In an earlier article entitled Father sky in ancient Greek and Sanskrit the word designating the ancient Indo-European deity presiding over of the heavens has been discussed in connection with the very close correspondences between the declension of the word sky in ancient Greek and Sanskrit. The present article is its parent and discusses the declension of the word father in Greek and Sanskrit and the features which point to both words being sons of the same father.
Most people will know that all Indo-European languages have words for father that exhibit clear external features marking their provenance from one ancestral word. And it is indeed from the observation of the close relation of basic Sanskrit, ancient Greek and Latin cognates, such as पिता (pitā), πατηρ (patēr) and pater, that the entire discipline of comparative linguistics took its beginning. Although the relationship of the three forms above is obviously very close, it is also equally superficial – just an artificially immobile still of one moment in the development of a language or of one fixed shape that has been reached. But results in themselves are never of importance, the causes that led to the results are what matters – results are as mute as photographs, causes eloquent with tales of evolution. For more on the subject read The erosion of cases.
People are generally much less aware of the fact, that the most revealing insights about the relationship of the different forms of this very ancient word only comes once one explores their verticality, i.e. once one penetrates the crust of their outer appearance and compares the different case forms that constitute their filling. We do certainly not content ourselves with merely looking at a praline – no! we want to know what is hidden inside, be the surprise good or bad. So why be happy to look at the crust of words and not crack them open to reveal their declensional filling?
The forms discussed here are the nominative, accusative, genitive and dative of the singular. These are, in the order give above: पिता (pitā), πατηρ (patér); पितरम् (pitaram), πατερα (patéra); पितुः (pituḥ), πατρος (patrós) and पित्रे (pitre), πατρι (patrí).
The first fact that becomes evident when one compares the different case forms of the words पिता (pitā) and πατηρ (patér) is that the word consists of three components, two of which are modular, meaning they alternatively appear in longer and shorter forms. The characteristic feature of the nominative, both in Greek and Sanskrit, is the lack of the last of the three components, but they all appear clearly in the accusative, where we have पितरम् (pitaram) in Sanskrit and πατερα (patéra) in Greek, which words consist of the root पि-/πα- (pi/pa), the suffix -तर्-/-τερ- (tar/tér) and the case ending -अम्/-α (am/a). When one moves on to the genitive case of Greek, the same three components are still present, but here the repartition of weight between them has changed. In the genitive πατρος (patrós), the second element is suddenly contracted to a mere -τρ- (tr), while the case ending has the form -ος (os), the short form of which would be just -ς (-s).
Greek reveals that the factor governing this change between short and long forms of the last two components of the word is accent. In the accusative the accent is placed on the suffix -τερ- (tér) (note that accent is not indicated in the original Greek due to problems with the font used in this blog), while in the genitive the accent is placed on the case ending -ος (ós), what causes the suffix to assume its shortest form -τρ- (tr). The surprising fact is that the effects of these shifts of accent were so ingrained in the structure of the ancestral language from which Greek and Sanskrit later developed, that even in a language like Sanskrit, which has, in its classical form, lost all evidence of the original Indo-European accent system, these effects – the results of a lost cause – still resonate with great clarity in the shift between weak and strong cases, which is so distinctive of the classical language of India. So while the genitive पितुः (pituḥ) of Sanskrit is insufficiently explained and does not bear any clear relation to the Greek form given above, the dative पित्रे (pitre) has an exactly corresponding structure consisting of the root पि- (pi), the short form of the suffix त्र् (tr) and the long form of the case ending -ए (e). The Greek dative itself has the structurally exactly corresponding form πατρι (patrí), which consists of the root πα- (pa), the weak, unaccented suffix -τρ- (tr) and the strong, accented ending -ι (í). The reason for the absence of correspondence between the case endings of the Greek and Sanskrit forms, is that the Greek dative is often, as here, derived from the original Indo-European locative, which appears, in the case of the noun here discussed, as पत्रि (patri) or पितरि (pitari) in Sanskrit. The first form of the Sanskrit locative corresponds in every detail to the dative of Greek, the second form is a variant with accent on the suffix found in Sanskrit only.
What of the accusative? As we have seen above, it has the endings अम्/-α (am/a) in Sanskrit and in Greek. According to the rule that accented components appear in their long form and unaccented in their short form, the case ending should, due to the accent on the suffix, appear in its short form. But does it? What is the exact relationship of the two very different case endings of Greek and Sanskrit? The typical Indo-European marker for the accusative case is *-m (the asterisk indicates a form that has been reconstructed using the comparison of different attested languages, but is itself not attested as such). In stems ending in a vowel this resulted in the case ending *-om, for example, which is -ον (on) in Greek and अम् (am) in Sanskrit. When, as here, the stem ended in a consonant, the direct contact of the accusative marker resulted in the ending *-ṃ. The point under the letter indicates that the sound m functions as a vowel; that the m has become capable of bearing a syllable and can therefore act as a support for consonants, which can by themselves not constitute a syllable. Comparative linguistics has proved that the regular development of this syllabic m is -α (a) in Greek and अम् (am) in Sanskrit. The appearance of this set of sound correspondences must therefore mean that the ending in the accusative was originally *-ṃ, meaning that it assumed, as expected, its shortest form due to the absence of accent on it.
