Re: IE common traits

"Simona Klemencic" simona_klemenci-@... writes:

1."In broad terms all human languages are most likely descended from a single language." What makes you so sure of that???

This gets into the origin of our species as well as the neurological basis of our ability to learn language. There are two models for the origin of  H. sapiens. The first says different groups emerged out of late H. habilis, in different parts of the world. The second, and most generally held view is that we all came from Africa, from a very small founder group. It is possible that language independently arose in more than one group, but extraordinary advantages conferred by language would give the founders an immense advantage over their pre-linguistic kin. Marc Verhaegan is better equipped to review these questions.

2. Who is Greenberg? Joseph Greenberg. His version of the Nostratic hypothesis is termed Eurasiatic. Greenberg is the 'father', so to say, of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages; this work is universally esteemed, and it puts him in the revered company of persons such as Sassaure. He has brought the techniques he used for demonstrating the unity of A-A to the next-higher level of human languages, where considerably less is available for study; for this, he and his followers have been subjected to severe criticism. The other big name in Nostratic studies is Alan Bomhard.

3."No one really disputes the idea that the world's languages can be placed in such supergroups." When I wanted to discuss the Nostratic question with my professor Wojciech Smoczynski in Krakow he said it was a was waste of time. Besides, how can everybody be so sure of something to be true if the methods that should prove it are so contradictory? I've often heard Illych-Svytich critisized.

Yes, it can be considered a waste of time, in that there is so little that can be stated with any certainty. The idea itself is not under attack, however, only the 'tools' used to make 'scientific' assertions about it. I'm am unaware of Illych-Svitich.

4.What do you mean by "the falling-together of proto-Indoeuropean"? I must confess I've never heard of this and I'd wish to learn more about this (what? a hypothesis?). Proto-Indo-European is the ancestral language of all known Indo-European languages, past and present. The date for PIE is controversial, depending on how soon or how late you move proto-Anatolian (Hittite, etc.) away from the remaining block of IE speakers. Before this date, you then have a longish period of time where what seems to be a small group of people maintained their language without developing any daughter languages.

The linguists can detect stages in the history of PIE by the remnants of earlier forms. It's like the vestiges of grammatical gender in Modern English (only in the pronouns), or overtly marked noun cases (again, in the pronouns), and archaic verb forms (the distinction between weak and strong verbs, the remnants of a formerly well-elaborated subjunctive, etc.), all of which clearly testify to a very different yet nonethless directly ancestral form. The date for the falling-together of PIE is somewhat theoretical, but what is looked for are the emergence of changes that differentiated PIE from all other language families. One suggestion is that this point was achieved when PIE switched from an ergative system (such as is found in Basque or Georgian) to a nominative system.

I'd appreciate the bibliography for these topics, especially the last one.

The two best books are:

J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (Thames and Hudson, 1989).

Robert S.P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (John Benjamins, 1995).

Any college library should have them. Both are available in paperback. For anyone with any interest in IE studies, these two books are indispensable. These are the books everyone has read. Beekes requires several readings before you can assimilate everything he presents. Mallory, since the death of Gimbutas, is probably now the world's most esteemed IE archaeologist.

For the falling-together of PIE, this is something you glean from reading everything else.

Mark Odegard.