Further Explanations about the Proto-Proto-Indo-Europeans

The ones I once speculated were pushed out into southern Russia/Ukraine when the Euxine Lake flooded c. 4500 BC. That was back in January 2007, almost two years ago! Now Bloner1 has left a recent comment:

Good theory, but how do you speculate this when there is no Proto-Indo-European reconstruction for the word 'sea'?

Interesting question. Apparently there is, though it depends on what you mean by 'sea'. A large body of water? Salt water? Many PIE words migrate in meaning to some idea merely associated with the original meaning. And there are words for sea in Indo-European vocabulary.

The hypothetical PIE word *móri is attested in Celtic (Old Irish muir, sea), Italic (Latin mare, sea), Germanic (eg our mere), and Slavic (e.g. Old Church Slavonic morje, sea). Now these all come from NW Indo-European languages, but there seems to be a possible cognate in Ossetian (last of the Alans!), an Iranian language (mal, deep standing water). So that extends it eastward. Perhaps more telling is the Hittite marmar(r)a-, a swamp, which seems to be a reduplicated form of the word. That would take us back to Proto-Indo European or even earlier if Hittite is a sister language to PIE, as I think, rather than a daughter.

Since this word only means a salt water sea in some languages, and a fresh water lake in others some experts think that *móri originally meant an "inland sea" or "lake" and was later extended to mean salt water sea.

But for my theory to work, that is exactly what it should have meant. The Euxine Lake was, after all, a fresh water lake until the Mediterranean crashed it, turning it into the salty Black Sea. So my hypothetical proto-proto-Indo-Europeans would only be expected to have a word for fresh ‘lake,' which in fact they do: *móri.

Kind of neat. But don't think I did this off the top of my head. I consulted The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J.P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams. Every household should have a copy.