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Color terms show a remarkable variation in their possible lexicalization patterns across different languages. In the literature, the interest has been especially to describe the color lexicon of a certain language and to determine whether it may abide or not by Berlin and Kay’s universal evolutionary sequence, e.g., whether a certain color denomination may be considered as a basic color term, or whether a certain color category is lexicalized by more than one basic color term, by which criteria, etc. It has not been established, however, which are the most common lexical sources of basic color terms on a comparative basis, and which semantic changes are more common in this semantic field. On the basis of data drawn from 70 ancient and modern Indo-European languages, we aim at answering precisely these research questions concerning the origin and the development of basic color terms. We discuss the various lexical sources of the basic color terms for white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, gray, orange, pink, and purple, and we show the most important semantic changes leading to these color meanings. We also discuss to which extent these terms are likely to be inherited or borrowed. All this aims at being a contribution to the study of diachronic semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the emergence, evolution and variability of negative correlative coordination (ncc) constructions in Indo-European, such as Armenian očʻ A (ew) očʻ B and Hindi nə A nə B. A new definition of ncc is put forward that takes into account the construction’s semantic and pragmatic properties, and this clause linkage strategy is analyzed in a sample of 240 historical and present-day doculects. It is argued that ncc constructions emerged in the proto-language by analogy with positive correlative conjunctions like Latin A-que B-que. The relationship between positive and negative correlative conjunctions is argued to be due to the fact that both constitute a system of question and response. Furthermore, a cyclic change is identified by which ncc markers bleach through frequent use and are regularly reinforced and renovated. A number of paths of renewal are identified, which are used to explain the variation of ncc constructions observed across the Indo-European family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the Ossetic word for 'boar' against the backgrounds of modern Ossetic porcine terminology. The Common Iranian name of the beast has survived in Ossetic anthroponymy only. Due to taboos many descriptive names for 'boar' are in use, such as 'forest pig', etc. The standard term (Digorian) tusk'a 'boar' was discussed by V. Abaev on a number of occasions, and the doyen of Ossetic studies considered it among Ossetic-European isoglosses in view of Eng. tusk , etc. The paper adds Iron evidence never mentioned before in its discussion and reassesses several questions regarding its alleged borrowing from Gothic. It is shown that the currently accepted approach to the pre-history of the Ossetic word as a linguistic loan at least requires adjustments, and that the term may well be of indigenous origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dumézil (1898-1986), classified societies and myths based on three principles to explain ancient cultures and drew analogies about the belief systems and social structures of Indo-European societies. He also claimed that societies were organized around three main functional principles: noble class, farmers and artisans, and the warriors. According to Dumézil, the relationship between these three classes can be seen in mythological stories and rituals. Dumézil's Trinity theory attempts to define the Indo-European cultural tradition based on socio-political categories. Experts have argued in parallel that the theory tends to generalize and that not all societies conform to these three class structures. It should also be discussed whether the universal patterns proposed by the theory are applicable to every