--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> People on Cybalist know that I favour a Danubian homeland and a
link > with the Linear Pottery culture, with ca. 5600 BC as the "root
date" > (the separation of Anatolian) and something close to 4500 BC
for the > latest common ancestor of the non-Anatolian branches. 2600-
2000 BC > would be the formative period of Proto-Indo-Iranian, with
common > Iranian and Indo-Aryan as distinct languages after the
latter date. > In brief, here is my (approximate) timeline for the
history of Indic > (BP = before present):
>
> 7600 BP --- PIE
> 6500 BP --- non-Anatolian IE
> 5000 BP --- Proto-Satem
> 4600 BP --- Proto-Indo-Iranian
> 4000 BP --- Proto-Indo-Aryan
> 3700-3200 BP --- Rigvedic Indo-Aryan
> 3200-2500 BP --- late Old Indo-Aryan
> 2500-900 BP --- Middle Indo-Aryan
For an alternative view on the Homeland and the Chronology problem by
another linguist, here are Aron Doglopolsky's views.
Those who need the full article in pdf format, please email:
kalyan97@...
"Mallory's main argument for settling on the 5th millennium as the
date of PIE is the alleged PIE words for 'wheeled vehicles', 'horse',
and 'copper' (pp. 158-9, 179-80). But the words connected with
the 'wheeled vehicles' and 'horse' appear in Western (= Non-
Anatolian) languages only and can thus be ascribed to Late IE only,
rather than to proto-IE. The word *wogho-s 'vehicle' is represented
only in Greek (Homeric wochos) and in Slavic *vozu. This noun is
derived from the *wegh-, which in Late IE meant 'to transport in a
vehicle' (> Old Indian vahati 'transports in a vehicle', Avestan
vazaiti id., Lith. vezu, Old Church Slavonic vezp 'I transport in a
vehicle/on horseback'). In Hittite-Luwian the verb is not present,
hence it cannot be ascribed to PIE. The same holds true for the terms
for 'wheel': *kwekwlo- (represented in Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic
and Tokahrian, but not in Anatolian) and *rotHo- (represented in Indo-
Iranian, Celtic, Latin and Baltic, but again not in Anatolian). The
word *ekwo-s 'horse' is represented in Latin, Baltic, Germanic, Greek
(loan-word?), Cletic and Indo-Iranian, but not in Anatolian (except
for Hieroglyphic Luwian as'uwa-, which is obviously a loan either
from Phrygian (where IE *k was assibilated) or from some Indo-Iranian
language, as suggeste by its phonetic shape: in Indo-Iranian the IE
stem *ekwo- yields *as'wa- whence Old Indian as'va- and Avestan aspa-
). Consequently, the word *ekwo- can be reconstructed for the non-
Anatolian branch of IE, rather than for PIE. More than that, there is
no evidence proving that *ekwo-s denoted the domestic rather than the
wild horse. There is one typological argument which suggests that the
word originally referred to a wild horse: in languages of horse-
breeders there are usually different stems for 'horse', 'mare'
and 'foal' (as in English, French, Russian, Turkish, Mongolian,
etc.), which is explaiend by the importance of the sex difference and
age of horses for horse-breeders. But in Proto-IE there are no
special stems for 'mare' and 'foal', which suggests that the
stem '*ekwo-s originally denoted a wild horse. As for the alleged PIE
word for 'copper', it actually did not exist. The word *ayes- did not
mean 'copper', but conveyed a vague idea of metal in general, as
suggested by its reflexes: Old Indian ayas 'metal, ore', Latin
aes 'copper', Gothic aiz 'ore', OHG e_r 'ore', Old Norse eir 'ore,
copper', and probably also Old Assyrian as'i'u 'meteorite iron' (a
loan from language of Anatolia, as suggested by unambiguous textual
indications that as'i'u- metal was brought by Assyrian merchants from
Anatolia -- cf. Dolgopolsky 1987-9). Hence, none of these words can
serve as evidence for dating Proto-IE...
"...The genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic (or
Finno-Ugric) cannot prove that Proto-Indo-European was in the
geographic vicinity of Proto-Uralic or Proto-Finno-Ugric (as Mallory
argues on pp. 147-9). The same holds true of the relationship of Indo-
European and Semitic. The relationship between Indo-European and
Semitic (which Mallory erroneously rejects) has no bearing on the
homeland problem. What matters here is not the relationship between
languages, but the existence of absence of loan words: if one
language-borrowed words from another, and these are not names of
trade goods, which can be Wanderworter, it strongly suggests direct
communication between the two speech communities, and hence their
geographical vicinity. What happens in the case of Indo-European and
Finno-Ugric? These two languages have common inherited words and
morphemes (such as pronouns, markers of persons and cases, words
for 'water', 'to carry' etc), which proves their genetic
relationship, but has nothing to do with the geographical location of
Indo-European and Uralic (just as in the above case of Germanic and
Old Indian). In Finno-Ugric there are several dozen words of Aryan
(Indo-Iranian)origin, which suggest that proto-Indo-Iranian (but not
Proto-Indo-European) was once spoken in the vicinity of Finno-Ugric.
These words are not an argument for determining the homeland of proto-
Indo-European. What really matters is the fact that there are no
proto-Indo-European loanwords in Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) and no
Uralic or Finno-Ugric loans in proto-Indo-European. It strongly
suggests that there was no territorial vicinity between PIE and proto-
Uralic or proto-Finno-Ugric, that is that PIE was not spoken in or
near the Volga or Ural region, including the steppes to the north of
the Caspian sea (Gimbuta's 'IE homeland')..."
Dolgopolsky, Aron, University of Haifa, 'More about the Indo-European
homeland' in: Mediterranean language review. Vol. 6-7, 1990-1993, pp.
230-248