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Home , Alfredo Trombetti, John Bengtson, Joseph Greenberg

Journal of the Association for the Study of in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The of Africa (1963)

Global Etymologies and

Shamil Nafiqoff Russian Academy of Sciences

A b s t r a c t The article offered presents a brief outline of the contribution the famous Italian macro- comparativist Alfredo Trombetti has made in the field of the so-called Global etyma, being among the first who studied and practiced this approach at the turn of the XIX-XXth centuries. A number of comparanda are demonstrated to be research subjects of the subsequent long-range linguistic scholars with particular instances presented.

Foreword. It is common knowledge that the great Italian comparativist A. Trombetti is often referred to as ‘father’ of long-range research, and of the so-called ‘global etymologies’ in particular. He was a predecessor or precursor of such noted long-range linguists as Vladislav Illich-Svitych, Morris Swadesh, , , , , , , to name but a few. Many of the above mentioned scholars have cited Trombetti in their sources or references. This is the case with Illich-Svitych 1971, Swadesh 1960, Bengtson and Ruhlen 1994 and in other works. A. Dolgopolsky for one had employed the technique of certain lexical and/or grammatical types as Trombetti had used starting with his earliest published works. The purpose of the present rather sketchy review is to acquaint readers of the Mother Tongue commemorative issue with global etymologies present in such publications as [Trombetti 1902, 1903; 1905, 1920, 1923, 1925] that have become rarities, despite such modern digitized versions as [Trombetti 1905] by the Google company.1 In his famous long-range studies, mostly in his native Italian, our scholar was wont to use such terms as voci universale, tipi diffusi/diffusissimi but not anything containing the term ‘global’. As regards taxonomy Trombetti operated with notions of ‘languages of the Old World vs the New World, further with the realm of the Boreal (Northern part of the Globe) languages (Italian ramo boreale) and Southern (part of the Earth)’ tongues (ramo australe in Italian). Throughout the works by Trombetti one also comes across the nine fold partitioning of all the world’s languages. Examples thereof follow: IV Indo-European languages, V Ural-Altaic tongues, VI Dravidian and Australian languages, VIII Munda-Polynesian tongues, IX languages of the Americas. This taxonomy of his demands a more detailed explanation and review, but for the purposes of the present article I mostly stick to the taxa — albeit hypothetical — current in the long-range research

 Russian Academy of Sciences, Senior Research Fellow (Oufa local branch, Bashkortostan). [email protected] 1 Free e-book: http://books.google.com/books/about/L_unit%C3%A0_d_origine_del_linguaggio.html?id=pBRZAAAAM AAJ

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MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The (1963) of our day, viz. Nostratic, Nilo-Saharan, (Congo-Saharan in some instances) Austric or Amerind super-stocks or macrophyla. The global etymologies researched by Alfredo Trombetti are truly voluminous. This being so, I have selected but a small sample, chiefly following the Swadesh standard 100 word list, with some asides occasionally made from his original 216 word list. This article consists of the factual data section, some parts à la discussion genre, followed by conclusions and the sources and references section. Now we commence with the l e x i c o n fragment.

Global type NEG ‘see/eye’ [Trombetti 1920:325]

This particular lexical type was first mentioned in [Trombetti 1903:165, № 639], the earliest of the macro-comparative studies that I am cognizant of. The scholar calls this item tipo diffusissimo and in the sense of ‘see’ (v.) referring to nak, nag and the like as one of the more diffused types in [Trombetti 1905:193]. Note: henceforth the rendering from Italian is by the present author. The Global etymology is to be inferred from: I. Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian: Georgian and Laz na, Athapascan naga, naal and similar glosses, Coptic nau; Berber enh – Tamil nōkka – Uralic näge; Nivkh nju ‘see’, nax ‘eye’. [Note: in Trombetti’s taxonomy Nivkh, with the other ‘Paleo-Siberian’ languages, forms a part of the ‘American Indian tongues’ macrophylum – this author]. Bodo nai ‘watch, observe’, nu ‘eye’, Chinese m-in ‘face’. II. Austric: Ainu nak-aru, cf. Melanesian nago ‘viso’… III. Australian [chiefly Paman-Nyungan, this writer’s note] nakk; nak. IV. Amerind: Algonkian ene-, new ‘see’, Carib enu, Costano inu ‘eye’, Wappo nao ‘see’, Yurok neγwo ‘see’; … From here on the samples I have picked are far smaller than Trombetti’s comparanda.

