To use the “Joe and I” analogy, it is like saying “Yes, Joe and I have the same grandfather, but we’re not related.”

Perzackly.

languagehat - 21 March 2008 10:32 AM

Derived from is clear, widely understood, and unambiguous. Right, but it also doesn’t help in this case, because the point is not that muileann isn’t derived from mill, it’s that it’s not cognate to it.  It really surprises me that this use of “related” is so counterintuitive for most people, but that’s one thing I love about this board—I’m always learning things!

I think from the discussion above, most people agree that muileann is indeed related to the Greek mylos / myle. Now, whether muileann is derived from mylos / myle, or both are derived from a common protolanguage was not my question.

languagehat - 21 March 2008 10:32 AM

The Etymologicum Magnum is a medieval work of no more scientific value than Isidore’s Etymologiae.  I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I’m not sure I see the point of an etymological site that doesn’t even try to provide accurate etymologies.

I notice a pattern here: you disagree with one of my references, so you belittle its “scientific value”; you disagree with hypotheses I present in my site, so you call them silly. In the former case, you follow an “ad hominem” approach, in the latter case you are being ill mannered to boot.

languagehat - 21 March 2008 10:32 AM

How can you possibly entertain the idea of a Greek etymology for Hadrian when it’s a Latin name?

Pretty much the same way that you entertain a Phoenician origin of the Geek Alphabet :) Early Greeks did adapt elements from Phoenician script, and further introduced vowels. The Chalcidian version the Greek alphabet eventually evolved into the Latin Alpabet. Ergo: the Latin alphabet is also derived from Phoenician! In such a fungible world, are you suggesting that a “Latin name” cannot possibly have a Greek etymology?

In any case, we presumably both agree that the Latin name Hadrian is derived from Adria. I proposed a hypothesis for the origin of Adria, which you did not take the time to address or even reject as silly using your revealed methodology. I would be interested to read your thoughts regarding the meaning/origin of adria.

languagehat - 21 March 2008 10:32 AM

I appreciate the fact that you’re an economist, not a linguist, but that makes it all the more important to stick to etymologies produced by modern linguists, since you have no basis for evaluating them yourself.

Now that’s a patronising comment, if I ever heard one! Some of the major innovations in economics ("Rational Expectations") were made by engineers, not economists. Heinrich Schliemann, who was despised and belittled by his contemporary archaeologists because he was a businessman, eventually unearthed Troy. I have no delusions of grandeur regarding my hobby, but resent your suggestion that only trained linguists have the authority to conduct etymological research !

MW3:

cognate (adj.) [and the n. follows the adj.]:

// ... 2 ... b _of a word or morpheme_ : related by descent from the same root or affixal element in a recorded or assumed ancestral language ....  c _of a word_ : related in a manner that involves borrowing rather than descent from or as well as descent from an ancestral language .... //

I think in general English “cognate” is often used with broad sense like (c) [rather than only with narrow sense like (b)].

“Cognate” in specialist jargon is a different matter, which I cannot fully address at this moment.

If one were to restrict “cognate” to sense (b), what word (if any) would one use for sense (c), I wonder?

Dave Wilton - 20 March 2008 11:50 AM

That said, I do, however, have a Gaelic etymological dictionary that says that lag, meaning pit or hollow, is related (not derived from) the Greek λυγιςω, meaning bend. But again, this is simply a distant relationship and doesn’t point to Greek influence in the Scottish distilling industry. I can’t find a connection with the other roots in the name.

Very interesting association! I’d like a add a few things on Greek λυγιζω, culled from the Greek Lexicon of George Babiniotis. λυγιζω is associated with λυγος (osier) as well as the I.E. root leug (to bend) to which the Latin luctor and English lock are also related.

Regarding λαγκος (lagos: hollow, valley), which I suggested in my first post, Babiniotis notes it is derived from λακκος whish is associated to the I.E. root laku (lake), and hence to lacuna, loch etc.

Again, this is pure speculation, but it seems more likely that the Gaelic lag is related to the I.E. root laku rather than than to leug.

it beats me how on earth the Semitic Adonai (Lord) could have traveled to Greece and transfigured as Adonis, a minor deity in the Hellenic pantheon.

