Are πτοία and πτερόν etymologically related?

[Kurama]

I would like to ask for help with three questions. The first is whether πτοία and πτερόν are etymologically related. I looked up πτοία in the LSJ and it only says that it comes from πτοέω, and the entry for πτοέω does not give any further information.

The second question is whether πτοία has any connotations that relate it to the notion of oscillatory wing-like motion, such as the motion involved in fluttering. This, either through being etymologically related to πτερόν, or perhaps by being the sort of word that the Greeks would have associated with that notion. The LSJ entry only gives two definitions: terror, fright, and excitement. From this I am not sure if the word has any such connotations.

The third question is about the use of πτοία in the following text (Stobaeus 2.88,8-, quoted from Long and Sedley, The Hellenisic Philosophers, vol. 2, p. 404):

πάθος δ᾿ εἶναί φασιν ὁρμὴν πλεονάζοθσαν καὶ ἀπειθῆ τῷ αἱροῦντι λόγῳ ἢ κίνησιν ψυχῆς παρὰ φύσιν (εἶναι δὲ πάθη πάντα τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ τῆσ ψυχῆς), διὸ καὶ πᾶσαν πτοίαν πάθος εἶναι, πάλιν πάθος πτοίαν.

Is it compulsory to translate πτοία as fluttering (as Long and Sedley do)? Or can it simply be translated as 'agitation'? I am trying to argue that the notion the Stoics have in mind here is not one of oscillatory wing-like motion, such as fluttering, but rather a more generic notion of agitation, so I would like to know if the 'fluttering' translation is compulsory.

Here are the entries for πτοία and πτοέω:

https://imgur.com/a/uOaOUN8

[ἑκηβόλος]

The English word "flutter" has a range of meanings.

Based on the overlap of the meanings given for πτοία and the range of meanings that "flutter" has in English, we can fairly confidently state the following. In the translation of Long and Sedley, "fluttering" means "being aggitated (in a state of agitation)". They are not saying it is regular motion.

The English word flutter could mean that it is regular in the particular circumstance of an occilatory motion with a short amplitude (as opposed to a big movement, ie. "flap"), or it could mean random motion, or it could mean disturbance or agitation.

The randomness of the fluttering of the fly end of a flag in the wind might be a better image than the orderly and rhythmic oscillation of a bird or insect's wings in a controlled hover.

[jeidsath]

The second question is whether πτοία has any connotations that relate it to the notion of oscillatory wing-like motion, such as the motion involved in fluttering. This, either through being etymologically related to πτερόν, or perhaps by being the sort of word that the Greeks would have associated with that notion.

I don't see how the English meaning of the word fluttering signifies anything here. On the Greek etymology, the short answer is yes (I think), that πτοια is related to oscillatory motion, but no, not because of any etymological relation to wing-like motion or πτερα.

The origin for the idea of πτοεω seems to be related to πτισσω, related to an Indo-European agricultural word (as opposed to the non-IE agricultural words that are so exciting at the moment, which were picked up from the old European non-IE farming population). πτισσω refers to grinding or winnowing, which are generally oscillatory. Did that meaning carry over? I have no idea.

I'll post information from Beekes when I have the chance.

[markcmueller]

as opposed to the non-IE agricultural words that are so exciting at the moment, which were picked up from the old European non-IE farming population

Seems like this exciting story didn't make the Google news cut. Is there any info on this online?

[seneca2008]

I think that the idea behind translating “πτοία” as fluttering is that the mind in trying to process “πάθος” goes back and forth between opposing beliefs about what is and is not worthy of our attention. This could certainly indicate an agitated state but to describe the process as agitation might suggest something random (which of course might fit the bill in some cases). Fluttering captures the back and forth idea but as has been mentioned it is not the same as hovering, nor does it imply something regular.

Martha Nussbaum has written about this “fluttering” in her reading of Seneca’s Medea in The Therapy of desire and elsewhere.

On a trivial point it is πλεονάζουθσαν not πλεονάζοθσαν

[jeidsath]

as opposed to the non-IE agricultural words that are so exciting at the moment, which were picked up from the old European non-IE farming population

Seems like this exciting story didn't make the Google news cut. Is there any info on this online?

For a popular overview, read chapter 5 of Reich's new book ("Who we are") about the expansion of Indo-European languages, especially the Why Renfrew Was Wrong section (I'm paraphrasing).

Here is a review of that chapter that gets into the linguistics a bit.

As you can see from the table at the top, Indo-European had detailed shared vocabulary for wagons, but its agricultural vocabulary is not shared with the Indo-Aryans. For a close look at what's going on, see the Iversen and Kroonen paper that I stole the table from. "Talking Neolithic" in AJA 121.4 Oct 2017.

The Greek-specific stuff coming out of this (the new technologies developed this decade that let us do full-genome analysis of archaic DNA -- that is, DNA from old bones) can be found in the August 2017 Nature paper "Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans". The appendix to that paper is absolutely tantalizing to me -- the data coming in over the next few years should be enough to allow us to rule out a number of the old linguistic theories about Greek.

[jeidsath]

Looking it up in Beekes, I'm wrong about any relation to πτίσσω. Here are the etymology sections for πτήσσω and πτοέω

πτήσσω etymology

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πτίσσω etymology

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So no idea of oscillatory motion whatsoever.