It now becomes clear how little information is to be gathered from the nominative alone and how little it tells us about the depth of the relationship between the two words as a record of their growth and development; how little it tells us about words seen not as inanimate shapes on paper, but as living entities that grow, change and breathe the same air than we do. But what of the nominative? In both languages the nominative is characterised by the absence of a case ending, which is replaced by the special lengthened grade of the suffix. According to this पिता (pitā) consists of the root पि- (pi) and the lengthened suffix -ता (tā), the Greek word πατηρ (patēr) of the root πα- (pa) and the lengthened suffix -τηρ (tēr). It is a typical feature of Sanskrit that this kind of suffix loses its final consonant when appearing in its lengthened form. For example Sanskrit माता (mātā) corresponds to Greek μητηρ (mētēr) and the nouns राजा (rājā) or आत्मा (ātmā) are n-stems, which have the base forms राजन् (rājan) and आत्मन् (ātman).
Silvio Zinsstag,
teacher for ancient languages
Does zabaan offer a course on ancient greek? I self studied Sanskrit and Latin. I also took a coursera course on PIE and its sound laws and hence i am familiar with grammatical endings in greek. I am picking up some Greek. I came across this article accidentally and I thought it would be useful if I learnt atleast Greek from an actual person instead of books, especially from people who can teach comparatively with sanskrit and latin, so that it would make my learning faster
Hi! Apologies for the late response- we do have a teacher who teaches both ancient Greek and Sanskrit. If you’d like to get in touch with us at learn@zabaan.com we’d love to help you get started with an assessment meeting with the teacher- this way you can discuss your goals before getting started into lessons. Thanks!
For the origins of the bare root, I would suggest thinking about the earliest sounds of baby talk. Ba, ma, da, ta, ga, na, etc. With a tendency to repeat syllables. Languages far apart in time, culture, and geography often seem to converge on similar words for close family members – especially after adding the usual sound shifts. (ba pa fa and da ta for example) Perhaps the common factor in such words is that all of these languages are products of Homo sapiens vocal anatomy.
Pls continue with your discussions on comparative linguistics, with indispensable languages such as ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Latin and some ancient Germanic languages. Thought i can open a different spectrum that you have not seen before. If you don’t want to see it, its OK. Its not your loss, and its not my loss.
You missed a critical element in the article.. that the root ‘Pa’ is from Tamil language. They write as ‘aPPa’.. and call as ‘ppa’.
I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you. If the word/root would only be attested in Sanskrit then your theory could be tenable, as Sanskrit has demonstrably borrowed a number of words from various Dravidian languages, but the word is attested in all Indo-European languages without exception and exhibits typically Indo-European sound correspondences between the languages, which would not be expected from a loan word. The pa- and pi- of Greek and Sanskrit go back to Proto-Indo-European *ph2. The *h2 is a so called laryngeal, the second laryngeal is always reflected as “a” in Greek and “i” in Sanskrit in inter-conconantal position. Such consistent behaviour puts it beyond doubt that the word is of purely Indo-European origin. Furthermore, the Dravidian languages are native to India, while Sanskrit is a language that has been brought to the subcontinent by migration. How could it then be that the word is found in all Indo-European languages as part of the absolute core vocabulary, if it has been adopted by the only Indo-European languages that has made it so far south as to come into contact with the family of the Dravidian languages? I regret to say that your theory is untenable, both on linguistic and on historical grounds.
You are half way through your research. In the sense, 1) you have stopped at PIE, which is a constructed unreal language, 2) you have stopped at what you read in books, that is Dravidian is India specific
For the first point, lets look at a real language, ie Sumerian Tamil. Father is mentioned as pPA or bBA (Abbu) in Sumerian as well. By the way, Sumerian is the basis for Akkadian and Goth languages – which means basis for every language of the world.
For the second point, How could Dravidian be found in Pakistan/Afghanistan? How could Indus valley be Dravidian? How could Sumerian be more closer to Tamil? Continue your research!!
Unless you dwell deeper into the connection between Tamil and world languages/ world religions, you can never become a thorough linguist.
I agree, the statement that the Dravidian languages are native to India might have been misleading, as I am very much aware of the fact, that there are Dravidian speech pockets scattered across Pakistan and further afield. Having said that, I still do not really see your point, as you offer no evidence for your claim, other than a vague phonetical similarity between the Tamil root and that found in the various Indo-European words for father. It appears, you hold the antiquity of Tamil alone to give you the licence to take whatever word or root from it and claim that any other similar word is derived from Tamil. Many words in the languages of the world sound similar, that still does not prove that one needs to be derived from the other. If you tell me that one can only become a good linguist if one knows Tamil, then fair enough, that might be true, even if there have been many great linguists in the past who got along pretty well without knowledge of Tamil. But if you claim that Sumerian Tamil – whatever odd mongrel language Sumerian Tamil might actually be (and you talk of PIE being an “unreal” language!) – is the source of all languages of the world, then I honestly have to say that you might need to read more real books about linguistics instead of just following mere flights of fancy, as this is utterly untenable and delusional beyond expression. I also fail to understand what you mean by Goth languages. If you mean the Gothic language, i.e. the earliest attested language belonging to the Germanic family, then how on earth is this supposed to be related in any way to Akkadian, a semitic language? I think your opinions are more based on a fervent desire to make Tamil the mother of all languages than on scientific evidence. You quite arrogantly claim that I am only half way through my research, but yourself offer no more than wild assumptions without even a whisper of proof. Also, I think you totally misunderstood the intention of the article, as it never was my aim to prove that the root comes from this or that language, but that by observing the real development of real nominal paradigms in real languages, one can learn much about the real nature of words and how they develop like real living organisms. Please only continue this discussion if you have real linguistic evidence to buttress your claims, just stating it as a fact that has escaped me is not enough to impress me. I could equally well just emphatically tell you that the root you are talking about has been taken by Tamil from the Indo-European languages. Also, which languages do you know apart from Tamil and English? Do you know ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Latin and some ancient Germanic language? I am asking, since for many years these have in fact been the languages that are held to be indispensable for a thorough discussion of comparative linguistics, not Tamil.