Why?

It’s pretty generally accepted that Adonis was the hero of a Middle Eastern mystery cult, analogous to Tammuz, Attis, and a whole slew of other similar figures, who was adopted by the Hellenistic Greek communities of the Middle East, and thus into Greek culture as a whole.

The centuries of Hellenistic civilisation produced a great deal of cultural exchange between the Greek and the Semitic world, and surely it shouldn’t surprise you to find Semitic names and figures cropping up in later Greek culture, any more than it should to find Greek influences in later Jewish thought.

I like your style of discourse, Pavlos. And I agree with your views about professional exclusiveness. Academic “qualifications” do not confer omniscience --- nor do they necessarily confer professional authority or even competence. Certainly not humility, nor good manners either. One sees too many people with “qualifications” of all kinds, who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. Qualification comes in the end from achievement, not from passing the required exams.

You mentioned Schliemann and the fuss that professionals made about his “presuming” to think about archaeology. Other professions aren’t much different. Any intruder risks being put down --- hard, usually. Look at Pasteur.

One thing that’s become clear to me since joining this board is that “professional” linguists disagree with each other on many points, often profoundly, and often abusively too. They’re just like any other professionals ;-)

I hope you’ll stick around.  As I said before—I like your style.

Welcome from my little corner of the world, too, Pavlos.  Few of us are professional linguists here, but that’s never stopped us (blushing and looking at her dainty little feet) from voicing opinions, often against all odds, which we feel we can justify.  Elsewhere lies the path of extreme academic dullness.  Imagine if the only things we could write on this site were professionally validated facts!  I for one would be pretty much silenced.  Which many would, of course, think a Good Thing.

Oh dear.

On the “related” front:

To use the “Joe and I” analogy, it is like saying “Yes, Joe and I have the same grandfather, but we’re not related.”

But these words (mill, muileann) don’t have the same grandfather!  They’re borrowed from the same word!  Why is it so hard to see this distinction? 

Relationship 1: English father, Irish athair.  Both are descended from Proto-Indo-European *pater; they are related (in my sense) or cognate per M-W’s definition 2b.

Relationship 2: English mill, Irish muileann.  Both are borrowed from Latin molina; they are unrelated (in my sense) or cognate per M-W’s definition 2c.

There’s a basic and categorical difference there.  I don’t care what words we use to describe it—I was a lot more willing to give up “related” before I discovered, thanks to D Wilson, that “cognate” has both meanings, but as long as we agree on specific terms, I’m happy to use them.  I am not willing to allow the basic difference between inheritance and borrowing to be fudged or ignored, and I’m a little surprised that Doc T, who I think of as a man of logical and scientific bent, is not on my side in this.

I notice a pattern here: you disagree with one of my references, so you belittle its “scientific value”; you disagree with hypotheses I present in my site, so you call them silly. In the former case, you follow an “ad hominem” approach, in the latter case you are being ill mannered to boot.

Pavlos, I’ve been trying very hard to be polite to you, because you love words and word origins and I’m glad you’ve found the site.  But I am reluctantly forced to conclude you have no interest in actual etymology.  This is not about “professional exclusiveness”; this is about facts.  You are in the position of someone claiming 2+2 = 5 and dismissing anyone who objects as prejudiced and/or impolite.  Since I don’t want to be accused of bad manners, I will simply avoid discussing these matters with you in future, but again I’m surprised at some of the members here who seem to value your “style of discourse” so much they’re willing to overlook the fact you deal in patent falsehood.  That is not an insult—you seem to be a fine fellow, and I’m glad to have you around, but your etymologies are wrong, and generally at this site we’re pretty hard on false etymologies, whether CANOEist or otherwise.

Coler me confused.

I notice a pattern here: you disagree with one of my references, so you belittle its “scientific value”; you disagree with hypotheses I present in my site, so you call them silly. In the former case, you follow an “ad hominem” approach, in the latter case you are being ill mannered to boot.

