Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Semitic/malʔak-

Is the etymology being confused with فرشته? Shuraya (talk) 08:47, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

No, the etymology is possibly correct at some point, but the idea that this is Proto-Semitic (or really any protolanguage) is ridiculous. This is obviously a culture word which has gotten around by contact. @Fay Freak, is there a good source to check for the etymologies here so this page can be deleted? مَلْأَك (malʔak) claims to be a borrowing from Hebrew, but hasn't got any sources. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 09:06, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: I thought so too and have now finally amended the Arabic page. You can delete the Proto-Semitic page now, the terms listed as descendants of it can now be found via the Arabic spellings.

If one fancies about imaginary friends in the heavens then the notion of messengers they have employed to relate to mortals – from a Judaeocentric POV lately keyworded “angels” – appears naturally, so it is not compelling to see even any early dependence between the Semitic and Iranian words. Fay Freak (talk) 13:52, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, before I delete it, we still have entries linking to it for which I am unsure how best to proceed. Can you take a look at those as well? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:42, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: The links are gone now. Fay Freak (talk) 23:22, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, Metaknowledge, I had this entry restored and moved it to a PWS entry. It's a pretty simply etymology and perfectly conceivable. The angel definition is more doubtful. I've read that that meaning spread from Hebrew to the rest of the Semitic tree, but influence from Iranian isn't completely absurd. --{{victar|talk}} 01:23, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: Only because of Ethiopian Semitic? This may well be Proto-Northwest-Semitic. But the Ethiopian Semitic is well believed to be a borrowing; the sense of a messenger is not often and a considerable part of the Gəʿəz corpus is from translations, else there was constant Jewish and Aramaic influence without religious translations (the whole section Hebräische und aramäische Wörter im Äthiopischen in Nöldeke’s Neue Beiträge is about these early adoptions, and this is only the first try). Else possibly a parallel formation, due to the fact that ለአከ (läʾäkä) was the word “to send”, so obviously one would derive the word for “messenger” from it, which Nöldeke seems to espouse.

I wouldn’t even bet though it is Proto-Northwest-Semitic. Names of occupations are liable to being borrowed, and as a messenger is sent across borders, you see that his profession’s name is particularly likely to be a borrowing, like the names of interpreters (Dolmetscher; تَرْجُمَان (tarjumān)). Fay Freak (talk) 01:56, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: I'm with Fay on this one. This kind of nominalisation is often produced in parallel, and the semantic range in Ethiosemitic is problematic. It's not a solid reconstruction at the level of PWS, and I don't really think we should be making any reconstructions that don't have support in the literature. Unless you have new evidence to bring to bear, I'd like to re-delete it (or we could send it to RFD, if you prefer due process). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:32, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Who claims the Ethiopian Semitic is borrowed? Nöldeke calls the word "native" to Ethiopian but that it gained more usage as a calque for the Hebrew term. And even if this word is just "Proto-Northwest-Semitic", that doesn't preclude it from being reconstructed -- we reconstruct plenty of words that are only North Sea Germanic and Common Turkic. --{{victar|talk}} 03:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: I don't know how to tease this apart, but everything about it is strange. The Arabic is a borrowing, the Syriac and Hebrew lack the base verb to derive it from, and in Ge'ez, the meaning "messenger" is vanishingly rare (where other derivations, including from the same root, prevail). Given the issues in the Aramaic group, even PNWS doesn't seem safe — not that we bother reconstructing it on Wiktionary to begin with. Given that this is a culture word, we run a serious risk of reconstructing something that is merely a widespread borrowing, and I'm not fond of taking that risk when I don't even see anyone doing so in the literature. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:19, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: "The Arabic is a borrowing, the Syriac and Hebrew lack the base verb to derive it from, and in Ge'ez, the meaning "messenger" is vanishingly rare (where other derivations, including from the same root, prevail)." None of the is particularly strange. Arabic has quite a few borrowing from Ge'ez, and Ge'ez from Aramaic. Also a nomitive derivative out-surviving a verb is nothing to write home about. --{{victar|talk}} 20:43, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: It's strange iff it's inherited. If you agree with me, then why did you make an unjustified PWS entry in the first place? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:05, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: Is *blīþisi an unjustified Proto West Germanic entry? What about Common Turkic *söŕ? --{{victar|talk}} 21:50, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: Maybe! I don't know enough about Germanic or Turkic to say. (It sounds like "Common Turkic" is akin to "Common Bantu" — not a real protolanguage, but a convenient fiction for our entries. But Common Bantu entries have a disclaimer to that effect.) Anyway, it seems we all agree this isn't PWS, so I really don't know what we're doing here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: Haha, well those would be some serious fighting words for people that work in those families. But if this is just a PNWS entry, then we should probably say so with a {{lb|sem-wes-pro|Northwest Semitic}} label. --{{victar|talk}} 22:48, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: Did you forget about the Aramaic problem? This isn't even secure as NWS! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any legitimate "Aramaic problem" or any issue in this being a "secure" reconstruction, and neither does the source I cite. --{{victar|talk}} 22:53, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: Which source reconstructs this? How can you call this secure when you admit it's not actually PWS? —Μετάknowledge^discussdeeds 02:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

