Isomorphism In The Components Of Isoglesses As A Consequence Of Ancient Contacts

Abstract

This work focuses not only on the lexical correspondences of the analyzed isoglosses, but also pays close attention to similar morphological elements in the formation and inflection of verbs and names of the languages in question. The semantic and formal coincidences that we found in the root morphemes, as well as in the morphological elements of the Chechen and Indo-European languages, in our opinion, are evidence of the most ancient language connections. In the works of A. Meye, it is repeatedly emphasized that "the original character of each Indo-European language indicates to some extent the influence of nationalities who spoke different languages that were supplanted by Indo-European dialects." Modern linguists often write about the distant kinship of different language groups. In the Nakh languages there are randomly preserved elements of root morphemes and morphological elements that belonged to the most ancient languages of ancient peoples, from which some of the existing peoples and their languages could have originated. In the practical part of the work, approximations of grammatical forms are presented. The kinship of the Indo-European and Nakh languages is not proved, therefore, the correspondence system is not presented here, the regularity of these correspondences is not analyzed. Lexical isoglosses in different structural languages are given in order to emphasize the nonrandom nature of the identifiable morphological elements that we discovered in these languages. A large number of lexical, semantic and morphological coincidences in different structural languages cannot be an accidental coincidence.

Keywords: Morphological elementsisoglossescorrespondence systemstructural languagesmorphemelanguage mixing

Introduction

It is noteworthy that in the Nakh and Indo-European languages, in the formation of grammatical categories and in the inflection system, a commonality of morphological properties is observed. In many languages of different families there are correspondences with the Nakh languages in the native vocabulary. Most scholars suggest treating them as homonyms, homographs, in general, as random correspondences. However, recent discoveries in comparative studies have led many scientists to the conviction that many well-studied language families have a distant relationship, which dates back to ten or more thousand years ago. In our opinion, the commonality of the phonetic structure with the semantic adequacy of morphemes in the analyzed isoglosses is a consequence of the oldest contacts of the speakers of these languages. Antoine Meye (2009) repeatedly pointed out the same fact in his works: "However, we should never forget that the term "Indo-European language" covers two different concepts ..., undoubtedly, there was a huge number of prehistoric borrowings by one dialect from another or several dialects from languages of other families (Meye, 2009). Meye (2009) also emphasized that “in cases where we find languages that are undoubtedly related to the languages of the ancient inhabitants of the country next to Indo-European dialects, we have not yet studied all the facts and were able to note only about some similarities, mainly between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages of India, between the Armenian and Caucasian languages" (Meye, 2009). A famous archaeologist David Anthony (2008) concludes that the Caucasian languages had long contacts with the Indo-Europeans and localized the "ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans in the Pontic-Caspian steppes between 4500 and 2500 BC” (Anthony, 2008). In our early works, lexical isoglosses were identified in Chechen and French, as well as in Chechen and Latin. Our other large series of articles discusses similar lexems in form and meaning in Nakh and in those Indo-European languages that have certified written records. We have selected the most illustrative examples from the lexical units we have found in dictionaries and literature on Indo-European languages. Due to the fact that our other works have already described lexical correspondences with Latin (206 words), French (330 words) and Old English (87 words), examples from the Spanish language prevail in the practical part of this work. In our work, we rely on the basic principles of G. Schuhardt that “the tasks of the history of language and etymology coincide, and etymology itself is nothing more than a shortened history of words” (Samarin, 2010). This study is based on the “principles of language changes” (Labov, 2001) and the “sociology of language” by William Labov; the subject of the study of the sociology of language “are social factors with a wide scope and their relationship with languages and dialects” (Labov, 2007).