cultural area within the Indo-European domain. In this article, the function of myths in the analysis of social structure has been evaluated through the lens of certain followers of the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both areal and phylogenetic affiliation have been discussed as driving factors of the distribution of word order in the languages of the world. However, disentangling the interaction of these two factors is challenging. Here we take Indo-European as a test case. Word order in this family is largely homogeneous both within areas and within branches, which makes it difficult to assess which factor was more important in shaping the present-day distribution. To break out of this impasse we turn to corpus data and explicit statistical modeling. Building on a parallel corpus of movie subtitles, we investigate word order on the sentence level under stable pragmatic conditions. We measure the similarity of word order variation between pairs of languages with an information-theoretic distance metric. Using cluster analysis and variation partitioning methods these distance metrics show that phylogenetic distance predicts more variation than geographical distance, but the most important predictor is the shared fraction where phylogeny and area overlap. We conclude that word order has evolved along both dimensions and cannot be reduced to a single one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article investigates the use of philology and classical scholarship in the racial categorisation of modern Greeks by French scholars in Greece in the second half of the nineteenth century, in particular the members of the French School in Athens, founded in 1846. It argues that modern Greeks are 'racialised' by these scholars of antiquity in relation to their perceived proximity with their classical heritage. It thus demonstrates how classical scholarship and philology are used as tools to justify racial inferiority and theories of degeneration through systematic scientific attempts to categorise and create scientific hierarchies grounded in linguistic difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Türkler göçebe hayatın getirdiği hareketlilik sayesinde dünyanın pek çok bölgesi ve o bölgelerde yaşayan halklar ile sürekli bir temas halinde olmuşlardır. Bunun neticesi olarak çoğu kereler diğer dillerden pek çok kelime almışlar ve öte yandan temas kurdukları pek çok lisana da kendi kelimelerini ödünç vermişlerdir. Bununla birlikte, Türkçe’de kullanılan ve de daha ziyade yerleşik hayata dair bir uğraş sahası gibi gözüken arıcılık ile ilgili terimler vardır ki, bunların başında bal için verilmiş Türkçe adlandırma yahut adlandırmalar göze çarpmaktadır. Arıcılık daha ziyade yerleşik yaşama özgüdür ancak Türklerin ise ekseri itibariyle göçebe bir yaşam biçimini benimsemiş oldukları kabul edildiğinden ötürü arıcılık ile ilintili kelimeler Türkçe dışı unsurlar olarak göze çarpar ve böylesi bir peşinen kabul edilmiş önyargı temelinde Türkçe konuşan topluluklar arasında halihazırda kullanılmakta olan tüm bal ile ilgili terimler Türkçe’ye dışarıdan gelmiş yabancı ödünçlemeler olarak kabul edilir. Özellikle de bilim dünyası içerisinde halihazırda mevcut olan fikre göre Türkçe’ye bu sözcük Çince üzerinden girmiş Hint-Avrupa kökenli bir ödünçlemedir. Bu türden bir fikrin en büyük dayanaklarından biri hiç şüphe yoktur ki, Hint-Avrupa dilleri içerisinde bal için kullanılan ortak adlandırmanın yaygın oluşu ve de Türkçe’de -m harfi ile ilgili başlayan kelimelerin Türkçe’de hali hazırda mevcut olmayışıdır. Bir diğer önemli husus ise tarihsel olarak Türk lehçeleri içerisinde bal için kullanılan en eski adlandırmanın bilinmeyişidir. Bu sebepten ötürüdür ki, Türkler bu sözcüğü Hint-Avrupalılardan aldıkları iddia edilir. Bu çalışmada ilk kez de olsa bugüne değin tüm dilbilimcilerin gözünden kaçan ve de fark edilmemiş ve de Türkçe bal kelimesinin kökeniymiş gibi duran bir sözcük paylaşılacak ve bu sözcüğün Hint-Avrupalıların diline ait değil gerçekte Sakaların diline ait bir dilsel miras olduğu gösterilecektir.

