.—
Ed.
[10] Introductory Aphorisms, XVI., p. 8.—Ed.
[11] Also in Appendix B of the 'Statesman's Manual, Bohn's
edition p, 337.—Ed.
[12] The 'Quarterly Christian Spectator,' of New Haven, U.S.
The letter referred to is signed "Pacificus," and appeared in
answer to a review of "Taylor and Harvey" (American divines),
"On Human Depravity," which had appeared in the previous
number of the Q.C.S.—Ed.
[13] Dr. Marsh's signature to the "Advertisement" published
with the above essay in its revised American edition was dated
"Burlington, Dec. 26 1839."—Ed.
 AIDS TO REFLECTION.

INTRODUCTORY APHORISMS.

APHORISM I.

I
N philosophy equally as in poetry, it is the highest and most useful
prerogative of genius to produce the strongest impressions of
novelty, while it rescues admitted truths from the neglect caused
by the very circumstance of their universal admission. Extremes
meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too
often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth,
and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the
most despised and exploded errors.

APHORISM II.
There is one sure way of giving freshness and importance to the
most common-place maxims—that of reflecting on them in direct
reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future
being.

APHORISM III.
To restore a common-place truth to its first uncommon lustre, you
need only translate it into action. But to do this, you must have
reflected on its truth.
 APHORISM IV.
Leighton and Coleridge.

It is the advice of the wise man, 'Dwell at home,' or, with yourself;
and though there are very few that do this, yet it is surprising that
the greatest part of mankind cannot be prevailed upon, at least to
visit themselves sometimes; but, according to the saying of the wise
Solomon, The eyes of the fool are in the ends of the earth.
A reflecting mind, says an ancient writer, is the spring and source
of every good thing. ('Omnis boni principium intellectus
cogitabundus.') It is at once the disgrace and the misery of men,
that they live without fore-thought. Suppose yourself fronting a
mirror. Now what the objects behind you are to their images at the
same apparent distance before you, such is Reflection to Fore-
thought. As a man without Fore-thought scarcely deserves the name
of a man, so Fore-thought without Reflection is but a metaphorical
phrase for the instinct of a beast.

APHORISM V.
As a fruit-tree is more valuable than any one of its fruits singly, or
even than all its fruits of a single season, so the noblest object of
reflection is the mind itself, by which we reflect:
And as the blossoms, the green, and the ripe, fruit, of an orange-
tree are more beautiful to behold when on the tree and seen as one
with it, than the same growth detached and seen successively, after
their importation into another country and different clime; so is it
with the manifold objects of reflection, when they are considered
principally in reference to the reflective power, and as part and
parcel of the same. No object, of whatever value our passions may
represent it, but becomes foreign to us, as soon as it is altogether
unconnected with our intellectual, moral, and spiritual life. To be
ours, it must be referred to the mind either as motive, or
consequence, or symptom.

APHORISM VI.
Leighton.

He who teaches men the principles and precepts of spiritual

wisdom, before their minds are called off from foreign objects, and
turned inward upon themselves, might as well write his instructions,
as the Sibyl wrote her prophecies, on the loose leaves of trees, and
commit them to the mercy of the inconstant winds.

APHORISM VII.
In order to learn we must attend: in order to profit by what we
have learnt, we must think—i.e. reflect. He only thinks who reflects.
[14]

[14] The indisposition, nay, the angry aversion to think, even in

persons who are most willing to attend, and on the subjects to
which they are giving studious attention—as Political Economy,
Biblical Theology, Classical Antiquities, and the like,—is the
phenomenon that forces itself on my notice afresh, every time I
enter into the society of persons in the higher ranks. To assign a
feeling and a determination of will, as a satisfactory reason for
embracing or rejecting this or that opinion or belief, is of ordinary
occurrence, and sure to obtain the sympathy and the suffrages of
the company. And yet to me, this seems little less irrational than
to apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its genuineness
by the sense of smell.
 APHORISM VIII.
Leighton and Coleridge.

It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary skill and

address, to fix the attention of men on the world within them, to
induce them to study the processes and superintend the works
which they are themselves carrying on in their own minds; in short,
to awaken in them both the faculty of thought[15] and the inclination
to exercise it. For alas! the largest part of mankind are nowhere
greater strangers than at home.

[15] Distinction between Thought and Attention.—By thought is

here meant the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those
states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the
religious reader) of those inward experiences, to which, as to his
best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral or
religious truth refers us. In attention, we keep the mind passive:
in thought we rouse it into activity. In the former, we submit to an
impression—we keep the mind steady in order to receive the
stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we
ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We may learn
arithmetic, or the elements of geometry, by continued attention
alone; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and
constitutions of the human mind, and the grounds of religion and
true morality, in addition to the effort of attention requires the
energy of thought.