Problem Statement

A large number of lexical, semantic and morphological coincidences in different structural languages cannot be an accidental coincidence. The analyzed isoglosses cannot be classified as later borrowings, since neither these words are in Russian nor in Armenian, and other groups of Indo-European languages are geographically distant from the distribution area of the Nakh languages. The linguistic facts discovered by us allow concluding that there are closer linguistic and cultural contacts between the Indo-European and Nakh languages in the prehistoric era. In our early works, lexical isoglosses were identified in Chechen and French (Tokaeva, 2013), as well as in Chechen and Latin (Tokaeva, 2016). Our other large series of articles discusses similar in form and meaning lexems in Nakh and in those Indo-European languages that have certified written records. We have selected the most illustrative examples from the lexical units we have found in dictionaries and literature on Indo-European languages. Lexical isoglosses in different structural languages are given in order to emphasize the nonrandom nature of the identifiable morphological elements that we discovered in these languages.

Research Questions

The limited volume of the article does not allow covering all the morphological properties of the analyzed languages that we have identified. In the analysis of languages with distant cognation, the coincidence of morphological properties is observed very rarely; much more common are irregular lexical matches. However, identical morphological elements are still found even in incognate languages, which indicates an ancient mixture of languages.

In the practical part, examples of parallelism in the formation of grammatical categories are given and cases of formal and substantial identity of morphological elements are emphasized.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of this work is to present and analyze the linguistic facts of the studied different structural languages to supplement and clarify information about the languages in question, which can shed light on the history of the development of Indo-European and Nakh languages.

Research Methods

Isomorphism of morphological elements in different structural languages is revealed by a comparative method. The empirical part of the study uses the inductive method of analysis.

Findings

The common root of the morphemes described below is obvious even with a superficial examination, many words underwent regular phonetic changes, the presence of metathesis in isoglosses testifies in favor of the archaic nature of these words and the antiquity of interlanguage contacts.

1. Isomorphism of the means for marking the verb form of the infinitive in Old English and Chechen

The verb infinitive in Old English was formed, as in Chechen, by adding the -an suffix to the verb base, compare:

Old English waurðan ‘become’ – Chechen vierzan ‘turn into, become’;

Old English herian; Gothic hausjan ‘hear’ (z<r – rhotacism as per Verner's law) – Chechen hazan ‘hear’;

Old English dragan ‘drag’; – Chechen taqa-ian/taquo ‘drag’;

Old English célan ‘become cold’ Chechen shelian ‘make cold’;

Old English ácnyssan ‘banish’ – Chechen qossan ‘leave’, ara-qossan ‘banish’;

Old English gietan ‘know, understand, achieve’ –Chechenquetan ‘understand, get, achieve’;

Old English būan, ‘bield’, bȳne ‘billet’ [Indo-European bhū- ‘to be’ (Pokorny, 1959)]– Chechen bun ‘bield’;

Old English alan ‘grow’, – Chechen daalan/jaalan ‘grow’;

Old English magan, magon ‘may’ [magh- (Pokorny, 1959)] –Chechen magan ‘may’;

Old English hebban ‘hoist’ –Chechen aiban ‘hoist’;

Old English árian ‘respect’ – Chechen laran ‘respect’;

As a result of historical changes, a phonetic transformation [l>r] takes place.

In comparative linguistics, the transformation [l>r] is considered a language universal, compare: Old English dælan ‘share, give’ – Chechen dalan ‘give, share’ (compare: Spanish dar ‘give’; ‘present’ – Chechen dalan ‘give, present’[l>r]; Old Irish -dаl ‘share’, daal ‘part’ [Indo-European *dâlo- ‘share’]).

In modern English, only derivative adjective verbs retain the ending -en in the infinitive and are formed by adding the verb don 'do' (darken, lengthen, shorten, soften, tighten), while German verbs in the infinitive have endings: en, eln, ern. Chechen detective verbs and causatives are formed in a similar way, namely using the suffixed verb dan (van, ian, ban) 'do', added to the verb base or qualitative adjective, compare: Chechen shuordan 'make wide', lakhdan 'make low', shieldan 'cool', doukhdan 'heat, make hot', zhimdan 'reduce', khazdan 'decorate', tuodan 'improve, kiechdan 'cook'.

