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Books by Michiel de Vaan
Kantonophonie, 2022
Die sprachliche und historische Herkunft schweizerischer Kantonsnamen.
DIGITALE ETYMOLOGIEËN. Toevoegingen bij het Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2020
Additions to the Etymological Dictionary of Dutch, written between 2014 and 2018.
Uit het Litouws vertaald door Michiel de Vaan
Guest-edited volume of Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik, nr. 77.
A concise grammar of Avestan, incl. abundant information on the historical grammar of the languag... more A concise grammar of Avestan, incl. abundant information on the historical grammar of the language. Also a small number of selected texts with a glossary. 160pp.
Collection of papers from a conference.
50 assignments from the Dutch Linguistic Olympics 2001-2009, with extensive solutions.
Philological study and linguistic analysis of all Avestan vowel graphemes and phonemes.
"Full grammar of Avestan, including some texts. Reviewed by: Ilya Yakubovich, in: Journal of ... more "Full grammar of Avestan, including some texts.
Reviewed by:
Ilya Yakubovich, in: Journal of Indo-European Studies 29 (2001), 476-481
Philip Huyse, in: Abstracta Iranica 25 (2002), online: http://abstractairanica.revues.org/document4116.html
Almut Hintze, in: Kratylos 50 (2005), 200-203
Xavier Tremblay, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 100 (2005), fasc. 2, 144-145"
Papers by Michiel de Vaan
Indo-European Linguistics, 2024
Albanian possesses eight different lexemes built to a radical element vetë, with meanings ranging... more Albanian possesses eight different lexemes built to a radical element vetë, with meanings ranging from ‘person’, ‘self’, ‘own’ to ‘only’ and ‘apart’. The aim of this paper is to clarify the distribution and meaning of these words in Old Albanian, in particular, in texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I also discuss the etymology of these various stems, though the ultimate origin of vet(ë) cannot be established.
Indo-European Linguistics, 2024
The animate accusative singulars of ky 'this' , ai 'that, he' , and kush 'who' are këtë, atë, and... more The animate accusative singulars of ky 'this' , ai 'that, he' , and kush 'who' are këtë, atë, and kë in Tosk dialects, whereas Geg vacillates between final-ë and nasal-ã, of which the latter is limited to argument position. Geg dialects furthermore distinguish kã 'whom?' from kãn 'someone'. This article surveys the dialectal evidence from modern dialects, sketches the Old Albanian situation, and discusses the linguistic history of the relevant forms.
Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 120, 45-79., 2010
Nederlands koorts kan etymologisch verbonden worden met Gotisch kriustan (ww.) en krusts (zn.) 'k... more Nederlands koorts kan etymologisch verbonden worden met Gotisch kriustan (ww.) en krusts (zn.) 'klappertanden'; het oorspronkelijke woord gaf dan een symptoom van hoge koorts aan. Dit artikel behandelt de dialectgeografie van koorts op basis van de Reeks Nederlandse Dialectatlassen en onderzoekt de spelling van *o en *u voor r plus dentaal in het Vroegmiddelnederlands. De conclusie luidt dat de precieze etymologie (*o of *u, de positie van *r) niet te bepalen is omdat de klinkerrekking bij koorts een ander patroon vertoont dan bij woorden die in de meeste dialecten rekking hebben, zoals als moord en woord, maar ook verschilt van woorden die steeds een korte klinker vertonen, zoals kort. Het onderzoek naar het dertiende-eeuwse materiaal geeft aanleiding om de in 1907 door van Wijk geponeerde regel in twijfel te trekken, volgens welke West-Germaans *ort/d altijd en *urt/d nooit Nederlands oort/d opleverde. Mogelijk heeft de stemtoon van de dentale obstruent een bepalende invloed gehad op de klinkerlengte, wat resulteerde in -oord- tegenover -ort-.
Investigating West Germanic Languages: Studies in honor of Robert B. Howell Edited by Jennifer Hendriks and B. Richard Page., 2024
This paper investigates the etymology of Dutch mooi ‘beautiful’. It argues that mooi and Dutch mo... more This paper investigates the etymology of Dutch mooi ‘beautiful’. It argues that mooi and Dutch mouw 'sleeve', which are not directly related within Germanic, may be derived from the same PIE root *muH- 'move'.
Jaarboek van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde 25, 2024
In 1933 werd in het Rijksarchief in Brussel een Latijnstalige jaarrekening ontdekt, waarvan de te... more In 1933 werd in het Rijksarchief in Brussel een Latijnstalige jaarrekening ontdekt, waarvan de tekst in 1953 door Meihuizen is gepubliceerd. De Rekening van Gelre beschrijft afdrachten uit alle delen van het graafschap Gelre in het rekenjaar 1294/95. Taalkundige analyse van de volkstalige woorden en namen in de rekening toont aan dat hier regionale deelrekeningen ongewijzigd in de Brusselse samenvatting zijn opgenomen. De stad Geldern zelf vormt het middelpunt van een aantal van de bewijsdragende taal- en schrijfkenmerken.