Type TI(G) ‘see/eye’ [Trombetti 1920: 267-269]

I. Nostratic: Svan the, Georgian dial. tho-l ‘see’; Latin tue ‘guard’ v. Ia. Sino-Caucasian: Kuki mi-t ‘eye’. II. Austric: Dayak, Bugi, i-ta, mi-ta, Tagalog, Bisaya ki-ta; Khmer pre-ta ‘see’; Thai ta ‘see’. IV. Amerind: Chinook tai, Seri i-to ‘eye’; Aztecan itta < ite-wa ‘see’. V. Indo-Pacific: Andamanese: Bea i-tā, Bale i-toa ‘see’, Juwoi re-tau ‘faccia’; Papuan: Gaima tao ‘eye’ v. VI. Nilo-Saharan: i-to ‘see’, etc.

Global type GI, GU ‘eye’ [Trombetti 1920:163-166]

[Left out by this author for MT readers to see for themselves.]

 The Roman IV here stands for Trombetti’s number IX, by and large the Roman numbers for the taxa are specific to this writer. 2

MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s (1963)

Global type LAP, LA(M)B ‘lick’ [Trombetti 1920: 288, 289].

The lineage of this word may be glossed from the following extracts of the work being cited: I. Nostratic: Dinka2 låp, perfective lap ‘lick’, Somali lēf ‘lick’; Indo-European: laph- : Armenian laph-em ‘lecco’, Albanian l’ap ‘lick water’, Russian dial, lopa-tj ‘fressen’; Indo- European [again]: lab-: Old German laff-an ‘lick’, Saxon lap-in-an ‘drink’ v., Old Icelandic lep-i- a ‘like a dog’, Old Slavic lobūzū ‘kiss’ n., Latin lambo ‘lick’. III. Austric: Dayak djelap, Bisaya dilap, Bugi lēpa ‘lick’. VI. Congo-Saharan [after E. Gregersen]: Bantu lamba ‘lick’, ‘lambire’ : Swahili, Pokomo lamba, Sukuma ramba, Sotho lapa ‘lick’ … Zulu lamba signifies ‘be hungry’ , Duala laba means ‘bite’ v.

Global lexical type LE, LEME, LEBE ‘tongue’ [ex Trombetti 1920: 289]

By its appearance this type is similar to the one above, with occasional identity in semantics quod vide infra. I. Nostratic, the Afroasiatic branch: Saho an-rab, Afar ar-rabā, Somali ar-rab, Galla [Oromo] al-lābo; Nandi nge-liep, Bari ngé-dep, Dinka liéb, liép; Ia Sino-Caucasian [branch of the hypothetical Borean ‘super-macro-family’]: Udo [Udi] lam- ‘lick’, etc. VI. Congo-Saharan: Kanuri lam, dial. ta-lam, te-lam, Maba de-lmi-k, ta-lme-k; cf. Fur dā-li, Wolof lamei, Mose zi-lam-de; Bantu: -leme ‘tongue’: Sotho le-leme, and so forth. The root is also fairly discernable in the samples adduced by A. Trombetti earlier [Trombetti: 1903: 163]: Sino-Caucasian: Thuš [Batsbi] lew-ar ‘speak’; Nostratic: Finnish lan-sa, Manchu leo – ‘idem’; Austric: Vietnamese loi, kai-loi ‘discourse’; Thai lāu; Karen lau ‘speak’. In Trombetti’s words “la medesima radice anche nell’ Oceania” (loc. cit.).

