Re: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 4566
Date: 2000-11-02

There is an interesting argument about linguistic areas in Bob Dixon's "Rise and Fall of Languages" (1997 [2nd edition 1999], Cambridge University Press). Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that Australia was peopled just once, ca. 50,000 BP, by a small linguistically uniform group of people (say, a few boatloads) and that any subsequent immigrations (before the arrival of the Europeans) were not substantial enough to upset its linguistic structure -- how would Proto-Australian have developed into the known Australian languages?
 
The first phase would have been the steady growth of the initial population and its geographic expansion, groups moving off into new territory. After a couple of millennia the continent would have been fully peopled and the relationships between its languages could have been best captured through a family-tree model. In a word, we would have had a single Australian family. Then a state of equilibrium would have begun and continued for the remainder of the fifty millennia. Languages would have died occasionally, and there would have been small-scale splits from time to time, accounting for the observable low-level subgroupings, due mainly to climatic changes and the concomitant contractions and expansions of local populations. But the total population would have been relatively stable and linguistic diffusion (as well as other types of cultural diffusion) would have led to the emergence of an areal prototype (not to be confused with Proto-Australian):
 
-- no fricatives or affricates;
-- a rich set of place-of-articulation contrasts;
-- a single row of oral stops;
-- a nasal corresponding to every stop;
-- a rich set of liquids (up to four laterals, two rhotics);
-- a three-term number system in pronouns;
-- nominative-absolutive inflection for pronouns, absolutive-ergative for nouns;
-- special avoidance styles in the presence of taboo relatives;
-- etc. (plus a number of features shared regionally within smaller overlapping diffusion zones).
 
Lexemes are freely borrowed throughout Australia. Two adjacent languages (no matter what their genetic relationship) typically share about 50% vocabulary. This figure represents an equilibrium value, which means that if two contiguous tribal languages that have split recently share, say, 70% lexemes, processes such as the replacement of tabooed words will gradualy bring the figure down to ca. 50%. Dixon analyses those stabilising forces in his famous grammar of Dyirbal (1972).
 
The pattern produced by millennia of convergence in a situation of equilibrium assumes the form of a common typological profile. There are a number of small genetic groupings for which family trees are reconstructable, but there is no evidence to justify higher-level filiation (even Pama-Nyungan is a typological, not a genetic grouping). If a common Australian family tree ever existed, diffusion led to the complete erosion of its structure long ago. Therefore, the derivation of the Australian languages from a single proto-language, while not impossible, cannot be proved using linguistic data. If Australia had been peopled by speakers of several languages belonging to different families, they would have merged their typological profiles during the period of equilibrium, producing exactly the same kind of pattern.
 
The reason why I'm describing the case of Australia in so much detail is that it provides a prototypical scenario of processes that have also occurred in other parts of the world. Your mesolithic Balkan-Pontic "phylum" might be something like Pama-Nyungan, and the more encompassing convergence area including virtually all the languages (and cultures) of the ancient Middle East would be analogous to the Pan-Australian grouping. In equilibrium areas traits demonstrating common descent "diffuse away" over millennia and are replaced by typological affinities resulting from areal contact and convergence. If the term "Nostratic" corresponds to anything real, it is probably the latter type of reality.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 11:40 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity

John wrote:

I don't go back to the movement of PIE out of Anatolia as does
Renfrew.  I am convinced there is no evidence of an IE or a PIE
horizon in Anatolia prior to the arrival of the Anatolian languages
(Hittite, Luwian, et al), which seems to have occurred 23-2200 BCE.

There is, however, the evidence of the proto-Tyrrhenian language,
which I believe did come out of Anatolia (despite what Glen says). 
This is, I believe, the origin of Tyrrhenian, Pelasgian, Lemnian,
Etruscan and may be the substrate to Luwian, Lydian and Carian. 
Certainly there was a single cultural provnce stretching between
western Anatolia into Gimbutas's Old Europe.  These I believe were
the Neolithic farmers, from Sesklo to Starcevo, and ence to Vinca and
the others.

In the mesolithic Danubian Gorge culture which preceeded Danubian
LBK, there is clear evidence of a process of neolithicisation along
its North West frontier.  I believe LBK came from the indgenous
Danubian Gorge people adopting a farming technology from their
neighbours and applying it to the lighter loess soils to the north
and west.  There is much evidence for this hypothesis.  If this is so
then Danubian LBK is not "Out of Anatolia" and Renfrew is wrong.

By the way, a similar series of events seems to have occrred on the
Pontic steppe a la Bug-Dneister and Don-Donetz mesolithic cultures
both undergoing neolithicisation from Old Europe in the same way. 
The position of Tripolye at this stage I feel is questionable.

The Renfrew OoA hypothesis as applied to the neolithic period
therefore is not possible on the cultral evidence.  But a version of
it does apply to the Mesolithic.

For instance there is clear evidence that pre-Neolithic Palestinian
Kebaran and later Natufian were the substrata for the development of
Anatolian mesolithic cultures (Beldabi and Belbasi).  There is also
clear evidence that the meslithic of Greece at Franchthi cave came
across from Western Anatolia.  Furthermore, the Danubian Gorge
mesolithic at Lepinski Vir and elsewhere shows clear Aegean
afinities.  Finally Murzak Koba (the predecessor of Grebeniki and
hence Bug-Dneistr and Don-Donetz) also shows affiliation to the the
Danubian Gorge mesolithic culture.  Here we have a clear line of
derived cultures stretching from the Pontic steppe all the way back
to Africa.  This I believe is the archaeological evidence for
Nostratic.  It also explains the archaic features linking PIE with
Proto-Tyrrhenian that Glen claims to have found.  This movement is
very old, extending from 18,000 through to 7,000 BCE (i.e. pre-Black
Sea event), and does show a movement north from Palestine into
Anatolia, and thence out of Antolia into the Balkans and points north.

If this is so, then all the mesolithic cultures of the Balkans and
the Pontic Steppe were part of a single language phylum.  Kuban and
LBK could have been cognate languages.  Which one was the PIE
ancestor, I don't know.  There is a difficlty getting LBK languages
out as far as Andronova and Yamanaya cultures (seen as Proto-
Tocharian and Proto-Indo-Iranian), but hey! it may be possible!

I'd be interested in others comments.