Swe gameliþ ist. Studien zur vergleichenden germanischen Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für Ludwig Rübekeil zum 65. Geburtstag., 2023
Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 2023
The Limburgian dialects contain a participial formation that is traditionally called a gerund, bu... more The Limburgian dialects contain a participial formation that is traditionally called a gerund, but is in fact a converb. The suffix appears in different forms. Since the emergence and development of the converb have not been convincingly explained so far, in this paper I revisit the topic. More precisely, I introduce the converb, discuss the history of the existing studies, treat the different formal variants of the suffix, and propose a linguistic-historical scenario that explains the converb as a continuation of a predicative adjective form on -ēr from Old High German Times.
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Vol. 18.1. P. 412–425, 2022
The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘salt’ has reflexes in all the main branches of the Indo-Europea... more The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘salt’ has reflexes in all the main branches of the Indo-European languages with the exception of Anatolian. It can be reconstructed as a neuter l-stem: *séh₂-l, *sh₂-él-.
A unique feature of this word is a stem-final element *d in some but not all branches of the family. Evidence for *d is found in Armenian, Germanic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic, with a possible further trace in Indo-Iranian. Since *-d- cannot be explained as an independent innovation that occurred in each branch, this formant was most likely an integral part of the late Proto-Indo-European paradigm of the word for ‘salt’.
In this paper, I propose that Late PIE *sh₂éld continues the Indo-Anatolian instrumental singular form *sh₂élt which came to be used as a subject marker when the protolanguage switched from ergative to nominative alignment. The attested word-final *‑d is the result of a phonetic shift *‑t > *‑d that happened after the Anatolian languages had split off. The final *-d of *sʕald was lost in Tocharian and Greek, and was reanalyzed as part of the stem in other branches.
Kantonophonie, 2022
Die sprachliche und historische Herkunft schweizerischer Kantonsnamen.
DIGITALE ETYMOLOGIEËN. Toevoegingen bij het Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, 2020
Additions to the Etymological Dictionary of Dutch, written between 2014 and 2018.
Uit het Litouws vertaald door Michiel de Vaan
Guest-edited volume of Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik, nr. 77.
A concise grammar of Avestan, incl. abundant information on the historical grammar of the languag... more A concise grammar of Avestan, incl. abundant information on the historical grammar of the language. Also a small number of selected texts with a glossary. 160pp.
Collection of papers from a conference.
50 assignments from the Dutch Linguistic Olympics 2001-2009, with extensive solutions.
Philological study and linguistic analysis of all Avestan vowel graphemes and phonemes.
"Full grammar of Avestan, including some texts. Reviewed by: Ilya Yakubovich, in: Journal of ... more "Full grammar of Avestan, including some texts.
Reviewed by:
Ilya Yakubovich, in: Journal of Indo-European Studies 29 (2001), 476-481
Philip Huyse, in: Abstracta Iranica 25 (2002), online: http://abstractairanica.revues.org/document4116.html
Almut Hintze, in: Kratylos 50 (2005), 200-203
Xavier Tremblay, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 100 (2005), fasc. 2, 144-145"
Indo-European Linguistics, 2024
Albanian possesses eight different lexemes built to a radical element vetë, with meanings ranging... more Albanian possesses eight different lexemes built to a radical element vetë, with meanings ranging from ‘person’, ‘self’, ‘own’ to ‘only’ and ‘apart’. The aim of this paper is to clarify the distribution and meaning of these words in Old Albanian, in particular, in texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I also discuss the etymology of these various stems, though the ultimate origin of vet(ë) cannot be established.
Indo-European Linguistics, 2024
The animate accusative singulars of ky 'this' , ai 'that, he' , and kush 'who' are këtë, atë, and... more The animate accusative singulars of ky 'this' , ai 'that, he' , and kush 'who' are këtë, atë, and kë in Tosk dialects, whereas Geg vacillates between final-ë and nasal-ã, of which the latter is limited to argument position. Geg dialects furthermore distinguish kã 'whom?' from kãn 'someone'. This article surveys the dialectal evidence from modern dialects, sketches the Old Albanian situation, and discusses the linguistic history of the relevant forms.
