Re: [pieml] Re: IE: likely home, India

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 12047
Date: 2002-01-15


----- Original Message -----
From: kalyan97
To: pieml@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 4:25 AM
Subject: [pieml] Re: IE: likely home, India


> 1. Sanskrit
has both k and c before y: va_kya, va_cya
> 2. Sanskrit has cukopa, jugopa
without a palatal vowel

Such forms result from morphological, not phonological processes. Sanskrit has innovated by levelling out much of the original alternation, but enough of it survives (e.g.  vakti < *wekWti : avocat < *eweukWet = {e we-wkW-e-t},  to demonstrate that the levelling is secondary. Actually, there is no proof that the Sanskrit reduplication of <cukopa> etc. with *u is older than the non-IIr *e-reduplication pattern. (*ke-koup-e). Obviously analogical "exceptions" cannot disprove the regularity of a sound change. We would have a reason to worry if the distribution of velars and palatals did not follow the expected pattern in forms that cannot be paradigmatically motivated. But that is not the case.

> 3.
Linguistics does not explain why Greek presents a dental instead  of a palatal when followed by a palatal vowel

What on earth is this supposed to mean? (Attic) Greek shows <t> rather than <p> for *kW before *e and *i, and if you have an apical reflex of a historical velar, it's rarely due to anything else but palatalisation. Greek <t> from *k reflects a former palatalised consonant. This, however, is an inner Greek development (Mycenaean still had <qe-> for *kWe-) and I fail to see its relevance to the discussion of Sanskrit.

> 4. In reduplications, a palatal appears for
a velar in Sanskrit by dissimilation.

So why do we have <gVg-> and <kVk-> with no dissimilation in hundreds of Sanskrit words? Why does this "dissimilation" operate precisely in the environment where other IE languages indicate a following front vowel?

> 5. Gypsy languages researches
indicate that Indo-Aryan a remains a in Asiatic Gypsy but it becomes a,e,o in European Gypsy. 'This confirms that original IE a was same as Skt a and remained a in the Indo-Iranian languages, but changed to a,e,o in their sister languages...Gypsy languages present evidence with the linguistic changes by repetition of what had happened several thousand years back'.

A vague parallel like that (splits do happen, so what?) does not outweigh the very solid evidence that Indo-Iranian *a is the product of a merger. The evidence has convinced every linguist since 130 years ago, except Misra, who chooses to ignore the obvious for reasons best known to himself. Even if no other IE langauges were known to us, internal reconstruction within IIr would still reveal that fact.

> 6. 'Although Indo-Iranian a (or Skt a) was
retained in Old Iranian and subsequently also in Old Persian, it has considerably changed in Avestan. The change of Iranian a in Avestan may be shown as follows: Examples; 1) a > A when followed by m,n,vi_ but preceded by any sound except y,c,j,z'; 2) a >i when followed by m,n,vi_ and preceded by y,c; 3) a > e after y when immediate next syllable had i_, e,y,c,j or r'jh ( = Skt. sy); 4) 1> o sometimes after labial sounds when the next syllable had u/o; 5) a > a in all other situations. The change of a to several vowels a,e,o in Avestan was conditioned by definite situations. But the change of a to a, e, o in Greek, Latin and to a,e in several other languages was a change for which no condition can be determined. This shows that these languages belong to a much later date.

This is nonsense piled upon nonsense. If Greek, Latin and "several other languages" owed their vowel contrasts to a split at a "much later date", we would _not_ expect the conditioning factor to have evaporated. The more recent a change, the more evident its conditioning context, since it takes time for other processes to obscure the regular pattern produced by the change.

> 7."The reconstruction of a as made by Schleicher, Bopp and
Grimm is more appropriate than the later reconstruction of a,e,o as made by Brugmann etc. (followed  by many including myself), if the Aryans hd India as their home and had gone out to different parts of Europe and Asia via Iran. The original a (=Skt a) is retained in Old Iranian (with changes in Avestan under different circumstances) and gratually changes in various historical languages for which the change of climate also might have been partly responsible.'

Whatever homeland you believe in, the Brugmannian revision of the vowel system must be accepted for reasons that have everything to do with logic and nothing to do with climate. Even assuming for the sake of the argument that India was the cradle of IE, Misra's historical phonology remains rubbish.

> 8. Laryngeal theory is questioned. 'The Anatolian languages
were writeen in a Semitic script and the Laryngeal symbol of the semitic script was frequently used in writing the Anatolian languages. First of all this might have entered as an orthographic inaccuracy but subsequently it might have been phonetically established in the
Anatolian languages.'
 
It apparently escapes Misra that laryngeal theory was formulated before the decipherment of Hittite. Anatolian evidence corroborates it rather spectacularly, but the theory is convincing even without it. The fact that the Hittite "orthographic innacuracy" happens to correspond to independently reconstructed *h2 or *h3 is of course another miraculous coincidence. The laryngeals have also left many traces in Indo-Aryan, but Misra is selectively blind to anything that might clash with his fundamental conviction that Sanskrit is the most archaic of all IE languages.
 
> 9. Classification of Dravidian as a separate race or as a separate language family is a hasty conclusion, because no proper linguistic comparison of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian has ever been attempted.'
 
To connect Dravidian with IE you would require some positive evidence derived from the rigorous application of comparative method. Arguing from the absence of negative evidence is like claiming that the moon must be mostly made of blue cheese, because no-one has dug into it deep enough to prove that there in no blue cheese inside. Lists of lexical correspondences and typological similarities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian prove nothing about common origin; they only show what everyone knows anyway -- Indo-Aryan and Dravidian have been geographically close for ca. 4000 years -- surely long enough for areal diffusion to produce a good deal of convergence. To be sure, the diffusing traits (with the possible exception of a few individual wanderworts) have never reached the non-IIr branches of IE, but who cares? The other branches "belong to a much later date" and might just as well not exist.

> 10.Every other language speaker (except Sanskrit) claims that he
came from outside; there is no evidence in early Sanskrit texts for such an ingress into India.

It would surprise you (and Misra) how many peoples (including IE-speaking ones) believe in their ethnic and linguistic autochthony since the dawn of time. The fact that so many people in India cling to such a belief so tenaciously is of some sociological interest, but is irrelevant from the point of view of historical linguistics. If you want to know where a language came from, the opinion of its native users may contain a grain of truth but is not necessarily more important than more objective evidence. The Roma people had managed to forget all about India as their place of origin by the time they appeared in Europe. The spread of Indo-Aryan in India is unlikely to have looked like a dramatic conquest or "ingress" -- more likely a gradual process of penetration and acculturation, involving many semi-nomadic groups and many generations of people.
 
Piotr