Day: June 20, 2018

tanadrin:

It’s a fundamental
principle of historical linguistics that vocabulary affects material culture:
debates about the origins of the Indo-Europeans are substantially colored by
the fact there are common Indo-European roots for “wheel” (e.g., *kʷékʷlos,
from the reduplicated form of *kʷel-, “turn”) and associated
technologies, which we would expect if the Indo-European dialects did not break
up before the invention of that device. This is an argument against the
Anatolian hypothesis, which has Indo-European originating much earlier, and
following the spread of agriculture into Europe, while bolstering the theory
that PIE arose on the Pontic steppe, and, like so many cultural invasions after
it, swept into Europe from the east. To the extent that wheels were integral
parts of subsequent cultures that spoke Indo-European languages, the common
word for these objects took on a life of its own and was subject to the normal
vicissitudes of sound change: words like chakra, wheel, and cycle
are roots in their own right in the daughter languages, not derived forms kept
regular by analogy.

In that spirit, I offer
the following etymologies from a possible future daughter-language of English,
whose technology, though having developed as far past our own as ours has that
of the Indo-Europeans, bears the unmistakable marks of an earlier era—if you
know where to look.

feshu < pēshɨ <
“spaceship”: Simplification of the initial consonant cluster and
monophthongization, the reduction of final unvoiced stops to glottal stops
before being lost entirely, and the lenition of /p/. The final ɨ of the middle
form participates in a chain shift of short vowels, becoming a back, rounded
vowel. In a few dialects that experienced tonogenesis, this final /u/ retains
its rising tone.

fallan < pārlan < “power plant”: fallan retains its final
nasal, but is otherwise subject to similar rules; note also the assimilation of
/rl/, part of a general trend away from the complex Indo-European consonant
clusters of the parent language, possibly influenced by the adoption of the
language by a large number of non-native speakers.

nokhufe < nokkirpar <
“nuclear power”: Here, the relentless ablation of trailing syllables, triggered
by English’s persistent initial stress, is evident. Unstressed syllables are
monopthongized and shortened, and the medial syllable of the middle form is
nearly lost entirely—saved by the semivocalic nature of <r> and its
position between two stops. Still, an even more abbreviated form, noffe,
is attested where dialects rejected /krf/ as a valid consonant cluster.

nitho < netuar < “(computer)
network”: More lenition of unvoiced consonants; original /w/ acquires syllabic
and vocalic properties, and the final syllable is lost entirely.

atten < (as[u]then <)
hāssɨttem < “filesystem”:
Merger of final nasals and loss of medial syllable due to the shift of
secondary emphasis to the final syllable. Note that in at least one *NIX-using
culture, this shift in emphasis did not take place, meaning the
intermediate form asuthen was retained and, before this dialect was
supplanted, was reborrowed into the standard language to mean “*NIX-derived (ext*-based)
filesystems” specifically.

shunia < tshɨnirn <
“(genetic) engineering”
shinshun < tshintshɨnir
< “genegineer” (portmanteau)
thirren < tinrin < “(cybernetic)
engineering”

A triplet of words
originally derived from the same root, English engineer(ing). In each
case, the word came to mean “enhancement or repair of organisms via advanced technology,”
but in slightly different cultural circumstances. Shunia refers
exclusively to plants and nonhuman animals, especially when altering them to
adapt them to new environments. Shinshun refers to the practice of
altering humans; the original semantic scope has changed from “those who study
or implement such alterations” to “genegineers and their area of study”
and finally just to “those who are so altered.” The third, thirren,
refers to a combination of genetic and prosthetic technology whether applied to
humans or to any other organism.

In the first /r/
eventually acquired an attenuated quality akin to German final r /ɐ/, and stress shifted to the first syllable. The second
follows the normal course of sound changes given a slightly altered original
form. The third word, on the other hand, has passed through either a dialect or
another language, before being reborrowed into the standard language sometime
in its middle phase of development. As a result, the structure of its vowels
are less altered, and the initial consonant cluster has been simplified in a
different manner.