In regards to who is locating the IE
"homeland" north of the Black Sea,
I blurted:
>> The
sane people :)
Gerry:
>Ah me Glennie! You are in rare
form. And where do the less-sane
>people locate the
homeland?
Glen:
This just happens to be the larger consensus. Anatolia would be
a lesser,
but second alternative and finally, the other locations are just
not
considerable because they are too looney-gaga to make sense of. Do
your
ideas of this consensus differ in your mind?
GErry
replies:
So we're determining language origins according to consensus vote?
Does this have anything to do with "how many scholars" stand behind a
particular locale? Well, by consensus vote, I'm not at all surprised
that "north of the Black Sea (Russia) has the larger consensus. Then
Turkey? That's fine by me also. Actually what's looney-gaga is the
nationalism attached to each and every origin! J.P. Mallory calls for a
BROAD swatch of an area for I-E origins. I think I'll throw my support
in his direction.
>OK. I'll (for the moment) accept Ivanov and Gamkrelidze as
presenting a
>fringe hypothesis for the origins of IE.
Glen:
Hooray!
Gerry:
Didn't mean for you to get THAT excited.
>Thus your conflict with John Croft has to do with linguistics vs
>archaeology.
>Are you perhaps claiming that linguistics can exist
without archaeology?
Glen:
I'm claiming nothing contraversial at all. Linguistics _does_
exist without
archaeology for the simple fact that archaeology deals with
physical remains
and linguistics deals with non-tangible remains. We may
use archaeology as
a guide but we have to realise that the archaeological
data just can't give
us firm answers about language. Since archaeology
doesn't provide us with
these, it is important to question and requestion
the importance of the
archaeological finds when speaking of IE and, in the
end, it must be
linguistics that more firmly decides the likeliest position
of the
proto-language. Sorry, them's the brakes.
Gerry:
Yea, them's the brakes (or is it breaks)?
So you take five words from language A and find five similar roots in language
B and PRESTO! You have a relationship. Right? No, no. That's
simply not so. Linguistic studies is frankly becoming absurd! Too
much conjecture and too little fact.
For
linguistics to exist without archaeology is like words existing without
speakers. Now that's LOONEY TOONS!
>IMO, anyone trying
to "pinpoint" an area in which to locate the I-E is
>barking up the
wrong tree.
Glen:
I don't think anyone is trying to
draw accurate boundaries of these
languages.
I certainly am not. My
maps online are meant to give a general indication
of the greatest
concentration of any particular language, not rigid borders.
... And let's
not get into prehistoric multilingualism because that's
another
headache.
Gerry:
Actually I think that both prehistoric and
historic regions were multilingual from the start. And I also think the
physiology (morphology) of the skeletal evidence was also mixed.
>What's wrong with the Altai? The archaeological
evidence is there.
Glen:
The "archaeological evidence"?
Come now, Gerry. Found tablets written in
Proto-Indo-European in the Altai
Mountains, have we? Did you find Noah's
Ark there too? Archaeology really
doesn't speak volumes about the presence
of a language in the best of
times. What about these remains show that the
IE language must have been
there? The clothing? The horse remains? The
middens? What? What on earth
demonstrates a language in the archaeological
record?
Gerry:
No, Noah's Ark is on Mt. Arafat. What
demonstrates a language in the archaeological record? Only the
morphological identity of the people as determined by skeletal calculations
(and now their DNA). IOW, one identifies the ethnic realm of the speaker
such as Turkish or Basque or Germanic and then "assumes" they speak a
particular Turkish or Basque or Germanic language. But so
what? So I have some Caucasian looking people -- and what language do
they speak? Chinese? Could be. Actually, when one examines
the artificats of a particular culture, one can then begin to create a
hypothetical vocabulary. In other words, for the excavations in the
Altai, one can assume that words exist for all the artificats uncovered as
well as for the tales that the imagination can conjure up about the travels
and daily lives of the inhabitants. IOW, the folks who once lived in the Altai
didn't spend their days basking in the sun along Caribbean beaches, gathering
conch shells, seining for shrimp, and catching sea
bass.
>You may have a point. The IE in its grand
spread *could* have
>been located over a broad swatch of territory (as
Mallory presents) yet
>each valley in that territory will have a
sub-language (dialect).
Glen:
Yes, I don't argue that IE _was_ spoken over a large territory
but there
is a limit. The territory couldn't have been so large as to cover
Europe
all the way to China since language cohesion for any length of time
would
be impossible. Logically, this means that IE MUST have been spoken in
a
smaller region before spreading this far... which means that IE
itself
could never have occupied such a large territory.
GRW: Not a bad point or two if I do say so
myself. Language cohesion is an absolute term for which there exists not
an iota of evidence. For example, take a family of 10 members.
Granted that all 10 members can communicate but likely each member has his/her
own set "vocabulary" dependent on experience, peer group, education, hobbies
etc.
No language cohesion there. Then expand
this family of 10 to encompass a small city of 50,000. Will that city
have "language cohension"? Absolutely not. Yet all city dwellers
will be able to communicate. Likewise, similar happenings occur when we
increase the number of enclaves to 100 and then 1000 or even 10,000. In
all instances individual language patterns exist yet a general means of
communication (be it pigeon or sign language) always prevails. Even if
one took two representatives from the extremes in geographic area and brought
them together, in some fashion they should be able to communicate.
Initially this interaction could be extremely rudimentary but as familiarity
set in, the amount of communication would increase.
Glen continues:
You're confusing the
spread of already fragmented PostIE dialects with
the location of
Proto-Indo-European itself. There must be an epicentre from
which IE had
spread. When we speak of this epicentre, it is largely placed
north to
northwest of the Black Sea. Likewise there is an epicentre to each
isogloss
as well. This still doesn't mean that IE was not surrounded by
"para-dialects",
which are kinda like dialects that didn't quite make
it into modern times.
This is all very much like the mitochondrial Eve, who
no doubt had sisters,
but their genetics have no bearing on modern
humans.
To sum up: Language evolution is just a bunch of raindrops
making waves in a
puddle. Think about it.
Gerry:
Actually Glennie, language evolution can never be
determined. I give up. Don't you?
>It is my
opinion that language operates *both* over a vast swatch of
>territory
while at the same time having distinct dialects that are area
>(valley)
specific.
Glen:
The Inuit languages are good examples of what PreIE might have
been
like where there is no major difference between one area and the area
beside
it but very marked differences when comparing the western and
eastern
fringes
of the language area. This pattern is caused by the
mobility of the people
which ends up "smudging" any possible regional
dialects together. Of course,
the speakers of the IE language were probably
a little more sedentary than
their hunter-gatherer ancestors were, so more
drastic regional variants
would have an easier time forming, like that
whole "satem" thing which must
have started somewhere nearer the center of
the area ('cuz both
eastern-spreading Tocharian and western-spreading
Anatolian are non-satem
dialects and "closer" to each other in that
sense).
Gerry:
Sounds like something Mallory presented when he
drew a map of the pink guys and the blue guys. The pinks were already
established in territory X with enclaves in which they lived as major focal
points and lots of tiny subgroups representing all the major social
functions. The blues invade the territory but initially only succeed in
causing a change with the nearby group of pinks wherein those pinks begin to
incorporate the blues (first in the major social functions and then within the
enclaves within which they live). Major problem with Mallory's blue guys
and pink guys is in assuming that each group was either all pink or all
blue. IMO, both pinks and blues were multi-colored to begin
with.
Love and Kisses,
Gerry
- love
gLeN