In Spanish and French, the verb infinitive is formed in a similar way to the Batsbi language, i.e. by adding the ending -ar, -er (compare: French lutter 'fight' – Batsbi latar 'fight'; French marier 'marry'; Spanish maridar 'marry'- Batsbi mari 'marriage'; mari-dar (iakhar) 'get married' ; French tasser 'pile, heap up'- Batsbi tasar 'heap up'; Spanish lesionar 'hit; hurt' – Batsbi lazvar/lazuor 'injure'; Spanish desear 'want' – Batsbi dezar 'desire'; Spanish madurar 'mature' – Batsbi maddalar 'ripen'; Spanish amaestrar 'train, drill' – 'amar/'amuor/' ama-var 'teach’).

2. Parallelism in the formation of verbs

The verb ‘be’ (bēon and wesan) in Old English with a conjugation of 2^nd person singular had the form wære, and in the plural – wære, while in the Chechen war ‘was’ (m), yar ‘was’ (f).

Irregular Old English verbs with suppletive forms ‘go’ (gan-eode-gegan) coincide with Chechen verbs not only in their lexical meaning, but also in form in some tenses, compare:

Old English he ēode ‘he walked’ – Chechen izavoedar ‘he walked“ is past imperfect time, izavoeda ‘he walks’ is present indefinite time; vakhan/vaghan ‘go’, imperative gho! (compare Old English fāren 'go', he ēode 'he walked', inf. ʒān, plural ʒāѢ, indicative of the present ēode, plural ēodon, imperial plural ʒāѢ. imper. ʒā).

3. Reflection of classes of Chechen names in verb isoglosses

In the Chechen language, nouns differ in classes: v is the class of living things, masculine, i (j) is the class of living things, feminine, as well as some inanimate objects and animals, d is the class of abstract concepts and generalizing signs, animals, and animated persons in plural, b is the class of living creatures in plural, animals and objects.

A feature of the Chechen language is the fact that the class of the subject of the action is reflected in the intransitive verb, and the class of the object of action is reflected in the transitive verb by adding the class prefixes v, j, d, b : izavoeda 'he walks', izaioeda' she walks', zh ' ӓladoeda 'dog (she) walks'.

When describing the lexical matches of the Chechen language with the Romance and Germanic languages, we found the correspondence of Chechen class prefixes in the verb anlaut to the initial consonants of the considered isoglosses, compare: lat. vitovīto avoid, evade, circumvent; – Chech. v- (d, b, i)- itan leave, leave;

Latin ā-veho, vēxī ‘to take away (about the storm) to rush’; avehi ‘leave’; vehere ‘carry’; vehes ‘cart’; vehor ‘drive, ride’, in-vehere ‘bring’ – Chechen vakhan/vaghan/ (d,b,i)-akhan ‘go, leave, go’;

compare: Old English ác w elan ‘die’ al. ác w olen ‘dead’, á d éadian ‘kill’ – Chechen valan ‘die’; Chechen adam du ‘human is’ – adam dien ‘kill a man’, stag vu ‘man is’, stag vien ‘kill a human (man)’;

The following examples reflect the class of an object, an animated masculine person: Spanish evitar (evitarse) ‘to avoid’ – vitan/ditan/iitan ‘leave’;

The combination kw is preserved in modern English: quit ‘leave’ – Chechen vitan ‘leave (someone)’;

The class of the subject of the action of the animated masculine person v is reflected in all intransitive verbs: Spanish venir ‘go (from somewhere); come (envehículo) ’;

Spanish venir viajar ‘ride’ – Chech. vaan/iaan ‘come’; vahan ‘ride, walk’ (compare: French venir );

evadir ‘avoid (anything)’; evadirse ‘leave, run away, hide’ – Chechen vadan/dadan/iadan ‘run away’;

Latin valeas! – 'leave me alone! get out!’, valeat ‘away, go away!’ Chechen valad’a/d’avala! ‘Get out, stop’!