Saying an idea or reference source lacks “scientific value” or that it is “silly” is not an ad hominem approach. Attacking the idea cannot, by definition, be ad hominem, which means to attack the person instead of the idea. Saying, “Joe is a jerk, so anything he says is worthless” is an ad hominem argument. Saying “that is silly” may not be very intellectually rigorous, but it’s not ad hominem.

I am not willing to allow the basic difference between inheritance and borrowing to be fudged or ignored, and I’m a little surprised that Doc T, who I think of as a man of logical and scientific bent, is not on my side in this.

My problem with this line of reasoning is that inheritance isn’t an actual etymological process. It’s simply a category we place certain roots in that are so old that we can no longer determine how they came into the language. An inherited root may indeed have been borrowed or derived from an even older root or echoic or whatever; we just don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an important classification in that it affects how we look at phonetic changes, but I don’t think in this present context that it matters.

I must say that I see no ad hominem attacks in language hat’s replies. He addresses the arguments, sometimes bluntly, but you can’t be unkind or impolite to an assertion, it’s either well-founded or it isn’t.

You seem a pleasant chap, Pavlos, and I welcome you to the board, but you must expect any theories you put forward to be rigorously examined here, especially if they are unorthodox. Believe me, we’ve all been on the receiving end at one time or another. It helps to have a tough hide and you’ll certainly develop one if you stick around. This board would be a far poorer one if its members held back on criticizing and demolishing weak arguments for fear of giving offence.

Well let me ask a related (ehem) question regarding these borrowings from Latin molina. Thor’s hammer was named mjolnir (with an umlaut), which means the grinder, according to one professor I had. It always struck me as odd that the Scandinavians would have used a Latin-based word for one of their quintessential mythological components. Moreover, we have the English word meal (cf. Dutch maaltijd), which seems pretty much in the ballpark as far as relatedness. Was there not some underlying PIE root word evidenced by these stray words?

edit: OK, meal and maal (for food) are derived from an earlier Germanic word for time or hour. However, we have meal, as in grain meal. The point is that in dealing with early Germanic borrowings such as those connected with molina, it seems a little positivistic to state that all post-latinate derivations are 100 percent from Latin and not influenced by very closely related indigenous words. The concept of relatedness becomes very ambiguous when you consider that the speakers of the language had no idea where the words came from.

My problem with this line of reasoning is that inheritance isn’t an actual etymological process. It’s simply a category we place certain roots in that are so old that we can no longer determine how they came into the language.

No, that’s not true.  We know that father is inherited from Proto-Germanic and farther back from Proto-Indo-European; that etymology is as well established as, say, the theory of relativity.  To confuse inheritance with borrowing is as big a mistake as confusing gravitation with electromagnetism.  The fact that there are cases where we can’t tell which has occurred does not lessen the importance of the distinction.

The point is that in dealing with early Germanic borrowings such as those connected with molina, it seems a little positivistic to state that all post-latinate derivations are 100 percent from Latin and not influenced by very closely related indigenous words.

Nobody’s saying that; borrowings are often influenced by indigenous words (this is a serious problem in North Africa, for instance, with Punic, Berber, and Arabic).  That does not lessen the importance of the distinction between borrowings and inherited words.

lionello - 22 March 2008 12:04 AM

I hope you’ll stick around.  As I said before—I like your style.

Thanks, I think this is a great forum with some very insighful and civil participants! I will certainly stick around and add my 2 drachmae worth!

Syntinen Laulu - 21 March 2008 11:59 PM

It’s pretty generally accepted that Adonis was the hero of a Middle Eastern mystery cult, analogous to Tammuz, Attis, and a whole slew of other similar figures, who was adopted by the Hellenistic Greek communities of the Middle East, and thus into Greek culture as a whole.
The centuries of Hellenistic civilization produced a great deal of cultural exchange between the Greek and the Semitic world, and surely it shouldn’t surprise you to find Semitic names and figures cropping up in later Greek culture, any more than it should to find Greek influences in later Jewish thought.

