Question on Greek noemata and Latin nomen

[bjorda...@gmail.com]

May Greek noemata and Latin nomen be related?

[Ed Cryer]

bjorda...@gmail.com wrote:
> May Greek noemata and Latin nomen be related?
>

Name and thought, eh? That sounds very Plato. Universal forms; eternal
and unchanging.
I suppose "nominalism" is the traditional view against formal realism.

What you're asking is the relationship between Greek words νόημα
("noema") and ὄνομα ("onoma", from which the Latin "nomen" derives).

I would strongly doubt that any ancient Greek philosopher made that
connection. If he had he would have trumpeted it loudly; especially
Aristotle with his proto-empiricism.

We need a specialist in proto-Indo-European. Do they derive from some
common source? Even if they did, however, then there's the further
question about whether the Greek philosophers knew it.

Ed

[John W Kennedy]

Or just look up "name" in the OED, which goes very deeply into OE words
(such as "name") that have been in the language from the earliest
records. Every (or nearly every) IE language uses a cognate of "name",
from Sanskrit to Irish. Reconstructed PIE is *h₁nḗh₃mn̥.

--
John W Kennedy
If Bill Gates believes in "intelligent design", why can't he apply it
to Windows?

[bjorda...@gmail.com]

Thanks Ed! How would I go about to ask a specialist in proto-Indo-European?

Frode

[bjorda...@gmail.com]

Thanks John! I will look up in OED. Your last word is illegible to me. Is there a code-breaker available?

Frode

[Ed Cryer]

You get in touch with either Professor J. P. Mallory or Professor D. Q.
Adams. One is based in Belfast; the other in Idaho, but they co-operated
to produce this book;
http://tinyurl.com/aptt7w7

Apart from that you hang around in this group for a while. We have many
drop-in visitors, some of whom know something about the subject.

Ed

[Will Parsons]

Ed Cryer wrote:
> bjorda...@gmail.com wrote:
>> May Greek noemata and Latin nomen be related?
>
> Name and thought, eh? That sounds very Plato. Universal forms; eternal
> and unchanging.
> I suppose "nominalism" is the traditional view against formal realism.
>
> What you're asking is the relationship between Greek words νόημα
> ("noema") and ὄνομα ("onoma", from which the Latin "nomen" derives).

A minor correction - the Latin word does not derive from the Greek,
but both are derived from a common PIE word.

> I would strongly doubt that any ancient Greek philosopher made that
> connection. If he had he would have trumpeted it loudly; especially
> Aristotle with his proto-empiricism.

Agreed.

> We need a specialist in proto-Indo-European. Do they derive from some
> common source? Even if they did, however, then there's the further
> question about whether the Greek philosophers knew it.

I doubt they are related. I would imagine that the starting point for
"noemata" is the noun "noos" (νόος) via the verb "noein". I don't
know what the ultimate origin of νόος might be, but it doesn't seem to
be close enough to "nomen" (or ὄνομα) in meaning to assume they are
genetically related.

--
Will

[bjorda...@gmail.com]

As a trained philosopher I beg to differ. There is certainly a conceptual relatedness between concept/thought and name, and so Greek noema and onoma are in that sense close in meaning. It may be that the Greek philosophers did not make a connection; a preliminary inspection of Plato's Cratylus seems to verify this but there is a big corpus to investigate apart from Plato. Howsoever the outcome of such an investigation may turn out, a name is often that by which we come to have knowledge of a thing. An affirmative answer to my question on an etymological relatedness between onoma and noema should therefore not be ruled out on the ground that the words differ too much in meaning.

I have now raised the question with expertise in PIE but an answer is pending.

Frode Bjørdal

[John W Kennedy]

It could be that you're using inadequate software or an inadequate
font, but it echoed back to me OK, so maybe it just looks too weird to
believe, even though it's standard PIE notation:

* Marks a reconstructed, non-attested word (as all PIE words are).

h₁ h sub 1: Laryngeal #1, one of several PIE mystery consonants
originally reconstructed only in theory, but spectacularly
confirmed when they turned up in reality, in Hittite.

n Regular old n.

ḗ e with a macron and an acute accent.

h₃ h sub 3: Laryngeal #3.

m Regular old m.

n̥ n with a ring below.

I am not sufficiently acquainted with PIE studies to know how to
pronounce these, especially the last.

--
John W Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins

[Ed Cryer]

You might try the "Theaetetus". Some bright sparks have found most of
subsequent western philosophy in that.

Ed

[Rich Alderson]

John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> writes:

> * Marks a reconstructed, non-attested word (as all PIE words are).

> h₁ h sub 1: Laryngeal #1, one of several PIE mystery consonants
> originally reconstructed only in theory, but spectacularly
> confirmed when they turned up in reality, in Hittite.

> n Regular old n.

> ḗ e with a macron and an acute accent.

> h₃ h sub 3: Laryngeal #3.

> m Regular old m.

> n̥ n with a ring below.

> I am not sufficiently acquainted with PIE studies to know how to
> pronounce these, especially the last.

I prefer to use TeX subscript/superscript, so that those without UTF-8
capability in their newsreaders can see what's under discussion. For those
unfamiliar with TeX, "_" makes the next character or bracketed string a
subscript, "^" makes it a superscript.

*h_1 ("h-sub-1") is the "e-coloring" laryngeal. Given that the commonly
reconstructed vowel in PIE (verbal) roots is *e/o (that is, the vowel which
undergoes timbre changes depending on (sometimes lost) contexts), this one is
hard to detect in most cases. Best known is *d^heh_1-, the root seen in Greek
tithe:mi.

*h_3 is the "o-coloring" laryngeal, called "non-apophonic *o" in earlier and
anti-laryngealist literature. Cf. *deh_3-, as in Gr. dido:mi.

There is some question as there was a single "a-coloring" laryngeal *h_2, or a
pair *h_2 and *h_4. There are occurrences of initial a- in Hittite which are
cognate with a-vowels in other IE languages, but the overwhelming majority of
non-Anatolian *a vowels have Hittite cognates in ha-. I think the majority of
Indo-Europeanists now accept only 3 laryngeals, but I haven't done a survey
recently.

The ring under the final *-n indicates that it's syllabic, like the second
syllable in the casual speech pronunciation of English _button_.

If you must pronounce them, I find that I prefer Lehmann's h_1 = glottal stop,
h_2 = a voiceless pharyngeal fricative, h_3 = a voiced rounded pharyngeal
fricative or approximant, and h_4 a voiced pharyngeal fricative or approximant
(think Arabic `ayin) to Cowgill's velar/back velar (h_2) with palatalization
(h_1) or rounding (h_3)--Cowgill was a three-laryngeal proponent.

--
Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
the russet leaves of an autumn oak/inspire once again the failed poet/
to take up his pen/and essay to place his meagre words upon the page...

[bjorda...@gmail.com]

Thanks, I will do that. Incidentially, I wrote a paper on that dialogue as an undergraduate philosophy major 29 years ago.

Frode Bjørdal