[jeidsath]

Also, the whole idea of "flutter" is obviously from the use of the verb in Sappho.

"metaph., flutter, excite by any passion, τό μοι καρδίαν . . ἐπτόαισεν Sapph.2.6"

In English, we naturally say that the heart "flutters". However, this is English metaphor, and is unrelated to the Greek, and shouldn't be carried over to other contexts.

[Hylander]

As we flutter away from the original post, the "non-IE" section of Table 1 raises the question of whether the Sanskrit column is blank not because the Germanic, Slavic, Latin and Greek branches took words from pre-IE Neolithic inhabitants of Europe but because Sanskrit or its ancestor substituted words for these food crops from the vocabulary of pre-Indo-Iranian inhabitants of central Asia and/or the Indian subcontinent. (Of course, that would suggest that speakers of IE languages might not be indigenous to India -- a political hot potato that Reich tactfully avoids, or rather dances around if I may be permitted a mixed metaphor.)

[jeidsath]

As we flutter away from the original post, the "non-IE" section of Table 1 raises the question of whether the Sanskrit column is blank not because the Germanic, Slavic, Latin and Greek branches took words from pre-IE Neolithic inhabitants of Europe but because Sanskrit or its ancestor substituted words for these food crops from the vocabulary of pre-Indo-Iranian inhabitants of central Asia and/or the Indian subcontinent.

Quite a reasonable question to ask.

(Of course, that would suggest that speakers of IE languages might not be indigenous to India -- a political hot potato that Reich tactfully avoids.)

"Tact" is an interesting quality to attribute to Reich. Regardless, he does not avoid the subject. See chapter 5 after his discussion of the steppe hypothesis (Yamnaya expansion into India), where he posits the first IE-language speakers to be a population south of the Caucasus mountains, in Iran or Armenia. The reviewer that I linked disagrees, and suggests that it's the eastern hunter gatherer ancestry of the Yamnaya that points to the first IE-speakers (making Amerindian languages very distantly related to IE).

See also Reich's footnote of Anthony and Ringe's 2015 "The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives".

[Hylander]

Reich goes to great length to avoid saying outright that he thinks the hypothesis advanced by Indian researchers and Hindu nationalists that the IE languages originated in India is nonsense. He needs the cooperation of Indian researchers for his project, and he goes out of his way to avoid offending them. There's apparently a kind of truce in effect.

The author of the "review" you linked to (really someone's blog) is not identified and includes some highly speculative material. Sounds kind of amateurish to me. He or she looks like s/he knows a little about the issues, in fact, a lot more than I, but I wouldn't put too much confidence in the conclusions expressed.

It would be a good idea to look at the reconstructed roots for the "non-IE" crops to determine whether they conform to accepted theories about PIE word structure, and also to look at the proto-Iranian words for these crops, as well as other IE languages. There are many possibilities: were these crops cultivated in Neolithic India at all, or is it possible that they were diffused into Indian agriculture after the Indo-Iranian expansion across central Asia and into the Indian subcontinent? Are the Indic words for these crops themselves obvious borrowings?

[jeidsath]

I feel like we must be thinking about different people. Here is Reich on the Yamnaya and the origins of the original IE speakers.

Reich Steppe Hypothesis Chapter 5 Europe

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Reich Steppe Hypothesis Chapter 6 India

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The review author is Greg Cochran. He used to live down the street from me, which is where I know him from, and he wrote "The 10,000 Year Explosion" with Henry Harpending, which is where other people know him from.

On the possibilities that you raised, I would recommend a look at the fuller discussion in the Iversen and Kroonen article that I sourced the table from. For a detailed discussion, which I can barely follow, you may want to look at Kroonen's linguistic supplement to this article, which goes into Indo-Aryan South Asian loans, among other things.

[seneca2008]

Also, the whole idea of "flutter" is obviously from the use of the verb in Sappho.
"metaph., flutter, excite by any passion, τό μοι καρδίαν . . ἐπτόαισεν Sapph.2.6"

Are you so sure about this? My understanding is that the fluttering in the Stobaeus is very much technical stoic philosophical language. I doubt especially because of the stoic context that whoever Stobaeus was quoting was thinking of Sappho.

[jeidsath]

You misunderstand me, Seneca. I meant that the whole reason that we English speakers use "flutter" to translate the word is from the Sappho verse. "Flutter" is English and has a literal meaning of "flap wings". English translators' or lexicons' use of "flutter" therefore says nothing about Stobaeus, who wrote in Greek and used πτοέω (or its derivatives), and was using it to talk about a particular type of motion, which unlike "fluttering" has no implied relationship to the motion of bird wings.

[Hylander]

I feel like we must be thinking about different people.

Reread Reich's chapter on India and you'll see what I mean,

[markcmueller]

As you can see from the table at the top, Indo-European had detailed shared vocabulary for wagons, but its agricultural vocabulary is not shared with the Indo-Aryans. For a close look at what's going on, see the Iversen and Kroonen paper that I stole the table from. "Talking Neolithic" in AJA 121.4 Oct 2017.

Google News has failed me. While keeping me up-to-date on the Kardashians, it failed to tell me that Proto- IndoEuropean is passé and Early European Neolithic is the new PIE. And who knew that bitter vetch was the preferred diet aid of the European neolithics?