The paper provides a critical review of a ten-chapter volume dealing with various aspects of the study of place names. Conceived as a concise but comprehensive reference source for students in toponomastics, the book has two distinct focuses, namely historical toponomastics (i.e. the study of place names within the framework of historical linguistics and contact language theory) and social toponomastics, but also covers the study of toponymy in the context of historical geography, language documentation, and cartography. Despite the fact that the book presents a good survey of some topics and contains relevant references to scholarly publications, which may be useful for students, it displays numerous issues in the chapters related to etymology, language change, and historical linguistics, which may give the readers a distorted idea of the research practices normally used in the corresponding sub-fields of toponomastics. In some cases, the analysis proposed in the book lacks arguments and further explanations, while in others, it is simply based on an a priori fallacy.

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In the article the name of the West Bohemian river Mže and its tributaries are analyzed in etymological perspective. In the first plan their Slavic etymologies are analyzed. In the second plan, possibilities of their pre-Slavic origin are verified. In the case of the hydronyms Mže and Úhlava their Germanic and Celtic etymologies are discussed, while the names of other tributaries are of Slavic origin. Finally the process of replacement of the hydronymic nomenclature during changes of dominant languages is generalized in the typological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to make a contribution to typological semantics presenting the patterns of semantic development attested in Ancient Greek. The etymology of 22 word families meaning ‘fear’ and occurring in Ancient Greek has been examined and classified, according to their original semantics, into 11 groups belonging to six semantic fields. The etymological analysis outlines six large groups in terms of semantic development based mainly on metonymy. The contextual analysis of the uses of the words denoting fear shows that in Ancient Greek, most lexemes do not just indicate the emotion of fear but also contain a semantic component linked to a physical symptom or reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines the principles and methods of constructing discourse that emerges through a unique combination of socio-cultural and linguistic factors in the context of a European metropolis. Participants involved are representatives of the first and second wave of Russian emigration: Gaito (Georgy Ivanovich) Gazdanov, a prominent writer of the Russian diaspora, and Fatima Salkazanova, an aspiring journalist who crossed paths with Gazdanov in the 1960s in Paris while working in the Russian service of Radio Liberty[60]. Salkazanova's oral memoirs provide valuable insights, revealing that Gazdanov remained completely silent in her presence for a period of six months until he unexpectedly spoke to her, advising her to purchase a new watch. The primary focus of this study is to elucidate the strategy employed in constructing this ‘wordless’ discourse, as well as to explore the conditions that facilitate its occurrence, underlying mechanisms, and its historical background. The analysis encompasses linguistic, historical, cultural aspects, and aims to determine its linguistic classification and overall significance. The discourse itself is interpreted as a revival of the archaic ritual of silence practiced in Ossetian patriarchal families, serving as a form of speech etiquette. This relic language practice, rooted in Indo-European archaic traditions, represents a manifes­ta­tion of the rite of passage and allows individuals of Ossetian origin, who may have lost their na­tive language due to external circumstances, to demonstrate their cultural identity. It is suggested that the occurrence of such speech behaviour is strongly influenced by the specific time and place, where forced emigration to Europe not only contributes to the preservation of archaic speech etiquette patterns but also involuntarily activates them.

This paper has two chief goals: (i) to collate the disparate synchronic evidence for the distribution of 'daughter' and 'son' from the dialect maps available for the modern Celtic languages, namely: the Gaelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx) and Brittonic (Welsh, Cornish and Breton), (ii) to revisit and analyse the distribution of the terms 'son' and 'daughter' at an early stage of Continental Celtic from two millennia ago in Gaulish and Celt-Iberian with particular reference to the Indo-European lexemes *dʱug̑ʱh2ter 'daughter' and *suhxnú- 'son'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper investigates the verbal morphology of Latin in terms of the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). In addition to providing a synchronic analysis of the verbal system of Latin, this paper discusses the development of the thematic vowel system and of athematic perfect forms in this language from their reconstructed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) antecedents and demonstrates the role of morpho-syntactic structure in constraining the historic analyses, and specifically the role that morpho-syntactic locality played in this historical development. It will be shown that despite radical changes in the exponence, the morpho-syntax and the semantics, of the verbal forms, the (local) structural relation between roots as the repositories of idiosyncratic morphological information and aspectual morphemes displaying special (irregular) exponents was consistently preserved across the millennia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among several Indo-European poetic and literary inheritances from which Aristophanes draws in his play The Frogs, a crucial one seems to have been overlooked thus far, which ties together seemingly disparate beats and motifs in the play.  This is the metaphor analogizing poets to carpenters, their craft (poems) to ships, and recitation/composition as sailing, which besides its appearance in other branches of the Indo-European languages, is attested in other places in the Greek corpus too, especially in the works of Pindar.  Tying this inherited poetic trope in with the metaphorical “ship of state” (attested in the lyric poets, tragedians, Plato, etc.) and the on-the-ground importance of Athens’s naval culture and service to its polity makes the trope into more than just a technique for poetic embellishment, but rather, a crucial element in interpreting the literary and political significance of these aforementioned seemingly disparate sections of the play, the motivations of characters, and the play’s overall message, in what is one of Arisophanes’s plays which most pointedly comments on the process and importance of producing poetry.  By analogizing shipbuilding and sailing to poesy and by unifying the act of rowing in ships to citizenship, Aristophanes intertwines the proper construction and appreciation of poetry with the health of the Athenian polity and participation in it.

In his exposition to the story of Kroisos in the first book of his Histories, Hērodotos narrates the rise of the Mermnad dynasty of Lydia through an act of assassination and usurpation by their founder, Gygēs. Commentators on Hērodotos’s text have seemingly neglected the resonances between the tale of Gygēs and the ancient Eurasian religious ideology of the sacred marriage, which conceptualized sovereign power as a goddess wedded to a male sovereign. This paper seeks to place the Gygēs narrative within the context of Indo-European traditions of the sacred marriage, suggesting that its origins lie in historicized myth.

