Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Semitic/wayn-

PWS ?

No East Sem reflex is provided. What do we do ?

1. An East Sem (Akkadian or Eblaite) reflex (not borrowing, which can be seen with regular sound shifts) is attested and must be put here to justify the PS reconstruction.
2. No Akk or Ebl reflex is attested and the page must be moved to Proto-West Semitic. What is more, as a Wanderwort (shared with IE and Kartvelian families), it's of course possible that the borrowing was in fact into PWS (Mediterranean side), not PS, explaining the absence of reflex in the East (Akkad city side). Malku H₂n̥rés (talk) 15:12, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

And it is also possible that the word is even later than Proto-West-Semitic, though it must have spread early enough to partake in the w→y shift in Northwest-Semitic. The Arabic word, which is exotic and I haven not been able to find any use of it whatsoever after trying multiple times (one quotes it after mentions in medieval lexicographers), has been declared borrowed from Old South Arabian. Of course, since viniculture was not common in Central Arabia (خَمْر (ḵamr) was “wine” in the loose sense, to say nothing about the allegations of it too being borrowed from Aramaic). I wonder what’s the craic with Persian وین (“black grape”) added by Irman; if from the Arabic word then it can only be an obscure word of Persian poetry, and he was prone to adding such words (whereas as far as I know never making up words, just insufferable etymologies). Fay Freak (talk) 15:56, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

PWS seems safe enough to me, because of the inherited Ethiosemitic and the sound-change as mentioned above. @Fay Freak: The Arabic should be added, especially to note that it is only found in mentions, and the entry خَمْر (ḵamr) is bereft of allegations; could you please add them if merited? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:12, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: Yes, the time-frame between that sound change and Proto-West-Semitic won’t be too large. For خَمْر (ḵamr), see for example Guidi, Ignazio (1879) Della sede primitiva dei popoli semitici (in Italian), Rome: Tipi del Salviucci, page 43 – also page 2 of the 3-page treatise Alcune osservazioni sulle gutturali ḥ et ḫ nelle lingue semitiche attached to the end of that book – defending exactly this, and then Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, pages 160–161, and Jeffery, Arthur (1938) The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Gaekwad’s Oriental Series; 79), Baroda: Oriental Institute, page 125 assents and says the orign is doubtless the Aramaic חמרא / ܚܡܪܐ (ḥamrā) – to the already mentioned Guidi and Fraenkel he references Jacob, Georg (1897) Altarabisches Beduinenleben nach den Quellen geschildert‎^[1] (in German), 2nd edition, Berlin: Mayer & Müller, page 99 who does not fail to emphasize how wine was slinged by the Yahud; the other reference is, for your convenience, Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 181, and he could have mentioned Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, page 158 with the same observation. But I have used to find it hard to swallow. The word fits well into the root خ م ر (ḵ-m-r) related to fermentation, and many common words like in the root, in addition to the old broader meaning “wine sensu lato = a fermented drink”, would have to be denominal from it or borrowed from Aramaic words; so Jeffery: “it is suggested many of the other forms from [خ م ر (ḵ-m-r)] are of Aramaic origin”. And the correspondence Aramaic ח (ḥ) → Arabic خ (ḵ) is bugging unless the Arabic is borrowed in the incipient 1st millenium BC or earlier when Aramaic still distinguished the sounds (a historical state Guidi couldn’t know, and Fraenkel and Jacob couldn’t talk about that far back a time), as I assume for خَاتَم (ḵātam, “signet”), though occasionally Aramaic ח (ḥ) → Arabic خ (ḵ) happened later as witnessed by not few terms in the list of Arabic Aramaisms, it is just not so typical. I guess it is easiest to note the notion of borrowing for all at the root page, not to exercise much exactness where there is much darkness. Fay Freak (talk) 23:06, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Done that. I also found more, @Metaknowledge, at Sima p. 256 where he notes the word’s presence in the Amarna letters and talks about 23 OSA attestations (quoting them in extenso the pages before) and dates the sound changes to the mid of the 2nd millenium BC at the latest, and therefore the word as before the mid of the 2nd millenium BC. But the Arabic he knows only from the dictionary Lisān al-ʿarab. Fay Freak (talk) 23:50, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: Reminder, that’s where we stumbled upon خَمْر (ḵamr). Well I did as I professed, to remark “the notion of borrowing for all at the root page”.

Those logics in {{R:sem-pro:GC|page=418}} do not work, although it is often useful to remind oneself of the commonness of a word (else the etymological dictionaries are filled with unlikely comparisons with dictionary-only words, and they “rewrite dialectal Arabic prehistory” from that). Often borrowings end up being the common word while in the source language they were one of many. An extreme example that comes to mind is Tagalog kahel (“orange”), which according to Kogan’s argumentation structure “less likely from Spanish” because there it is an obscure borrowing from our ex post view – apparently somewhen it wasn’t particularly rare, it just looks like that afterwards.

And those attestations said there by Kogan, there by Sima, or on the page of חַמְרָא (ḥamrā) from the Book of Daniel (if Arabic borrowed back then it would still have خ (ḵ) instead of ح (ḥ)) show the word strong enough.

You also noted at Talk:بن how from prestige or colonial influence it is even possible that a foreign intruder replaces the native word for a local plant, seemingly contra frequencies, a similar mechanism; then it is even easier of course for a language to acquire a borrowing if a plant or produce from it is not native. Fay Freak (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2021 (UTC)