Catacomb Culture as source of Greek, Albanian, Armenian

[norbert]

Balto-Slavic is a Corded Ware language. Satemization is only an areal feature, propagating out from the Indo-Iranian speech community, in which it has its fullest realization. If you want to put Greek, Armenian, and Albanian in Catacomb Culture, feel free to do so, but Balto-Slavic is a Corded Ware language, while Indo-Iranian may have Catacomb influences.

If satemization is an areal feature, why is Tocharian a centum language? Satem-like features have arisen in different areas, at different times. Changes to sibilant sounds like S occured independently as well. French cent is pronounced as sã. Now French is obviously a centum language but such shifts can give you an insight how they might have occured in the past, only on a much larger scale. The division of IE lanuages into centum and satem is no longer important as it used to be.

 

[torzio]

@norbert

The lack of linguistic relationship of Albanians with Illyrian names, the lack
of Proto-Albanian toponymy in Illyria, and the absence of indigenous sea-
faring terminology in the reconstructed language having borrowed corresponding
words from Roman or Greek language makes it most likely that Albanians were unrelated
to many of the ancient Illyrian tribes. Most likely is that they came from further north,
settlements of Proto-Albanians believed to be in Dacia Ripensis and
farther north of this, basically in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and the
Beskidy/Bieszczady area.

 

[norbert]

@norbert

The lack of linguistic relationship of Albanians with Illyrian names, the lack
of Proto-Albanian toponymy in Illyria, and the absence of indigenous sea-
faring terminology in the reconstructed language having borrowed corresponding
words from Roman or Greek language makes it most likely that Albanians were unrelated
to many of the ancient Illyrian tribes. Most likely is that they came from further north,
settlements of Proto-Albanians believed to be in Dacia Ripensis and
farther north of this, basically in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and the
Beskidy/Bieszczady area.

I wasn't getting into that but I agree. Almost all of the maritime and flora and fauna vocabulary is borrowed from Latin and Greek. A sea-faring people would certainly have enough of their own maritime vocabulary. Much, if not most, of their agricultural terminology is derived from Slavic. Proto-Albanian emerged in Moesia Superior, in close proximity to proto-Romanian. About 40% of Albanian words are Latin borrowings. Over the centuries, Albanian has been exposed to the more politically powerful and advanced cultures that surrounded it. Being a people of semi-nomadic herders, the Albanians were moving all over southern Balkans until they expanded to the Adriatic Sea. Maybe that's how they evaded full romanisation.

 

[epirus1000]

I wasn't getting into that but I agree. Almost all of the maritime and flora and fauna vocabulary is borrowed from Latin and Greek. A sea-faring people would certainly have enough of their own maritime vocabulary. Much, if not most, of their agricultural terminology is derived from Slavic. Proto-Albanian emerged in Moesia Superior, in close proximity to proto-Romanian. About 40% of Albanian words are Latin borrowings. Over the centuries, Albanian has been exposed to the more politically powerful and advanced cultures that surrounded it. Being a people of semi-nomadic herders, the Albanians were moving all over southern Balkans until they expanded to the Adriatic Sea. Maybe that's how they evaded full romanisation.

It's pretty easy to say things that you don't know. "Sea" in Albania is "deti" pretty obvious related to the Greek Mythology "tetis", with the standard conversion of 't' to 'd' observed in many cases in Albanian. The amount of 'flora and fauna' Albanian words is quite large and I don't know where did you get that. I don't know that cow, sheep, pig, goat in Albanian and many other flora and fauna words are related to any other language.
It's easy to jump into conclusions when you don't know the language. We use the language and we can distinguish

 

[Archetype0ne]

It's pretty easy to say things that you don't know. "Sea" in Albania is "deti" pretty obvious related to the Greek Mythology "tetis", with the standard conversion of 't' to 'd' observed in many cases in Albanian. The amount of 'flora and fauna' Albanian words is quite large and I don't know where did you get that. I don't know that cow, sheep, pig, goat in Albanian and many other flora and fauna words are related to any other language.
It's easy to jump into conclusions when you don't know the language. We use the language and we can distinguish

It is just that people keep parroting and regurgitating things they read on pinterest. Even the argument is flawed, we know for a fact that following the Illyrian wars Romans took control of the coastline, for the purpose of solving the pirate problem the wars were started over. In this context maritime vocabulary being replaced over 20 centuries by Latin terms is the bare expectation. Likewise North Illyrian tribes following the two Bato revolt were moved around the empire to prevent such future rebellions, with only a limited number surviving in the hinterland.