The concept of ‘tongue’ as a somatic term may be expressed by a number of roots, as is well known. This is exemplified in many long-range studies by A. Trombetti, say in his most famous monograph which saw print in 1905 [Trombetti 1905, passim]: I. Nostratic, Altaic branch: Turkish dil ‘tongue’. II. Austric: Austronesian family: dila ‘tongue’, Iloco dil-dil ‘lick’. III. Australian: Walookera ū-tala ‘tongue’, etc. IV. Amerind: Wintu talal; Chon tāre, k-tal, del (dial.) ‘tongue’. V. Indo-Pacific: Bale aka-atal, some other – tal. VII. languages: Bushman [//Au//en] tari ‘tongue’. Sino-Caucasian : Garo telai, etc.

By the end of the twentieth century the reader comes across similar comparisons in works of several macro-comparativist scholars. Here is a sample published in [Blažek 1979: 34, 40]: Proto-form *tal: ~ dali ‘tongue’ Sino-Caucasian macrofamily: Sino-Tibetan *dlag ‘tongue’. Austric: Austronesian *dilah ‘tongue’.

2 For Trombetti Dinka and other Nilotic languages were included (as “Hamitic”) with Afroasiatic [Ed.]. 3

MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The Languages of Africa (1963)

The Congo-Saharan superstock’s Nilo-Saharan branch *dali/mi/ ‘tongue’; Kordofanian: Tumtum djāro ‘idem’ , etc. The comparanda presented reflect a substantial refinement over Trombetti’s parallels with the selfsame root, namely scholars of our day insist on comparing proto-forms wherever available, though certain attempts in this directions had been made by A. Trombetti himself, quod videt supra. Worthy of note are frequent cases of direct continuity one observes in works of Trombetti and some later long-rangers: compare global roots KAP-, KOP- ‘capere’, KAP-, KAB- ‘afferare col denti’ [Trombetti 1920: 125, 127] with Eurasiatic *kap ‘seize’ [Greenberg 2002: 142, № 331]. In the well-known work [Bengtson & Ruhlen 1994] we come across the global etymology of KUNA ‘woman’. This widespread ancient root had been first explored by A. Trombetti. In his early research [Trombetti 1903: 155] he wrote about the universal spread of the type γυνή containing the word in question. In the famous book that produced a veritable sensation [Trombetti 1905: 179-100] the scholar present the following: according to his opinion the Ancient Greek word for ‘woman’ and the like present a composite name KU (kui, kua: see ‘man’) and NA (nai). In Mongolian [sive Altaic branch of Nostratic] kű maű ‘man’ is opposed to kű-nej, kű-ni ‘woman’. Indo-European: Sanskrit gnā ‘wife of a god’, cf. English queen. Afroasiatic: Dembea kwinā ‘woman’, Chamir dzenā ‘mother’. Trombetti continued with more examples:“Il medesimo tipo è rappresentate anche nell’ Oceania”: Nancoury kān, kāne ‘woman’; Ulava keni ‘idem’. [Indo-Pacific]: Andaman chana ‘woman’, Bea chāna–da ‘mother’. Australia: NW coast gīnaia, Queensland in female names in-gun, as in Urgilla-gun. Tasmania quanna ‘woman’ [citation over].

Below is a sampling taken from the previously mentioned “Global Etymologies’ [loc. “cit.]: Proto-Afro-Asiatic *k(w)n ‘wife, woman’: Kaffa gen̄ e ‘lady’, Dembia kiūnē ‘wife’; Oromo qena ‘lady’; Akkadian kinī–tu ‘wife’ [one of a harem], Berber (Tuareg) tēkne ‘wife’; Proto-Indo- European *gwen ~ *gwenā ‘wife, woman’; Sanskrit gnā ‘goddess’; Avestan gǝnā ‘wife’; Slavic žena ‘wife, woman’; Lydian kâna ‘woman, wife’; Proto-Turkic *küni ‘wife’ [one of a harem]: Kirghiz künü ‘wife’; Eskimo (Alaskan) aganak ‘woman’; Proto-Caucasian *q(w)änV ‘woman’; Andaman: Bea chána ‘woman’; Tasmanian (SE) quani ‘wife, woman’; Australian Aboriginal Warrgamay gajin ‘female’; Shawnee kwan-iswa ‘girl’; Dakota hun ‘mother’; Cayuse kwun-asa ‘girl’; Zuñi k’anakwayina ‘woman’; Tonkawa kwān ‘woman’; Zapotec gunáa ‘woman’; Proto-Tupi *kuyã ‘woman’, Guarani kuña ‘female’. Many more Amerind forms are in [Greenberg 2000, 47, also included there are Indo- Pacific, Australian glosses]. In [Bengtson & Ruhlen 1994; 291] the job of identifying numerous widespread roots is linked to and compared with pioneering works of Trombetti, Greenberg and other long-range scholars. So much for the lexical Global etymologies proposed in various works by A. Trombetti.