Actually, Adonis appears in Hellenic religion well before the Hellenistic era (which started around Alexander’s time). Adonis was in fact mentioned by Hesiod (circa 700 BCE). And the myth of Adonis certainly bears similarities with other deities, including Tammuz.  Hellenic – Semitic interaction throughout the ages is a well known fact, both within the region of mainland Greece (where Romaniot Jews have been a vital cultural force for centuries) as well as in what later evolved as the Hellenistic world.

languagehat - 22 March 2008 05:18 AM

Pavlos, I’ve been trying very hard to be polite to you

Thanks for the effort! To many people politeless comes effortlessly.

languagehat - 22 March 2008 05:18 AM

But I am reluctantly forced to conclude you have no interest in actual etymology.  This is not about “professional exclusiveness”; this is about facts.  You are in the position of someone claiming 2+2 = 5 and dismissing anyone who objects as prejudiced and/or impolite.

The impoliteness I alluded to was the fact that you called one of the etymologies suggested in my site (for Adonis) silly. When I mentioned my source, you pulled a very old logical fallacy known as poisoning the wells, i.e., discrediting the source used by your “opponent.” Finally, you pulled another classical sophism, known as argument from authority : i.e. to belittle the arguments of a presenter not perceived as an expert. You may be a brilliant linguist, but your oratory skills have room for improvement. May I sugest Aristotle’s Organon as a starting point.

languagehat - 22 March 2008 05:18 AM

I’m surprised at some of the members here who seem to value your “style of discourse” so much they’re willing to overlook the fact you deal in patent falsehood.  That is not an insult—you seem to be a fine fellow, and I’m glad to have you around, but your etymologies are wrong, and generally at this site we’re pretty hard on false etymologies, whether CANOEist or otherwise.

Patent falsehood? My etymologies are wrong? The burden of proof, my friend, is on you to disprove what you disagree with, and I am looking forward to hearing some logical arguments which I am certain you are capable of. They would in fact do wonders for your own “style of discourse.”

Dave Wilton - 22 March 2008 07:24 AM

Saying an idea or reference source lacks “scientific value” or that it is “silly” is not an ad hominem approach. Attacking the idea cannot, by definition, be ad hominem, which means to attack the person instead of the idea. Saying, “Joe is a jerk, so anything he says is worthless” is an ad hominem argument. Saying “that is silly” may not be very intellectually rigorous, but it’s not ad hominem.

Mea culpa, Dave. I misused the expression in my previous post. However, I hope you agree with me that being branded as one with “no interest in actual etymology” or one engaging in “patent falsehoods” are as ad hominem arguments as they come.

aldiboronti - 22 March 2008 07:31 AM

You seem a pleasant chap, Pavlos, and I welcome you to the board, but you must expect any theories you put forward to be rigorously examined here, especially if they are unorthodox.

Thanks, aldiboronti, I would welcome rigorous critique, provided it is exercised in good faith and not in a haughty or patronizing manner.

Pavlos wrote:

Thanks for the effort! To many people politeless comes effortlessly.

Somebody mentioned patronizing remarks?

Pavlos, if you come to a debate about chemistry using the Almagest as your source when there are modern sources like the CRC Handbook and Merck Index available, people are going to criticize your sources, and quite legitimately. Likewise for etymological references that are centuries old and predate the development of scientific linguistics. If your best defense of such an etymology is “Ooh, he’s criticizing my sources! No fair!”, I’m very unimpressed.

Languagehat wrote:

I am not willing to allow the basic difference between inheritance and borrowing to be fudged or ignored, and I’m a little surprised that Doc T, who I think of as a man of logical and scientific bent, is not on my side in this.

LH, I appreciate the difference between loanwords and cognates (sensu stricto) and the need to distinguish them. My big issue is with your criticism of Pavlos’s use of “related”. 

But first, I think we have to recognize that the distinction between loanwords and cognates is not a perfect and absolutely sharp dichotomy. Yes, the connection between “father” and Vater is very different from the connection between “aperitif” and Aperitif. I can understand why it would be silly to call the latter pair “related"--it’s just the same French word borrowed into English and German.  But the connection between “mill” and muileann is somewhere in between. Molina was borrowed into English in the Old English period or earlier and has been undergoing etymological evolution since then, leading to mill; I don’t have a reference for the history of muileann but it would seem to be similar. These aren’t the same word as molina or each other; they are separate descendants of molina.