Ismail Kadare is one of the greatest contemporary writers. In this paper, we have found the borrowings that the author Ismail Kadare uses in some of his poems that we have taken for study. The phenomenon of borrowing is well accepted by everyone and is often seen as a necessity in communication, but only to the extent that it is used logically. and for the benefit of communication and the enrichment of the language, without abusing this freedom that each speaker has and damaging the language by introducing foreign words here and there. The borrowings we found are: asfalt, xhami, sahat, vërtit, stol, barakë, kadife, pazar, hamall, kolltuk, xham, josh, abazhur, qilim, dremit, vatan, kob, batak, oxhak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proto-Indo-European verbal morphology is generally described as consisting of at least a “thematic” and an “athematic” conjugation, which differ in whether or not a fixed vocalic piece adjacent to the root (traditionally known as “thematic vowel”) is present. This paper investigates the behavior of the outcomes of the thematic vowels in three ancient Indo-European languages: Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin. We show that, on the one hand, Latin thematic vowels are typically “ornamental”, in that they lack any morpho-syntactico-semantic information, and are used exclusively for classification purposes; on the other hand, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek thematic vowels are fully functional, in that they expone (at least) aspectual information. We argue for a diachronic account of such differential treatment of thematicity across the three languages, whereby the original functionality of such pieces, albeit fully preserved in Sanskrit, was gradually lost over time, and finally gave rise to the Latin verbal ornamental system.

The most widespread etymology of bagaudae, the name of rebel groups in late Roman Gaul, connects it to Old Irish bág ‘fight’ and to the IE root *bhē/ōgh- (IEW 115). There are, however, phonetic problems. The historical sources and the current historiographic research do not support an original meaning such as ‘fighters’. A morphological and semantic analysis (doubts about a suffix *-aud-, the connotations associated with the term bagaudae, its use in anthroponymy etc.) points to an old dithematic compound meaning ‘collector of goods (to be allotted)’ (cf. IEW 107 *bhag-; 75 *au(dh)-).

The nominative, the accusative and the dative have been recently argued to stand in proper containment to one another. In contrast to more traditional decompositions which posited no such containment, this new decomposition has been shown to account for the absence of ABA exponence patterns for this triplet of cases, i.e. for the fact that no rule of exponence applies in both nominative and dative without also applying in the accusative. We point out that, in addition to its desirable predictions regarding *ABA, the more recent decomposition also makes an undesirable prediction about the derivation of ABB patterns, as we show based on data from Indo-European languages. We argue that a third theory—under which the accusative is properly contained within the dative, but the nominative and the accusative do not stand in a containment relation to one another—accounts for all the relevant facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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IntroductionThe directionality of semantic change is problematic in traditional comparative models of language reconstruction. Compared to, e.g., phonological and morphological change, the directions of meaning change over time are potentially endless and difficult to reconstruct. The current paper attempts to reconstruct the mechanisms of lexical meaning change by a quantitative model. We use a data set of 104 core concepts in 160 Eurasian languages from several families, which are coded for colexification as well as cognacy, including semantic change of lexemes in etymologies. In addition, the various meanings are coded for semantic relation to the core concept, including relations such as metaphor, metonymy, generalization, specialization, holonymy, and meronymy. Further, concepts are coded into classes and semantic properties, including factors such as animacy, count/mass, concrete/abstract, or cultural connotations, such as taboo/non-taboo.MethodologyWe use a phylogenetic comparative model to reconstruct the probability of presence at hidden nodes of different colexifying meanings inside etymological trees. We find that these reconstructions come close to meaning reconstructions based on the comparative method. By means of the phylogenetic reconstructions, we measure the evolutionary dynamics of meaning loss of co-lexifying meanings as well as concepts.Results and discussionThese change rates are highly varying, from almost complete stability to complete unstability. Change rates vary between different semantic classes, where for instance wild animals have low change rates and domestic animals and implements have high change rates. We find a negative correlation between taboo animals and change rate, i.e., taboo animals have lower change rates than non-taboo words. Further, we find a negative correlation between animacy and change rate, indicating that animate nouns have lower change rate than inanimate nouns. A further result is a negative correlation between change rate and degree of borrowing (borrowability) of concepts, indicating that lexemes that are more likely to be borrowed are less likely to change semantically. Among semantic relations, we find that metonomy is more frequent than any other change, including metaphor, and that a change from general to more specific is in all cases more frequent than the other way round.

