Reconstruction talk:Proto-Indo-European/péh₂wr̥

@Chuck Entz@Fay Freak@AryamanAI don’t think it’s correct to say that PIE péh₂wr̥ meant both “fire” and “spelt”. Neither Mallory & Adams nor Ivanov & Gramkelidze consider this PIE word to have meant “spelt”. For “spelt” they reconstruct a different PIE word not connected to fire. It’s only reference #3 in this article that claims the PIE word for fire and spelt is the same, which is either outdated etymology or a minority/fringe view among scholars. It’s not widely accepted among scholars that this PIE word meant spelt. In fact, I can’t find any other source that corroborates this claim. Therefore, I believe we should be consistent with the mainstream view and remove spelt from this page. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 17:49, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Foreverknowledge: It’s not fringe because nobody has disagreed. Nor do I have a penchant for outdated or fringe views. In fact, as expected, some even accepted Трубачёв’s understanding (I found him via a reference from somewhere else). Other’s just ignored it, in the literal sense that they did not know it or didn’t care (likely because uh, it’s in Russian; language barriers should not be ignored in favour of Anglocentrism). However there is no contradiction if we follow this equation; more, it appears to be needed, for how do you explain the identity of meanings of certain grasses and cinder in Proto-Slavic *pyrь? How do you connect the rest of the terms for grasses? The actual slant was that before my dealing with it the plant meanings, though attested better than the cinder meaning, were not shown. Which of course can be related to the human and humanities’ fascination with fire, rather than with the “fringe field” of botany. Without the plant meanings however, there isn’t even much left to reconstruct. Before I recognized the identity of the meanings I was somewhat inclined to RFD this PIE page because the amount of descendants with such a general meaning as fire and two matching consonants alone may leave too much room for coincidence.

You didn’t tell us why Sanskrit पूर (pūra, “a kind of cake or pastry; a fragrant grass (Cyperus scariosus)”) (which Gamkrelidze and Vasmer amongst others put to the grass meanings) is not related to anything in our group here – which root is it? I did not necessarily believe the Sanskrit is related but I could not counter this connection recurring in literature with anything either, I mainly came for the Slavic part and because I wanted to solve a certain group of similar plant names, and the result seemed satisfactory, so you made me interested what you propose in contrast. In the end on Wiktionary we have to make sure that the forms and meanings we have are concerted and we can’t just plead ignorance because in majority sources the connection is not expressed. It’s always a piecemeal work of compiling something more complete than was there before. Fay Freak (talk) 18:32, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak:Mallory & Adams proposed PIE *puh_xro´s for spelt (or rather wheat), and PIE *pe´h₂ur for fire. Ivanov & Gramkelidze proposed PIE *pʰūr for spelt (or rather wheat), and PIE *pʰHHur for fire. So both of those sources obviously disagree with Trubachev that spelt and fire are the same PIE word. Have you found any other source that supports Trubachev's statement that spelt and fire are from the same PIE word? It seems to me that Trubachev's claim, if not a fringe view, is certainly not the mainstream view. So the question then becomes: should we leave this page with both definitions (fire and spelt), or create a new page for spelt/wheat similar to the proposals by Mallory & Adams and Ivanov & Gramkelidze?

RL Turner suggested the Sanskrit पूर is either connected to Sanskrit अपूप, पूप (loanwords from Dravidian) or, echoing Manred Mayrhofer, is derived from the other meaning of पूर (filling, from PIE pl̥h₁nós). --Foreverknowledge (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Foreverknowledge: It makes sense to have multiple pages. I am open to it depending on what looks more cleanly. It seems at least difficult to carry it out for the Slavic page. Paralleling that it appears to be uncertain which forms are to be posited for Proto-Indo-European. It also makes sense to not have multiple pages for Indo-European but mention the varying reconstructions and the uncertainty or (unconsidered) dispute about the separation. I say unconsidered because the fact that the senses were reconstructed separately is not strictly a statement about the idea of a connection. What may be considered is that is difficult for a single language to have the same word for fire as for spelt.

The thing common in multiple reconstructions is probably that the spelt word is masculine but the fire word neuter (although not in the Slavic part, as most is masculine even in i-stem where Illič-Svityč's law does not apply and even spelt meanings are neuter o-stems). The principal connection between the words is at least insightful about an Indo-European root, so we might have a root page based on the two words – as a root-relation is not disputed, whereas seemingly unrelated separate reconstructions after Mallory & Adams are problematic as they have never even seen the possibility of a connection.

