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Indo-European Lexicon

PIE Etymon and IE Reflexes

Below we display: a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) etymon adapted from Pokorny, with our own English gloss; our Semantic Field assignment(s) for the etymon, linked to information about the field(s); an optional Comment; and Reflexes (derived words) in various Indo-European languages, organized by family/group in west-to-east order where Germanic is split into West/North/East families and English, our language of primary emphasis, is artificially separated from West Germanic. IE Reflexes appear most often as single words with any optional letter(s) enclosed in parentheses; but alternative full spellings are separated by '/' and "principal parts" appear in a standard order (e.g. masculine, feminine, and neuter forms) separated by commas.

Reflexes are annotated with: Part-of-Speech and/or other Grammatical feature(s); a short Gloss which, especially for modern English reflexes, may be confined to the oldest sense; and some Source citation(s) with 'LRC' always understood as editor. Keys to PoS/Gram feature abbreviations and Source codes appear below the reflexes; at the end are links to the previous/next etyma [in Pokorny's alphabetic order] that have reflexes.

All reflex pages are currently under active construction; as time goes on, corrections may be made and/or more etyma & reflexes may be added.

Note: this page is for systems/browsers with Unicode^® support, but fonts for only the Unicode 2.0 character set (including combining diacritics). Versions of this page rendered in alternate character sets are available via links (see Unicode 3 and ISO-8859-1) in the left margin.

Pokorny Etymon: baba- 'babble, babbling, unclear speech'

Semantic Field: to Speak, Talk

Indo-European Reflexes:

Family/Language	Reflex(es)	PoS/Gram.	Gloss	Source(s)
Celtic
Old Irish:	báb	n	baby, girl	RPN
	bábán	n	baby	RPN
Irish:	baban	n	baby	CDC
Manx:	bab(an)	n	baby	CDC
English
Middle English:	baban	n	babe, baby	RPN
	babe	n	babe	RPN
	babee/babi	n.dim	baby	CDC/RPN
	bab(e)len	vb	to babble	CDC
English:	babble	n	meaningless speech-like sounds	W7
	babble	vb	to chatter, prattle, utter meaningless sounds	W7
	babe	n	baby	LRC
	baby/babie	n	infant, new-born	CDC
	babysit, babysat	vb.str.intrans	to care for children	W7
W-Germanic
Dutch:	babbelen	vb	to babble	CDC
Low German:	babbelen	vb	to babble	CDC
Middle High German:	buobe	n	little boy	RPN
German:	bappeln/bappern	vb	to babble	CDC
	Bube/Bubi	n.masc	lad, little boy	LRC
Swiss German:	Buaeb	n.masc	lad, little boy	LRC
N-Germanic
Icelandic:	babbla	vb	to babble	CDC
Danish:	bable	vb	to babble	CDC
Slavic
Old Czech:	bábě	n	doll, little girl	RPN
Czech:	bábenec	n	youngster	RPN
Hellenic
Greek:	βάρβαρος	adj/n.masc	foreign; non-Greek person	LRC

Key to Part-of-Speech/Grammatical feature abbreviations:

Abbrev.		Meaning
adj	=	adjective
dim	=	diminutive
intrans	=	intransitive
masc	=	masculine (gender)
n	=	noun
str	=	strong (inflection)
vb	=	verb

Key to information Source codes (always with 'LRC' as editor):

Code		Citation
CDC	=	W.D. Whitney and B.E. Smith: The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (1889-1911)
LRC	=	Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas, Austin
RPN	=	Allan R. Bomhard: Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic (2002)
W7	=	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (1963)

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