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MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The Languages of Africa (1963)

Grammatical comparanda

The body of grammatical items in Trombetti’s Comparazioni lessicali [Trombetti; 1920] is by far more modest vis-à-vis the lexicon therein. I do not wish here to treat at length such classical items of grammar as pronomina interrogative, personali et cetera. I am limiting myself to just a few instances. One of these is the global distribution of the interrogative I, U ‘chi?’ [‘who?’: Trombetti 1920: 435]. Grammatical comparisons containing pronouns in this meaning that is ‘who?, what?’ are to be found in many writings of the renowned scholar. The following is an extract taken from [Trombetti 1925: 87, 88]: I. Nostratic, Altaic and Uralic branch: Turkic ne ‘what?’, ‘which?’, Tungusic nī ‘idem’; Uralic Koibal nō ‘what’; Afroasiatic: kuna; cf. demonstrative *ʔi [Illich-Svitych 1971]. II. Austric, exemplified by Khasi ka-no ‘quale’, Vietnamese nā–o ‘che?’, Tagalog s-no ‘chi?’. Sino-Caucasian macrofamily: Basque dial. no, ergative no-k ‘chi?’ < *na-n ‘chi questo?’; Literary (Mandarin) Chinese na ‘quale?’. Niger-Congo: Bantu -a-ni ‘chi?’. In the research of merited experts in long-range studies we also meet grammatical data similar to those given by Trombetti in his works. Suffice it to mention here interrogative etymologies No 10, 17 in [Bengtson, Ruhlen 1994] and No 60 ‘interrogative K’ offered in [Greenberg 2000] where Eurasiatic etyma are coupled with Khoisan, Nilo-Saharan and other data. Formally speaking grammar items of global scope are a common feature in Trombetti’s legacy, say, in [Trombetti 1923, § 667 – 670] the reader learns about the global distribution of the expression of gender through vocalic variations, in § 678 global data on locatives are to be found.

In lieu of discussion

Alfredo Trombetti, father of global etymologies, was a comparative linguist whose works were well ahead of his time, little doubt about it. We ought to bear in mind the milieu reigning supreme in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in comparative . I mean here the supremacy of the Junggrammatiker school which would look askance at any comparative research falling short of their meticulous Lautgesetze and virtual Eurocentrism. As great as Trombetti was, A. Meillet issued a highly critical appraisal of [Trombetti 1922-1923, 2 volumes] – a seminal monograph indeed. Italian colleagues of Trombetti, though not all, were no better. It was only near the end of his life that Trombetti had been conferred the title of academician in the Italian Royal Academy of Sciences. Nowadays the method of research Trombetti employed is widely known as ‘’. Yet, in an overwhelming number of instances, it has not been the notorious ‘mess comparison’ as sceptics would have it. By way of illustration I give only one more sample taken from [Trombetti 1905: 193], where glosses with the sense of ‘fat’ are represented in many of the world’s tongues by various types: pi (Kunama, Indo-European, Thai, etc.); kū – (Bantu, Finno- Ugric); sim- (Hamito-Semitic [Afroasiatic] and Altaic). With this presented to the reader Trombetti comes with a very keen observation: le concordanze sono fra lingue troppo remote fra di loro per potersi ammettere fin d’ora una connessione storica.

