Langfocus - Strange Similarities Between Celtic & Semitic Languages!

[Cainntear]

Ownership is expressed in a similar way in Russian and Finnish (and possibly some of their related languages):
I have a book = AT ME (there is) (a) BOOK

What is also weird is that the меня [= me] in У меня есть книга. is the genitive form of я [= I].

Why is that "weird"? "genitive" means "possession".

Hindi/Urdu has an interesting variant here:

They have possessive pronouns for inalienable position:
Mera beti — my aunt

And a locative construction for alienable possession:
Mera pas X — my closeness X
... but notice that this locative still uses the possessive pronoun.

Despite that difference, this is one of things that suggests the evidence in the video is cherry-picked: the Celtic and Indic migration from the Indo-European heartland occurred before the migration of the “have” speakers, so I believe it’s generally accepted that “have” wasn’t part of proto-IE at all, but a later innovation.

[Saim]

Ownership is expressed in a similar way in Russian and Finnish (and possibly some of their related languages):
I have a book = AT ME (there is) (a) BOOK

What is also weird is that the меня [= me] in У меня есть книга. is the genitive form of я [= I].

Why is that "weird"? "genitive" means "possession".

Hindi/Urdu has an interesting variant here:

They have possessive pronouns for inalienable position:
Mera beti — my aunt

And a locative construction for alienable possession:
Mera pas X — my closeness X
... but notice that this locative still uses the possessive pronoun.

Despite that difference, this is one of things that suggests the evidence in the video is cherry-picked: the Celtic and Indic migration from the Indo-European heartland occurred before the migration of the “have” speakers, so I believe it’s generally accepted that “have” wasn’t part of proto-IE at all, but a later innovation.

Meri beti - my daughter (feminine agreement)

Meri phophi (father's sister, father's cousin), khaalaa (mother's sister, mother's cousin), chaachi (father's brother's wife), mumaani (mother's brother's wife) - my aunt

Mere pas (postposition-type constructions trigger oblique forms)

[Cainntear]

Big "oops" to my completely forgotten Hindi.

Another thing I forgot to mention before is that as I recall it, it's largely accepted that definite articles tend to evolve in languages before indefinite ones anyway -- early IE languages had no articles, and the definite in most IE languages evolved out of the demonstratives ("the" being related to the old precursors of "this" and "that"; the L in il/el/le/la/les being from Latin demonstrative ille (sp?); der die das related to diese, das etc) and the indefinite article later evolving out of the number one.

What's interesting in the Goidelic branch (Gaelic, Irish & Manx) is that the definite article (an/a'/na/nan) has no clear relation to the demonstratives (seo/sin/siud), but more interestingly still is not phonologically a million miles from the number one (aon). The simplest and most straightforward explanation for the Goidelic languages not evolving an indefinite article is that this similarity probably blocked it from ever happening -- a reduced "aon" would be "an" and identical to the definite article, so evolving an indefinite article would actually paradoxically remove the definite/indefinite distinction.