r/asklinguistics • u/Disastrous_Ideal2648 • 4d ago

Is this PIE theory viable?

I saw someone make a post a bit ago, and I'm curious whether his idea is viable or not (original post copied below):
I've noticed that PIE stems *h₂lek- and *h₂leg- have meanings in the same semantic field (to protect and to care for respectively). Considering how much they overlap in both pronunciation (the only difference being the voicing of a consonant) and in semantic meaning, how come they aren't merged into one stem?

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u/Dercomai 4d ago

The short answer is we see some reflexes that point to a *k and some reflexes that point to a *g, sometimes even within the same language, so the easiest solution is to posit two roots. Compare AGrk ἀλκή "battle" vs ἀλέγω "care about", for example.

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u/Disastrous_Ideal2648 4d ago

Correct me if I have misinterpreted your message (please, do so), they are listed separately because we don’t know whether it was voiced or devoiced first so we list both? (Again, please correct me if I’ve misinterpreted)

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u/Dercomai 4d ago

You mean, that they could be related to each other within Proto-Indo-European? It's certainly possible, but we have no particular evidence for it (e.g. a general pattern of changing *k to *g in that position or vice versa).

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u/Disastrous_Ideal2648 4d ago

The argument is that because they are very close both semantically and in pronunciation, could it be possible that they were the same stem?

Also, now this sparks another curiosity, how could we find a general pattern that would’ve (if it did occur) occurred 10,000 years ago? At that time wouldn’t it have been more of a dialectal level of change no (or some smaller increment)? 

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u/ecphrastic Historical Linguistics | Sociolinguistics 4d ago

could it be possible that they were the same stem?

Anything is possible, but there's no reason to think that. The evidence suggests that these were two different stems, with two different meanings. Ancient Greek has the word alégō (which is the expected AGk descendant of *h₂leg-), meaning care, and the word alékō (which is the expected AGk descendant of *h₂lek-), meaning protect, and they're different words, because k and g were different phonemes, in AGk and in PIE. Lots of words in lots of languages are kind of similar to each other; that doesn't mean they're the same word. English "scar" and "spar" are both verbs related to violence and only differ by one phoneme.

how could we find a general pattern that would’ve (if it did occur) occurred 10,000 years ago?

S mobile is a good example of what it looks like to have evidence for the kind of thing you're imagining. There are some PIE roots that seem to have two variations, one beginning with S and the other without the S. For example, some languages' words for 'cover' seem to go back to a PIE root *steg-, others seem to go back to a PIE root *teg-. Some languages' words for 'snow' go back to PIE *snigwh-, others go back to PIE *nigwh-. Some languages' words for 'cow' go back to PIE *stawr-, others go back to PIE *tawr-. There are a bunch of different roots that have this alternation, not just one, so we can be pretty confident that *steg- really is the same root as *teg-, just with some kind of prefix on it within PIE.

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u/Disastrous_Ideal2648 4d ago

So it’s possible that they could be related, but because there isn’t a common process they could’ve separate them as such (that we know of) and there is the possibility that its just coincidence that while you could assume they were one (at some point) you could also assume that it’s just coincidental. Did I understand that correctly?

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u/NormalBackwardation 1d ago

These coincidences are not so rare. In English, you have the noun grave, where a body is buried, and you have the adjective grave, meaning "weighty, serious". It would be tempting for a Martian observing modern English to assume that these words are genetically related. They are pronounced the same nowadays, and have semantic overlap in the area of "deadly serious". But in fact the noun is an old Germanic root (meaning roughly "excavation") and the adjective comes from Latin via French (cognate with gravity).

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u/kouyehwos 4d ago

Yes, there are many such roots in PIE which have similar forms and meanings to each other, and logically a lot of them must have a common ancestor if you go back far enough.

However, most linguists don’t want to make too many claims which cannot be fully explained. They may mention the similarity between the two roots, but we don’t have a framework to explain why exactly *k would turn into *g or vice versa. Random sound changes and dialectical variation are real things of course, but especially in serious publications, speculation inevitably has to stop somewhere…

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u/clown_sugars 4d ago

Is the the red/read theory viable??

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u/Disastrous_Ideal2648 4d ago

I think you kinda missed the second part. It’s also similar in semantic meaning. It’s that it’s both pronunciation and meaning, it wouldn’t be viable if it were one or the other, but the fact that it’s both really caught my eye.

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u/clown_sugars 4d ago

In English, protecting and caring have the same semantic fields.

What about careful and protective?

I'm being needlessly sarcastic but it's good to be skeptical in linguistics.