What I have had in mind with the connection is Proto-Slavic *pьrga which means “roasted victuals ground and pulped together (such as spelt? quote at the Serbo-Croatian)” and in some descendants even “beebread“, while evidently deriving from a well-known word for frying, or say roasting with fire, which made the connection particularly attractive to me.

The least measure you can take is to mention various reconstruction possibilities at this one page, but I agree there is room for embetterment. The question is in the end also what could or should be reconstructed, form and paradigm, if we assume that the two senses are connected, or whether a connection should be discarded altogether because it cannot be devised formally. Fay Freak (talk) 00:10, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

What speaks against two pages however is that if we subtract the Sanskrit, which you did convincingly, we basically only have Balto-Slavic and Greek, the latter suspect to be a loanword from an extinct IE family close to Balto-Slavic. The English furze is of uncertain origin and it is too bad that it is only found in English and not else in Germanic. For the Balto-Slavic we have a better explanation from Nieminen listed at the Slavic. So according to this is all unrelated, only possibly to the word for fire, or for more coherence: the senses are related through a root that does not contain /r/ but the word for fire is from the same root as Latin paviō because fire was made by striking stones, so *péh₂wr̥ is “the struck thing, the thing obtained by striking”. So we have to swap the suffix? Fay Freak (talk) 00:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Mallory & Adams said the following (all of the diacritics may not appear properly as a I copied and pasted):

*puh_xro´s 'wheat (Triticum sp.)'. [JEW850 (*pu-ro-); Wat

53 (*puro-); GI 566 (*p^hur-)~ Buck 8.431. OPrus pure

'bromegrass (Bromus secalinus)', Lith purai'" 'winter-wheat',

Latv puri 'winter-wheat', OCS pyro 'wheat, millet', Rus pyrej)

'couch grass (Agropyrum l= Triticum] repens)' , Czech pyr

'couch grass', Slov pir 'spelt', Grk πυρός 'wheat', πυρήν '(stone

of a) fruit'. OE fyrs 'furze' (> NE furze) is rejected both on

account of its meaning 'furze' rather than 'couch grass' and

its short rather than long vowel, i.e., < *p[si-. A word limited

to the center of the IE world; probably late. It may be that we

have a derivative of *pieh_xu- 'strike (down)', but only in Baltic

does the latter come to have any agricultural meaning, namely

'mow (grass)'. Another possibility is that we have here a

derivative of *peuh_x- 'purify' as '± that which is winnowed'

or the like. One might compare Lat triticum 'wheat' from

tero 'rub, thresh', OIr cruithnecht 'wheat' « *'red stuff for

winnowing'), or OCS pisenica 'wheat' « *'[grain] for

grinding').

So I would suggest a Wiktionary entry for *puh_xro´s (or something similar) with the definitions "wheat" and "spelt". We can move all the spelt, wheat, and grass related definitions for the daughter languages to the new Wiktionary entry (with the exception of OE fyrs since that is unlikely to be related to any of these words). In the etymology details we would mention a possible connection to the word for "fire" (with Trubachev as reference) and a possible relation to the word for "strike down" or "purify" (with Mallory & Adams as reference). The advantage with that is we would acknowledge the possibility of a relationship to the word for "fire", but at the same time not state that "fire" and "spelt" are the same word. Do you agree with my proposal or oppose? — This unsigned comment was added by Foreverknowledge (talk • contribs) at 19:09, 6 February 2021 (UTC).

@Foreverknowledge: Basically that’s about what I suggested, too, as one possibility. But we can’t rely too much on Mallory & Adams’s forms and have to reckon the exact forms and the existence of the grass word in PIE uncertain. Do we have *pieh_xu- 'strike (down)', should we have it, can you make it (the PIE root form on Latin paviō is likely outdated)? Then we do not even need to have a PIE page for the plant name (the existence of which is doubtful even after Mallory & Adams in spite of their mentioning it hypothetically, technically it should have three stars as an only possible form not really assumed; I assumed it here of course also on the Sanskrit, knowing now different derivation). In that root page, if warranted by verbs, we can show the Balto-Slavic and Greek under derived terms like e.g. terms on *h₂yew- (referencing also with the explanation I summarized from Eino Nieminen at *pyrь, and referring to the alternative explanation with *peuhx- 'purify' and the alternative explanation with fire; a derivation from “to strike” seems the likeliest explanation especially with the comparisons Latin *pьšeno, Latin trīticum etc.). Fay Freak (talk) 19:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Michael de Vaan in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages also considers the word for wheat to be connected to “pure/clean” and possibly “strike”, rather than to “fire”, so those seem the more plausible etymologies. I’ll go ahead and make those changes to the pages. Feel free to add information. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 03:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)