Ps: I tried really hard to find a thread regarding non IE roots in Albanian where dardhë root among a couple of others are the same to some Caucasian languages. The poster was linking such words to the CHG part of the CHGEHG mix that gave us IE. Searched my browsing history with no luck, it was either in genarchivist or twitter. If someone comes across it please share. Maybe Riverman or someone has also seen it.

 

[Archetype0ne]

Here is the public access paper I was referencing.

https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A3656153/view

 

[Archetype0ne]

4.6.5 Relative chronology In contrast with the loanwords discussed in the previous two chapters, the linguistic stage at which Proto-Armenian borrowedthese words is not clearly distinguishable from Proto-Indo European. In other words, the adoption of these words appear to have begun before any identifiable sound changes had taken place. Still, it is a necessary presumption that the dialects of Proto-Indo European had already diverged to such a degree that they constituted discrete speech communities, since otherwise, foreign words would not have been borrowed in different forms. Loanwords that must have been adopted after the emergence, in Proto-Armenian, of tenues aspiratae and the secondary *s₂ in Armenian and Greek, are naturally later, and suggest that the shared contact between one or more non-IE languages, by Armenian, Greek, and probably Albanian, took place over a relatively prolonged period of time (cf.Martirosyan 2013: 123).

Apart from the lexemes shared between Armenian and Greek alone, these languages also share lexemes of a wider distribution, in particular including Italic and Germanic – secondarily Celtic. Again, this draws the tentative picture of an linguistic contact zone centering upon Armenian and Greek. Remaining Core Indo European languages, in particular Italic, Celtic, and Germanic initially adopt words within this same contact zone, but presumably migrate out of it before Armenian and Greek become geographically removed from one another. This is particularly confirmed by the presence, noted above, of words with tenues aspiratae and the secondary sibilant *s₂, which are shared exclusively by Armenian, Greek, and Albanian, and must represent relatively late loanwords. The presumption of a fundamental border in the linguistic landscape, separating the South-East from the North-West is additionally supported by the distribution of forms with the cluster *‑VC‑against *‑VsC‑.

The third layer of loanwords evaluated in this work clearly represents the oldest. It testifies to a prolonged contact between Armenian and one or more unclassified, non-IE languages. This234 5. Evaluation and outlook contact event predated all or most Armenian sound changes. Crucially, most other Indo-European languages, with the exception of Anatolian and Tocharian, were to some degree in contact with the same stratum. These facts, taken together, suggest that this period of language contact must have begun relatively shortly after the dissolution of the Core Indo-European languages. Therefore, it most likely represents contact between speakers still residing near theIndo-European homeland, and speakers of those languages neighbouring them. It seems clear that Armenian, Greek, and Albanian remained in close contact with the same language(s) for the longest period of time. This is consistent with the data showing that these languages shared innovations on the basis of inherited material as well (Matzinger 2012, Lamberterie 2013, Olsen & Thorsø 2022).At the same time, there is also a considerable overlap between non-Indo-European vocabulary in Armenian and that found in Germanic, Italic and Celtic. Among these loanwords are terms for agricultural crops, like ‘barley’ and ‘some pulse’ (> Arm. ‘alfalfa’),indicating that Proto-Armenian existed within the core of Indo European languages whose speakers migrated Westward across the steppe and went through a gradual transition from a completely herding-based economy to a more sedentary culture with elements of agriculture, starting from around 3300 bce (cf. Kroonen et al.2022). Nevertheless, Armenian does not share as much foreign agricultural vocabulary with Germanic, Italic, and Celtic as these languages do with one another. Thus, there is reason to believe that its speakers did not take part in those population movements that later gave rise to the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures in Europe. Again, given that population movements around 2000 bce are a plausible vector for the movement of Proto-Armenian speakers into the Caucasus, it is tempting to preliminarily locate these Proto Armenian speakers somewhere in the Late Yamnaya and perhaps in the Catacomb culture, which emerges from Yamnaya starting around 2500 bce. Future studies combining linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence will hopefully be able to confirm or reject this hypothesis.

 

[Jovialis]

On the other hand, it is also quite viable that Corded Ware could be a source for "northern" ancestry, at least for for these Northern Greeks. But at least not necessarily linguistic influence, save for some dialectic augmentation (if there is any).

IMHO, the Mycenaeans possibly received steppe straight from a source like Yamnaya or Catacomb. But I think later Greeks, such as Dorians could have received more "Northern" ancestry from Central Europe (likely through mediation via neighbors in a more complex process overtime, rather than a direct climactic invasion from Central Europe)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1768655394904174652

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1773390091462816237