All objects of the action of the Chechen verb diešan/dieshan ‘study, read’ belong to class d , which is preserved as a petrified prefix in the words denoting “learning and study” in all Romance languages: kiekhat dieshan, “read letter”, ioza dieshan ”read manuscript ', zhaina / tӓptir dieshan ‘read book '(compare: Latin edoceo, docēre ‘teach, learn’; Spanish docente ‘teaching’ docencia ‘study, learning’; docencia ‘teaching’ [palatalization of velars before e, i: k>ts/tch>š]).

Class d includes all nouns that are objects of action for the Chechen verb diitsan 'speak': duosh du 'word is', q'amel du 'conversation is', khabar du 'rumor (conversation) is', kiekhat du 'letter is' , ioza du 'writing is' (compare: Spanish decir 'speak; say'; decir 'word; expression, rumors' – Chechen diitsan/diitsar 'speak, story' – Chechen khabar diitsan 'speak', Spanish hablar 'speak, talk', linv . habla – Chech. habar 'conversation').

The Chechen transitional verb lie-van ‘deceive’ is a complex verb with a causative meaning, consisting of two bases: lien 'speak, blarney, speak a lot' and van (dan, ian) 'do' (compare: Spanish clavar ‘deceive; deception’). The Chechen verb biettan (iettan, diettan) ‘beat, knock’ is combined with the class of the object: Chechen kuogash/mira biettan ‘kick’, ghazh jettan ‘hit with a stick’ – Spanish patear ‘kick’, ‘stomp, trample’; batir ‘beat, pound, hit’ [b>p].

Compare: Spanish latigar ‘smack, beat with a whip’ – Chechen latan ‘fight’; afuetear ‘flog’ – Chechen jettan ‘flog, slash’ [b>p];

Spanish lidiar ‘fight (with anyone, anything)’; látigo ‘whip, scourge’ (compare French) – Chechen lietan ‘beat, fight’;

Spanish latido 1) ‘jerky barking (of a dog)’; 2) ‘beating, pulsation (of the heart)’ – Chechen zhalin lietar ‘dog barking’; (duog) dietta-dalar ‘heartbeat’;

Spanish lidia ‘fight, battle’ – Chechen latar/lietar ‘fight’.

4. Match of neuter ending -um in Latin and Chechen nouns

In Latin, neuter nouns in the second declension in Nom. Sing have the ending -um, also masculine and neuter nouns in Accus. Sing and Pl. have the ending -um: Latin corium [ii, n] ‘leather, woody bark’ – Chechen čq’or ‘leather’ [s> č; k> q ’] (compare: Greek keiro, Slavic ‘skin’, Lithuanian skiriu‘ strig ’);

Latin catillum/cadus ‘glass’, ‘saucer’; Chechen kad ‘cup, bowl’;

Latin serum [i, n] ‘yogurt’ – Chechen šar ‘whey’, šura ‘milk’.

In the Chechen language, a small number of nouns with the same ending -um remained

compare: khorsum 'turnip, radish', borshum 'clay flooring', hollum 'monument', h'oqum 'flat cake', gorgum 'rag', zulum/zulam 'evil', korzhum 'piece, broken part of something', k'ozhum' something burned down'. In the modern Chechen language, more regular is suffix -am, which is used in the formation of abstract names and concepts, for example, gulam ‘collection’, muqam ‘motive, chorus’, beram ‘sauce, spice’. It is likely that the petrified suffix -um morphed into the ending -am.

5. Isomorphism in formation of causation in the Chechen language and Sanskrit

Interestingly, in the Nakh languages and Sanskrit, when the causation is formed, a common morphological property is observed. Kulikov L. I. (1989) identifies the main stages of the development of the causative in Sanskrit, “in the late and post-Vedic period, the suffix -aya- displaces all other causative indicators, begins to join almost all verb roots”. In Nakh languages, a causative is formed in a similar way: the most productive suffixes of the causative are -iyta and -yan, formed from the suffixed verbs ditan (vitan, jitan, bitan ‘allow, leave’) and dan (van, jan, ban ‘do’).