APHORISM IX.
Life is the one universal soul, which, by virtue of the enlivening
Breath, and the informing Word, all organized bodies have in
common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals possess,
and man as an animal. But, in addition to this, God transfused into
man a higher gift, and specially imbreathed:—even a living (that is,
self-subsisting) soul, a soul having its life in itself. "And man became
a living soul." He did not merely possess it, he became it. It was his
proper being, his truest self, the man in the man. None then, not
one of human kind, so poor and destitute, but there is provided for
him, even in his present state, a house not built with hands. Aye,
and spite of the philosophy (falsely so called) which mistakes the
causes, the conditions, and the occasions of our becoming conscious
of certain truths and realities for the truths and realities themselves
—a house gloriously furnished. Nothing is wanted but the eye, which
is the light of this house, the light which is the eye of this soul. This
seeing light, this enlightening eye, is Reflection.[16] It is more,
indeed, than is ordinarily meant by that word; but it is what a
Christian ought to mean by it, and to know too, whence it first came,
and still continues to come—of what light even this light is but a
reflection. This, too, is thought; and all thought is but unthinking that
does not flow out of this, or tend towards it.

[16] The "dianoia" of 1 John v. 20, inaccurately rendered

"understanding" in our translation. To exhibit the full force of the
Greek word, we must say, a power of discernment by Reason.

APHORISM X.
Self-superintendence! that anything should overlook itself! Is not
this a paradox, and hard to understand? It is, indeed, difficult, and
to the imbruted sensualist a direct contradiction: and yet most truly
does the poet exclaim,
—— Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!

APHORISM XI.
 An hour of solitude passed in sincere and earnest prayer, or the
conflict with, and conquest over, a single passion or "subtle bosom
sin," will teach us more of thought, will more effectually awaken the
faculty, and form the habit, of reflection, than a year's study in the
schools without them.

APHORISM XII.
In a world, the opinions of which are drawn from outside shows,
many things may be paradoxical, (that is, contrary to the common
notion) and nevertheless true: nay, because they are true. How
should it be otherwise, as long as the imagination of the Worldling is
wholly occupied by surfaces, while the Christian's thoughts are fixed
on the substance, that which is and abides, and which, because it is
the substance,[17] the outward senses cannot recognize. Tertullian
had good reason for his assertion, that the simplest Christian (if
indeed a Christian) knows more than the most accomplished
irreligious philosopher.

Comment.
Let it not, however, be forgotten, that the powers of the
understanding and the intellectual graces are precious gifts of God;
and that every Christian, according to the opportunities vouchsafed
to him, is bound to cultivate the one and to acquire the other.
Indeed, he is scarcely a Christian who wilfully neglects so to do.
What says the apostle? Add to your faith knowledge, and to
knowledge manly energy: for this is the proper rendering of αρετην,
and not virtue, at least in the present and ordinary acceptation of
the word.[18]

[17] Quod stat subtus, that which stands beneath, and (as it
were) supports, the appearance. In a language like ours, where
 so many words are derived from other languages, there are few
modes of instruction more useful or more amusing than that of
accustoming young people to seek for the etymology, or primary
meaning, of the words they use. There are cases, in which more
knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a
word, than by the history of a campaign.
[18] I am not ashamed to confess that I dislike the frequent
use of the word virtue, instead of righteousness, in the pulpit:
and that in prayer or preaching before a Christian community, it
sounds too much like Pagan philosophy. The passage in St.
Peter's epistle is the only scripture authority that can be
pretended for its use, and I think it right, therefore, to notice that
it rests either on an oversight of the translators, or on a change
in the meaning of the word since their time.

APHORISM XIII.
Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom
light, as well as immortality, was brought into the world), which did
not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart;—which did not
multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed
and simplified those of the desires and passions.[19]

Comment.
If acquiescence without insight; if warmth without light; if an
immunity from doubt, given and guaranteed by a resolute ignorance;
if the habit of taking for granted the words of a catechism,
remembered or forgotten; if a mere sensation of positiveness
substituted—I will not say, for the sense of certainty; but—for that
calm assurance, the very means and conditions of which it
supersedes; if a belief that seeks the darkness, and yet strikes no
root, immovable as the limpet from the rock, and like the limpet,
fixed there by mere force of adhesion; if these suffice to make men
Christians, in what sense could the apostle affirm that believers
receive, not indeed worldly wisdom, that comes to nought, but the
wisdom of God, that we might know and comprehend the things
that are freely given to us of God? On what grounds could he
denounce the sincerest fervour of spirit as defective, where it does
not likewise bring forth fruits in the understanding?

[19] The effects of a zealous ministry on the intellects and

acquirements of the labouring classes are not only attested by
Baxter, and the Presbyterian divines, but admitted by Bishop
Burnet, who, during his mission in the west of Scotland, was
"amazed to find a poor commonalty so able to argue," &c. But
we need not go to a sister church for proof or example. The
diffusion of light and knowledge through this kingdom, by the
exertions of the Bishops and clergy, by Episcopalians and
Puritans, from Edward VI. to the Restoration, was as wonderful
as it is praiseworthy, and may be justly placed among the most
remarkable facts of history.

APHORISM XIV.
In our present state, it is little less than impossible that the
affections should be kept constant to an object which gives no
employment to the understanding, and yet cannot be made manifest
to the senses. The exercise of the reasoning and reflecting powers,
increasing insight, and enlarging views, are requisite to keep alive
the substantial faith in the heart.

APHORISM XV.
In the state of perfection, perhaps, all other faculties may be
swallowed up in love, or superseded by immediate vision; but it is on
the wings of the cherubim, that is, (according to the interpretation of
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