This study investigates two traditional Proto-Slavic etyma. (1.a) PS *netopyŕĭ, *netŭpyŕĭ ‘bat’. The former has widespread descendants in East and West Slavic and Western South Slavic; the latter, attested in Middle Russian, has no known modern reflexes. (1.b) PS *netopyŕĭ, *netŭpyŕĭ ‘moth > butterfly’. The former is attested as Pb. netüpar ‘butterfly’; the latter as SC lȅptīr, lȅpīr, Mn lȅper ‘butterfly’. Comparison with PS *noťĭlegŭ ‘night lodging’ points to a PPS *[nekt-i+pūr]-ja- ‘[night-time fire] one’, a juxtaposition of PPS *nekt-i (cf. OR nočĭ adv. ‘at night’) and *pūr ‘fire’. Moths and bats naurally occur around an out-door fire at night. (2) PS *ǫpyŕĭ ‘revenant, monster’ is resolved as PPS *[un-pūr]-ja- ‘one without fire’. The socio-cultural context for the word’s creation is the ancient Slavic cremation culture, in which the untimely dead were thought to be tools of evil forces. The remarkable archaisms in these words are commented on in the Conclusion.

An integrated approach to etymology and comparative mythology is applied to five figures of Ancient Greek myth of mostly monstrous character, all linked with the concept WATER, and often related to each other. Python and Oceanus (and other Ancient Greek serpentine characters) are identified as reflexes of the Indo-European theme of the "Serpent of the Watery Depths", with parallels in the Indic (Áhi- Budhnyá- "Serpent of the Deep", Vr̥tra, Śeṣa) and Norse (the Midgard Serpent) traditions, among others. The Hydra and Scylla may instead be analyzed as reflexes of a further Indo-European theme, that of the dangerous "Water Canid", with parallels in the Irish (Onchú and Dobarchú) and the Norse (the wolf Fenrir or Fenrisulfr) traditions. A further "Eschatological Water Monster" theme links together the latter Wolf, the Greek monster Typhon and the Indic fire-monster called Vāḍava- '(being) of the mare, of the she-horse' and Aurva- '(being) of the ocean-basin'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volgo-Kama Neolithic resulted from an expansion of the Elshan culture to Lower Kama c. 5700 BCE. Corresponding “Indo-Uralic” linguistic parallels attest to an expansion of pre-Proto-Indo-European speakers to the area of pre-Proto-Uralic speakers. This supports the evidence of linguistic palaeontology (Proto-Uralic words for ‘cembra pine’ and for ‘bee’ and ‘honey’) for the Kama River Valley as the Uralic homeland. Proto-Uralic had loanwords from pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian, whose speakers can now be traced to the Abashevo culture of 2200–2000 BCE: the Abashevo expansion from Lower Kama to the Ural-Tobol interfluve created the Sintashta culture (2000–1900 BCE), which has the earliest archaeological evidence for horse-drawn chariots, matching Proto-Indo-Iranian chariot vocabulary. Between 2200 and 1900 BCE, the Sejma-Turbino network (ST) of warrior-smith-traders distributed high-quality weapons along the border of taiga and steppe between the Upper Ob and Finland. This long but narrow corridor matches the distribution of the intermediate proto-languages of the Uralic family. It is argued that the ST came into being when Abashevo smiths moved from Balanbash on Lower Kama to Turbino on Mid-Kama and there created the ST metal axe-celt to replace the local stone-celt. The metal axe and Abashevo-like lance-heads and other weapons were then traded west and east, to hunter-fisher-cultures of Europe and Siberia (where weapons of tin-bronze were produced), establishing Proto-Uralic as the language of the areas of ST rule.

Introduction. This article is an attempt to extract information about the interactions of dialects of the Indo-European dialect continuum with each other using a comparative analysis of the basic vocabularies of some Indo-European (IE) descendant languages.The search for external borrowings and influence of a common substrate would help to clarify the ethno-linguistic surrounding of the area where the IE proto-dialects developed.In turn, these data are actual being pro and contra arguments of the well-known hypotheses about the IE ancestral home.Methodology and sources. The number of mutually understandable basic lexemes taken in relation to the number of lexemes in the compared lists was chosen as a measure of the interaction of IE dialects, indicators of their commonality.207-word Swadesh lists of 12 languages in their possibly more ancient states were analysed.For geographical binding of the IE language areal we have selected cross-borrowings from/to neighboring / substrate non-IE languages, the ancient settlement areas of native speakers of which are considered well-known.Results and discussion. The results of the comparison of the basic vocabularies of 12 IE languages have been interpreted in the form of a graph demonstrating the relative location of areas of the corresponding IE dialects. Lexemes meaning 'predator (bear, lion, etc.)', 'cattle (bull, ox)' determined the ethno-linguistic surrounding of the IE areal.Conclusion. The relevant linguistic data permitted to identify in the IE dialect continuum the core of proto-dialects: Baltic, Slavic, Aryan and Italic – and partially superimposed dialect subcontinua:– Balto-Greco-Aryo-Tocharo-Anatolian subcontinuum in the northern part of the IE areal;– Tocharo-Celto-Germanic subcontinuum in the eastern part;– Germano-Celto-Italo-Greco-Armeno-Baltic subcontinuum in the southern part;– Balto-Slavo-Italo-Aryan subcontinuum in the western part.The representation of the Proto-IE areal as a dialect continuum solves a number of difficulties inherent in the most common model of a single IE proto-language.

