Linguistic Symbolism and the Illusion of Circularity

Linguistic Symbolism and the Illusion of Circularity

To claim that A rotates into A is no different from claiming that day rotates into day—a statement that is cognitively meaningless. It does not happen. Day rotates into night, and night into day. This oppositional alternation is not a late abstraction but a prehistoric cognitive structure, embedded in human language for well over 200,000 years. Day–night is a complete cycle, not a sterile repetition.

From this primordial logic emerge words such as Albanian rrallë, Latin rārus / rārō, and Greek araiós, all encoding the idea of spacing, thinning, and separation. Yet attempts to place these forms on equal chronological footing ignore an obvious fact: Albanian rrallë is structurally more archaic. It stands without the prosthetic a- that Greek later inserted—a prefixed vowel that reflects secondary systematization rather than original formation.

The evidence becomes even clearer in Çam Albanian, where we encounter rer(ë) (English: rare), the unadorned form that directly yields Standard Albanian rrallë. This is not accidental. Just as Standard Albanian rëra (“sand”) replaces the older Gheg rân(ē), rrallë does not “exist” abstractly in nature. It appears only where time and force act relentlessly: on the seashore, as the millennia-long result of stone being beaten, fractured, and thinned by the sea.

The connection between “rare” and “sand” seems rooted in the idea of something being unusual or hard to find in its natural state. Sand is created through a specific natural process (rock erosion on the seashore) and is “rare” in the sense that it is not ubiquitous but the product of specific conditions.

The Albanian word rëra (sand) is linked to rrallë (rare), suggesting a conceptual connection: sparsity, thinness, smalliness or absence in the external, physical world gives rise to the symbolic notion of rarity. Sand exemplifies how rarity manifests materially—through the gradual, relentless action of natural forces on stone, a process rarely occurring inland.

What emerges, then, is not a borrowed abstraction but a material, experiential concept, encoded in Albanian long before later languages reshaped it with prefixes and theoretical symmetry. To ignore this is not neutrality—it is methodological convenience masquerading as scholarship.

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A Theoretical Critique of Borrowing-Based Indo-European Linguistics

Borrowing-based Indo-European linguistics rests on a methodological reflex: whenever a lexical item in a non-prestige language resembles a form in Latin or Greek, the resemblance is immediately interpreted as directional borrowing. This procedure is often presented as cautious and conservative. In reality, it is epistemically asymmetrical and theoretically weak.

1. The Asymmetry of Directionality

The borrowing model assumes, almost axiomatically, that:

• Latin and Greek are sources;
• Balkan, Anatolian, or peripheral Indo-European languages are recipients.

Directionality is rarely argued from phonological necessity or semantic chronology; it is presupposed by cultural hierarchy. The prestige of classical languages substitutes for evidence. As a result, similarity becomes proof of borrowing, while independent retention or parallel development is excluded a priori.

This violates a basic comparative principle: similarity alone does not establish direction.

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2. The Circularity of the Borrowing Argument

Borrowing-based explanations often proceed as follows:

1. A form exists in Albanian.
2. A similar form exists in Latin or Greek.
3. Therefore, the Albanian form is borrowed.
4. The borrowing is then used to prove Latin or Greek influence.

This is circular reasoning. The conclusion (borrowing) is already embedded in the premise (prestige origin). No independent chronological or cognitive criterion is introduced. The argument closes itself by design.

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3. The Neglect of Cognitive and Symbolic Chronology

Borrowing-based linguistics prioritizes textual chronology over cognitive chronology. A word is considered younger simply because it is not attested early in writing. This confuses absence of documentation with absence of existence.

Yet many semantic cores—day/night, motion/stillness, thinning/condensation—belong to prehistoric human cognition, not to literate civilizations. Languages may preserve these concepts orally and materially for millennia without leaving written traces.

Thus, the model systematically underestimates:

• archaic semantic retention,
• symbolic continuity,
• experiential grounding of meaning.

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4. Formal “Regularity” as a False Criterion of Age

A persistent assumption is that formally regular or systematized words are older, while irregular or “bare” forms are younger. Historically, the opposite is often true:

• older forms are shorter, less prefixed, less optimized;
• later forms introduce vowels, prefixes, and morphological smoothing.

Borrowing-based linguistics frequently mistakes structural refinement for antiquity, treating prefixed or vocalically expanded forms as original and unprefixed forms as derived, despite cross-linguistic evidence to the contrary.

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5. The Erasure of Material Semantics

Borrowing explanations operate at the level of lexical abstraction, ignoring the material and environmental grounding of meaning. Words arising from:

• movement,
• erosion,
• repetition,
• pressure,
• cyclic alternation,

are treated as semantic labels rather than as linguistic sediment, formed by long-term interaction with the physical world. This abstraction bias favors written administrative languages over experiential languages, leading to systematic misattribution of origin.

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6. Borrowing as a Default, Not a Conclusion

In a sound comparative framework, borrowing should be:

• the last explanatory resort,
• supported by historical contact, phonological intrusion, and semantic mismatch.

In borrowing-based Indo-European linguistics, it has become the first and easiest answer. This reverses the burden of proof: languages must now prove they are not borrowed, rather than borrowings proving themselves.

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7. Toward a Corrective Model

A theoretically sound alternative would:

• treat similarity as shared inheritance or parallel cognition, not immediate borrowing;
• prioritize semantic depth over textual attestation;
• recognize peripheral languages as conservators, not merely recipients;
• integrate cognitive, symbolic, and material chronology into etymology.

Without such corrections, borrowing-based Indo-European linguistics risks becoming not a science of language history, but a taxonomy of cultural prestige.