See {{R:gez:Leslau-Comp.|303|head=malʾak}}. Since there is no lang code for Proto-Northwest Semitic, Proto-Northwest Semitic = Proto-West Semitic, just as Proto-West Germanic = Proto-North Sea Germanic = Proto-Anglo-Frisian Germanic, and Proto-Turkic = Common Turkic. --{{victar|talk}} 10:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: No, Leslau doesn’t. That’s exactly the case where the scholar has not been active to say anything at all. In the Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez he just lists all forms and literature voices he knows, and also compares without positioning himself on the borrowing direction, because he doesn’t need to as his task and book is already that great. Semitic there really means only that he groups his comparisons, not that he is reconstructing Proto-Semitic, although this dictionary is notoriously helpful to find the forms and literature for that purpose. This is again the misconception that everyone is trying to reconstruct the proto-language. The title of the book says exactly what he was doing. It’s a dictionary of Geʿez and thereafter it also contains naked comparisons.

I think Victar just clinges to a proto-page to show the comparanda in a descendants table rather than in an individual language’s etymology section as he is most averse to such lists. But how you portray things should follow how you found things to be and thus would like to stand for them, not the reverse, just claiming a proto-something because it will look more neat. Fay Freak (talk) 14:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Whoops, I'm sorry, I shared the wrong link. I meant to give {{R:sem-pro:Weninger-Handbook|page=464|passage=maLʾaK-}}. "Clinges"? You think this word being even Proto-Northwest Semitic is completely unreasonable? I don't see a strong argument for that opinion. --{{victar|talk}} 20:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: 🙄 {{R:sem-pro:Weninger-Handbook|page=464|passage=maLʾaK-}} is describing Ugaritic grammar. No, I don’t think the idea is unreasonable. It is reconciliable with what we know. But it is weakly evidenced and there are opposite assumptions equally or more reasonable, for which we have mentioned specific reasons or moments of suspicion. Fay Freak (talk) 20:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

The word also exists in Sabaean as 𐩣𐩡𐩱𐩫 (mlʾk). This paper might be of interest to you. --{{victar|talk}} 00:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

@Victar: The systematic interpretation: Nöldeke put it into a list of borrowings, so he had suspicion, while in the end, according to the literal interpretation, he opts for a native formation, but less from Proto-Semitic than a new formation from the verb, as he mentions its frequency; still says the Geʿez usage goes after the Hebrew. Whereas the Tigrinya, Tigre, and Amharic are juxtaposed to the Geʿez because they have a long second vowel like the Hebrew while the Geʿez has a short one like the Aramaic, serving the argument from which of Hebrew or Aramaic the term would have been borrowed. So he presents a choice between a formal borrowing from either Aramaic or Hebrew and a native parallel formation with later semantic influence from Aramaic or Hebrew, more the latter. Knowing Nöldeke (well, I wrote his bibliography), I can’t imagine he would have admitted inheritance from Proto-West Semitic, he would have rebuffed this your conceptualization.

Even independently of what anyone said (especially since the subjects of Ethiopian linguistics are so exotic that only a selection of scholars has been active to say anything at all; even for Arabic I come to explain basic words myself): You should weigh up all arguments that you can think of for inheritance on one hand and borrowing on the other hand, this is the method how one comes up with “yeah, I am ready to believe this existed already in the ancestral language”. It’s not that everything can be assumed inherited unless demonstrated a borrowing, that’s how one reconstructs Altaic and the attitude by which one is fine with “Proto-Albanian” pages … Fay Freak (talk) 14:04, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I can certainly see the argument for the Ethiopian being borrowed. The evidence is really strong for this being at least Proto-Northwest-Semitic, which the source I cited agrees with. --{{victar|talk}} 20:43, 15 February 2021 (UTC)