Second, with all due deference to the right of specialists to develop specialized vocabulary, construing “related” to exclude such pairs is a piss-poor choice* that invites confusion, since it conflicts violently with the common meanings of the word ("1. Being connected; associated. 2. Connected by kinship, common origin, or marriage.” AHD, emphasis mine.) Saying father and Vater can be called related but mill and muileann cannot seems like saying that the Wilton brothers are not related to each other but Washoe the chimp and I are.

Third, springing the specialist’s restricted sense into the discussion in the way you did is like telling a programmer who has remarked that he has a lot of work to do that he’s wrong because “work” is force times distance and working at a keyboard involves only small forces acting over small distances. Or like Dr. Doowop’s objection to “delusion” here, except that it’s plausible that he was unaware of the non-specialist sense of “delusion”; “related” is too common a word for you to be unaware of the common senses.

*JFTR, my own specialty contains some piss-poor terminology too, but I don’t expect everyone to be familiar with it, nor do I introduce it into conversations among non-specialists without prior notice and explanation.

Postscript:  I just noticed an interesting note in the OED’s etymology of mill:

The Old English word is attested both as masculine and feminine (as are the Middle Dutch words), which has led to the suggestion that they are partly < post-classical Latin molinum; however, change of gender in Old English (and Middle Dutch) is more likely (cf. A. Campbell Old Eng. Gram. (1959) §521). In all other Germanic languages the cognate word is (or was) feminine.

The burden of proof, my friend, is on you to disprove what you disagree with

Not so. The burden of proof is always on the person making the positive assertion, not on others to disprove. This is true in every single academic and professional discipline. If you make a statement, you have to provide sufficient evidence to convince reasonable people that it is true.

We know that father is inherited from Proto-Germanic and farther back from Proto-Indo-European; that etymology is as well established as, say, the theory of relativity.

I would be careful with the comparison with relativity. Relativity has been confirmed countless times by observational evidence. We know its true because we can see relativistic effects at work in the universe. When they send spacecraft to distant planets, NASA has to take relativity into account in planning the mission.

This is not the case with Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European. There is no observational evidence that these languages actually existed. There is very, very strong inferential evidence that they did, but we have no records of these languages. (I’m not saying they didn’t exist, only commenting on the degree of certainty with which we know this.)

The case of father is one where we can state that it is true with extreme confidence, similar to that with which a physicist talks about relativity, but this is not the case with all PIE roots.

For these, a better comparison might be to evolution in Darwin’s day. Darwin’s inference that evolution by natural selection had occurred based on observing modern animals, like his finches, is much like the inferences in the PIE theory. Since Darwin’s day, fossil and DNA evidence has provided direct evidence that evolution occurred, but these were unavailable to Darwin and no linguistic equivalents to fossils or DNA exist, so the PIE theory today is in much the same state that evolution was 150 years ago--a very strong inferential theory awaiting direct, observational evidence.

This is important because there are a few (mercifully few, fortunately) linguists who develop elaborate etymological explanations based on reconstructed PIE roots. They reconstruct a root based on a previously reconstructed root which in turn is based on yet another reconstructed root. Here’s an example from Mitchell and Robinson’s Guide to Old English (perhaps the most commonly used OE textbook), p. 47n:

But j had another property denied to i; in short-stemmed words it caused the lengthening or doubling of any cons. (except r) which preceded it, and then disappeared. So *framjan > fremman. In *naerjan the j merely caused the i-mutation and remained as i; hence nerian.

But in places where fremman “loses” an m, the inflexional ending originally began with i. So e.g., the 3rd sg. pres. ind. of *framjan was *framjiþ. Here the j was absorbed into the i before it could cause doubling; so we get *framiþ.

Now Mitchell and Robinson’s book is, in general, quite good, but there is no way they can know this particular fact with any confidence. And this is with Old English, a language for which we have an extraordinary amount of evidence. Once you start getting into similar arguments about reconstructed PIE roots, you’re in fantasy land. (Or perhaps string theory if you want to continue the physics analogy.)

In short, broad statements about Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European etymologies are on firm ground. But when you get into specifics, it quickly becomes very dicey and you can’t say much with confidence.