Compare: Sanskrit vaháti ‘carries’ -vâháyâti ‘forces to carry’ (Chechen vakhan ‘go’ – vakhiytan ‘make to go’); Sanskrit vac ‘talk’ – vaac'aya ‘force to talk’ (Chechen dekan ‘tweet (about a bird)’, viecan ‘chat’ – viekiytan ‘let talk’);

jan-ati ‘is born’ – jan-yâti ‘gives birth’ (Chechen yo ’yan‘ give birth to a girl ’, k’antvan‘ give birth to a boy ’, behrdan‘ give birth to a baby’); Sanskrit vart 'spin' – varta-ya-ti 'spins' (Chechen vorta 'neck' – verzan 'turn around', verzijtan 'make turn around', compare: Latin ā – verto, versum, versare 1) 'turn', vertere 'twirl'; II āversor ‘turn away’; Chechen v-(d,b,i)-ierzan ‘turn around’, d’a-vierzan ‘turn away’, vuorta ‘neck’).

6. Common indicators in the formation of plural nouns in English and Chechen

In English, the plural of nouns is formed by adding the inflection -s/-es, while in the Chechen language this is done by adding sh (English plural: table – table- s , watch – watch- es ; Chechen kor – kora- sh , kad-keda- sh ). In comparative studies, it is well known that during the historical development of languages phonetic transformations of this kind are often observed, namely the simplification of affricates and tweaking and turning them into whistling sounds [tch>sh>s>z, dj>zh>z].

Conclusion

This article identifies and analyzes the formal and semantic correspondences in the morphological elements and root morphemes of different structural languages to supplement and clarify information about the languages in question, which can shed light on the history of the development of Indo-European and Caucasian languages. The linguistic facts discovered by us allow concluding that there are closer linguistic and cultural contacts between the Indo-European and Nakh languages in the prehistoric era.

Interestingly, in the Nakh and Indo-European languages, in the formation of grammatical categories and in the inflection system, a commonality of morphological properties is observed. The cognation of the Indo-European and Nakh languages is not proved (although there are lexical matches of the Chechen language with most of these languages), therefore, the correspondence system is not presented here, the regularity of these correspondences is not analyzed.

In our opinion, the commonality of the phonetic structure with the semantic adequacy of morphemes in the analyzed isoglosses is a consequence of the oldest contacts of the speakers of these languages.

References

• Anthony, D. W. (2008). A New Approach to Language and Archeology: The Usatovo Culture and the Separation of Pre-Germanic. The J. of Indo-Europ. Studies, 36, 1–51.
• Kulikov, L. I. (1989). Causatives in Sanskrit. (Cand. Dissertation thesis). Moscow. Retrieved from http://cheloveknauka.com/kauzativ-v-sanskrite
• Labov, W. (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language, 83, 344–387.
• Labov, W. (2001). Principles of linguistic change. Vol. 2. Social factors. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.
• Meye, A. (2009). Introduction to comparative study of Indo-European languages. Moscow: LIBRICOM.
• Pokorny, J. (1959). Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Retrieved from http://www.proto-indo-european.ru/dic-pokorny/index
• Samarin, D. A. (2010). Problem of mixing languages in the concept of G. Schuhardt. Retrieved from https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/problema-smesheniya-yazykov-v-kontseptsii-g-shuhardta
• Tokaeva, A. S. (2013). On the question of lexical correspondences in the Chechen and Romance languages. Bull. of ChSU, 2, 145–155.
• Tokaeva, A. S. (2016). Latin-Chechen lexical matches as a result of ancient contacts. Bull. of ChSU 1, 50–60.