Verslagen en Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 120, 45-79., 2010
Nederlands koorts kan etymologisch verbonden worden met Gotisch kriustan (ww.) en krusts (zn.) 'k... more Nederlands koorts kan etymologisch verbonden worden met Gotisch kriustan (ww.) en krusts (zn.) 'klappertanden'; het oorspronkelijke woord gaf dan een symptoom van hoge koorts aan. Dit artikel behandelt de dialectgeografie van koorts op basis van de Reeks Nederlandse Dialectatlassen en onderzoekt de spelling van *o en *u voor r plus dentaal in het Vroegmiddelnederlands. De conclusie luidt dat de precieze etymologie (*o of *u, de positie van *r) niet te bepalen is omdat de klinkerrekking bij koorts een ander patroon vertoont dan bij woorden die in de meeste dialecten rekking hebben, zoals als moord en woord, maar ook verschilt van woorden die steeds een korte klinker vertonen, zoals kort. Het onderzoek naar het dertiende-eeuwse materiaal geeft aanleiding om de in 1907 door van Wijk geponeerde regel in twijfel te trekken, volgens welke West-Germaans *ort/d altijd en *urt/d nooit Nederlands oort/d opleverde. Mogelijk heeft de stemtoon van de dentale obstruent een bepalende invloed gehad op de klinkerlengte, wat resulteerde in -oord- tegenover -ort-.
Investigating West Germanic Languages: Studies in honor of Robert B. Howell Edited by Jennifer Hendriks and B. Richard Page., 2024
This paper investigates the etymology of Dutch mooi ‘beautiful’. It argues that mooi and Dutch mo... more This paper investigates the etymology of Dutch mooi ‘beautiful’. It argues that mooi and Dutch mouw 'sleeve', which are not directly related within Germanic, may be derived from the same PIE root *muH- 'move'.
Jaarboek van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde 25, 2024
In 1933 werd in het Rijksarchief in Brussel een Latijnstalige jaarrekening ontdekt, waarvan de te... more In 1933 werd in het Rijksarchief in Brussel een Latijnstalige jaarrekening ontdekt, waarvan de tekst in 1953 door Meihuizen is gepubliceerd. De Rekening van Gelre beschrijft afdrachten uit alle delen van het graafschap Gelre in het rekenjaar 1294/95. Taalkundige analyse van de volkstalige woorden en namen in de rekening toont aan dat hier regionale deelrekeningen ongewijzigd in de Brusselse samenvatting zijn opgenomen. De stad Geldern zelf vormt het middelpunt van een aantal van de bewijsdragende taal- en schrijfkenmerken.
Swe gameliþ ist. Studien zur vergleichenden germanischen Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für Ludwig Rübekeil zum 65. Geburtstag., 2023
Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, 2023
The Limburgian dialects contain a participial formation that is traditionally called a gerund, bu... more The Limburgian dialects contain a participial formation that is traditionally called a gerund, but is in fact a converb. The suffix appears in different forms. Since the emergence and development of the converb have not been convincingly explained so far, in this paper I revisit the topic. More precisely, I introduce the converb, discuss the history of the existing studies, treat the different formal variants of the suffix, and propose a linguistic-historical scenario that explains the converb as a continuation of a predicative adjective form on -ēr from Old High German Times.
Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Vol. 18.1. P. 412–425, 2022
The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘salt’ has reflexes in all the main branches of the Indo-Europea... more The Proto-Indo-European word for ‘salt’ has reflexes in all the main branches of the Indo-European languages with the exception of Anatolian. It can be reconstructed as a neuter l-stem: *séh₂-l, *sh₂-él-.
A unique feature of this word is a stem-final element *d in some but not all branches of the family. Evidence for *d is found in Armenian, Germanic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic, with a possible further trace in Indo-Iranian. Since *-d- cannot be explained as an independent innovation that occurred in each branch, this formant was most likely an integral part of the late Proto-Indo-European paradigm of the word for ‘salt’.
In this paper, I propose that Late PIE *sh₂éld continues the Indo-Anatolian instrumental singular form *sh₂élt which came to be used as a subject marker when the protolanguage switched from ergative to nominative alignment. The attested word-final *‑d is the result of a phonetic shift *‑t > *‑d that happened after the Anatolian languages had split off. The final *-d of *sʕald was lost in Tocharian and Greek, and was reanalyzed as part of the stem in other branches.
Leuvense Bijdragen 103, 2021
Jaarboek 23 van de VLDN, 2021
[vø:rter]. Mélanges de linguistique, de philologie et d'histoire ancienne offerts à Rudolf Wachter, 2020
Philology and etymology of the words French regiquine and Latin regiquina, found in juridical doc... more Philology and etymology of the words French regiquine and Latin regiquina, found in juridical documents from the French-speaking part of Switzerland between 1200 and 1600.
Jaarboek van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde, 2019
Indo-European Linguistics, 2019
PIE *dheh1-'to put, make' and *dheh1-(i-) 'to suck (mother's milk)' look like two separate verbal... more PIE *dheh1-'to put, make' and *dheh1-(i-) 'to suck (mother's milk)' look like two separate verbal roots with a very different meaning, which happen to be homonymous. Yet recent investigations have shown that the morphological behaviour of both verbs is more similar than was previously thought. This article offers a re-evaluation of the evidence and explores the options to bridge the semantic gap between 'put' and 'suck' .