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MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The Languages of Africa (1963)

As pointed out on several occasions above many global etymologies by Trombetti have been borne out by eminent long-range researchers of later times. Thus, a global root T ‘tooth’ [Trombetti 1920: 218] was investigated in a masterly manner in [Dolgopolskiy 1964: 60]. An exception may be in place here: ‘root’ T is also in Yukaghir todi … || Altaic: old Ujghur tiš ‘tooth’ … Trombetti is also said inter alia to have independently of E. Sapir suggested a superfamily now known as Dene-Caucasian, his insights on Indo-Pacific were also ahead of his time… Certain faults and/or moot points were also present in the eminent scholar’s researches. Say a case of contamination of two distinct roots can be seen in Gothic qēns [kwēns] ‘wife, woman’, Old Icelandic kona, Old Irish ben, vs. Tamil pen ‘female’, Palaung ī–pan, Empeo banāu ‘wife’ [Trombetti 1905: 66, 67].3

Concluding remarks

1. Alfredo Trombetti, a long-range comparative linguist par excellence of the past, was among the few first pioneer researchers who performed a many-faceted survey of the world’s diverse languages in toto. 2. The famous Italian comparativist scholar, a Semitologist by his first trade was a staunch adherent of the theory of monogenesis, meaning a single primordial origin of humanity’s tongues. 3. In order to bear this conception out Trombetti came forward with numerous proofs both of lexical and grammatical nature; being the forerunner of the modern ‘global etymologies’ trend in the world science of language, more precisely in the field of the long-range ethnolinguistic comparison. 4. Many universally distributed roots (types) discovered by this eminent scholar have and are currently being corroborated and refined by a number of linguists from various countries, the present writer being one of their kin.

References

Bengtson, John D. & Merritt Ruhlen. 1994. Global Etymologies. In: M. Ruhlen On the origin of languages: Studies in linguistic taxonomy. Stanford: Press. Blažek, Václav. 1989. A survey of global etymologies. In: V. Shevoroshkin, ed. Reconstructing languages and cultures. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Dolgopolsky, Aharon 1970. A long-range comparison of some languages of northern . In: Trudy VII Meždunarodnogo kongressa antropologičeskikh i etnografičeskikh nauk. Tom 5. Moscow: Nauka, рр. 620 – 626. [This is a rare English version from the pre PC era.] Greenberg, Joseph H. 2002. Indo-European and its closest Relatives. The Eurasiatic Language Family. Vol. 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Illich-Svitych, Vladislav 1971. Opyt sravnenija nostraticheskix jazykov. Vol.1. Moscow: Nauka.

3 As is well known to Indo-Europeanists, Old Irish ben is a regular development from PIE *gwen-; while the Tamil and following words seem to reflect a primeval labial [Ed.]. 6

MOTHER TONGUE Journal of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory • Issue XVIII • 2013 50th Anniversary of J.H. Greenberg’s The Languages of Africa (1963)

Swadesh, Morris. 1960. On interhemispheric linguistic connections. In: Culture in history: Essays in honor of P. Radin, ed. S. Diamond, pp. 894-924. New York: Press. Trombetti, Alfredo. 1902/1903. Delle relazioni delle lingue caucasiche con le lingue camito- semitiche e con altri gruppi linguistici. In: [I] Giornale della societa asiatica italiana XV (1902), [II] Giornale della societa asiatica italiana XVI (1903). Trombetti, Alfredo. 1905. Unita d’origine de linguaggio. : Treves. Trombetti, Alfredo. 1920. Comparazioni Lessicali. In: Saggi di glottologia generale comparata. T.3. Memorie della R. Accademia delle Scienzi dell’ Istituto di Bologna. Sezione di Scienze Storico Filologiche, Ser.2. Trombetti, Alfredo. 1923. Elementi di glottologia. Vol.2. Bologna. Trombetti, Alfredo. 1925. Le origine della lingua basca. Firenze.

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