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Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The dative subject construction of the historical languages is the continuation of the Proto-Indo-European thematic present. It was largely replaced by the construction with a nominative subject that continued the athematic present as well as the aorist, where the ergative was reinterpreted as a nominative.

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During the nineteenth century, early Egyptologists were still in the first stages of understanding Egyptian grammar, while at the same time comparative philologists were attempting to reconstruct the historical origins of languages and peoples. These two disciplines intersected and produced various models that situated the Egyptian language into broader world histories. This article explores how early Egyptological scholars during the mid-nineteenth century like Christian Bunsen, Richard Lepsius, and Leo Reinisch, as well as a constellation of figures from comparative philology, drew boundaries around the Egyptian language and speculated about its origins. Their work belonged to a broader intellectual culture where historical language – the nuts and bolts of grammar – became scientific data that revealed biblical truth for some, underpinned the divergent intellectual foundations of civilization for others, and for yet more determined the fate of a people in a manner that prefigured and eventually joined with biological racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings to the attention of historians the recent discoveries by palaeogeneticists of a pandemic of plague in Europe during the fourth and third millennia BCE that contributed to the decline of the once-thriving Neolithic farming population of Anatolian origin and opened the way to the migration of nomadic herders equipped with bronze weapons who came from the steppes of southern Russia. As the geneticists' sequencing of ancient DNA has revealed, the ancestry of central, northern and western Europeans changed from predominantly Anatolian to largely (or, in some areas, predominantly) the steppe nomads. Besides the change in ancestry, the genetic sequencing of Bronze Age European populations also provides evidence that the arrival of the Yamnaya changed their social structures and gender relations and contributed to the spread of the Indo-European languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the boom in Indo-European (IE) studies among linguists from the early 20th century, toponymic studies on European place names have been largely based on the Proto-Indo-European (PIE). However, historical and archaeological records of non-IE groups, such as the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, have presented the possibility of pre-IE/non-IE (Paleo-Sardinian) linguistic stratum influences on certain toponyms in Sardinia, Italy. This article aims to present a meta-study on existing toponymic reconstructions theorized by scholars, while offering a fresh perspective by employing methods of historical phonetic chains and sequences analysis to identify toponyms of interest. Analysis showed that certain Sardinian toponyms contain striking phonetic sequences that are uncharacteristic of PIE, such as *s(a)rd-, *kar-, *-ini, *-ài/*-éi, *#[θ]-. Overall conclusions appear to display the merits of (1) PIE and (2) pre-IE/ non-IE theories. Both provide plausible toponymic reconstructions. (1) The accuracy of IE theories is brought into question, as they appear to rely heavily on phonetic links to existing PIE roots, sometimes with a lack of consideration for other contextual or hydro-geo-morphological factors. (2) Conversely, pre-IE/non-IE theories are found to be highly speculative due to the lack of historical data, and knowledge, about the Paleo-Sardinian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using etymological methods, the present study has identified two Sinitic and Germanic shared (Sino-Germanic) etymologies (etyma):【南, 陰】. These two etyma form a rhyme correspondence. This regular sound change validates the etymological connection in question. The etymon 【南】 for 'southern sky' has been identified in Sinitic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, Albanian, Hellenic, Anatolian, Armenian, Indo-Iranian, some Tibeto-Burman, some Uralic and Hungarian. The etymon 【陰】 for 'dark' has been identified in Sinitic, Germanic and Gyalrong. In words of Western linguistics, the Proto-Indo-European root *nebh- 'moist, water from it damp, mist, fog, cloud' is newly identified in Sinitic, some Tibeto-Burman, some Uralic and Hungarian; the Proto-Germanic root *ēbanþ-/ēbunþ- 'evening' is identified in Sinitic and Gyalrong.