The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European. The Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic Hypotheses. Edd. Alwin Kloekhorst & TIjmen Pronk, p.203-218., 2019
Proto-Indo-European *sm and *si 'one' Michiel de Vaan 1. The Proto-Indo-European root noun *sem-,... more Proto-Indo-European *sm and *si 'one' Michiel de Vaan 1. The Proto-Indo-European root noun *sem-, *sm-(Beekes & de Vaan 2011: 210) is reflected in the cardinal 'one' in a number of ancient Indo-European languages: Greek εἷς, accusative ἕνα < *sem-, Armenian mi < *miyo-<< f. *smiʕ-(Martirosyan 2010: 468), Tocharian A sas, Tocharian B ṣe < Proto-Tocharian *ṣaens << *ṣäns (Pinault 2006: 91).1 The locative singular *sēmi 'in one (of two)' is reflected in Latin sēmi-, Old High German sāmi-, Greek ἡμι-'half' , Sanskrit ásāmi 'completely'. From a collective *som-éʕ-, the thematic adjective *somʕo-'the same' can be explained, as in Skt. samá-, Avestan hama-, Gr. ὁμός, Proto-Germanic *sama-'the same' , the Old Irish emphatic particle-som, and the Tocharian oblique forms of 'one' , ToA som-, ToB m. ṣem-, f. ṣom-(Pinault 2006: 89). Other derivatives include the preverb *som 'together' (Skt. sám, Old Church Slavic sŭ, Lithuanian sam-), and, possibly, the particle *sme(ʕ) (Skt. sma, which according to Mumm 2004 reinforces an assertion or a request; Gr. μήν 'truly'). In compounds, the zero grade appears as the first member in words such as Skt. sakr̥ t, Av. hakǝrǝt̰ 'once' from Indo-Iranian *sm̥-kr̥ t, in the numeral 'thousand' , Skt. sahásra-, Av. hazaŋra-< PIE *sm-ǵhes-lo-, Lat. mīlle < PIE *sm-ǵhes-lio-, and in many other words. A further likely occurrence is the element *sm in the oblique cases of the demonstrative pronouns PIE *ʔe-and *to-: ablative *ʔesmōd, locative *tosmi, dative *tosmōi, etc. There is no other candidate for the etymology of the element *sm, and it is not difficult to imagine that the same morpheme can be used to build deictic pronouns while also developing the identificational meaning 'one'. The restriction of *sm to the oblique cases-we can reconstruct dative *-smōi, abl. *-smōd, loc. *-smi-will be addressed in the final section of this paper.
Petri Kallio Rocks. Liber semisaecularis 7.2.2019, 2019
The etymology of English WRESTLE and Dutch WORSTELEN
Mélanges offerts en hommage à Marianne Kilian-Schoch. Cahiers de l’ILSL 56, 2018
Many European languages contain an indefinite construction that consists of 'I don't know' and an... more Many European languages contain an indefinite construction that consists of 'I don't know' and an interrogative pronoun, of the type pour je ne sais combien d'années 'for I-don't-know-how-many years' in French. Of the Spanish equivalent, no sé cuánto 'I don't know how many', a superlative no sé cuantísimo 'I don't know how very much/many', 'an awful lot', has been derived in the twentieth century. In this paper, I give examples of its usage from Spanish text corpora, discuss the formal variants of the construction, and argue that no sé cuantísimo has been grammaticalized as a marker of large indefinite quantity. The historical origin of the superlative cuantísimo lies in an analogy with tantísimo 'so very many', attested in Spanish since the 17th century.
HIstorical phonology of Albanian
Published in: Jan Ceuppens, Hans Smessaert, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (e... more Published in: Jan Ceuppens, Hans Smessaert, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (eds.), A Coat of Many Colours. Festschrift for Dany Jaspers. Part 4. 11pp. Published online at: https://dj60.be/
Powerpoint of my presentation at the 15th Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Wien, 13.... more Powerpoint of my presentation at the 15th Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Wien, 13. September 2016
(leicht korrigierte Version 14. 9.)
Brief announcement of the 2nd edition of Cor van Bree's Manual of Historical Grammar of Dutch (20... more Brief announcement of the 2nd edition of Cor van Bree's Manual of Historical Grammar of Dutch (2016). OPEN ACCESS, see the link below.
Conférence sur les lieux-dits de la Commune de Penthaz
Powerpoint of my talk at the Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 6 June 2019, in Lju... more Powerpoint of my talk at the Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 6 June 2019, in Ljubljana.
Ppt of a talk given in Lausanne on 5 February 2018 at the 7e Colloque Onomastique Suisse.
Index of Latin words. Consult at: https://catima.unil.ch/atlastopvaud/fr/indexodin