--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, x99lynx@... wrote:
> I WROTE
> <<Renfrew often enough does not even admit the existence of a
language called
> proto-indo-european. So it is inaccurate to say that he places such a
> language in the Fertile Crescent.>>
>
> PIOTR REPLIED:(Sunday, March 16, 2003 7:45 AM)
> <<Steve, Where does he deny it?>>
>
> I said he doesn't admit it. And he says so expressly in A&L.
> E.g., running through the index from _Archaeology & Language_ the
paperback
> edition (1988):
>
> p. 18 - "One important question is the extent to which it is
legitimate to reconstruct a Proto-Indo-European language, drawing upon
the cognate forms of the words in various Indo-European languages that
are formed."
He poses a question without giving a clear answer. He does have valid
objections against specific things like "linguistic palaeontology"
(and here I at least partly agree with him), but that's different from
undermining the comparative reconstruction of PIE.
>
> p. 35 - "Nearly all scholars who have considered the Indo-European
problem have felt able to propose a specific place of origin, a
homeland for those speakers of a Proto-Indo-European language,
postulated as ancestral to these languages... One exception was the
Russian scholar, N. S. Trubetskoy, who questioned the whole notion of
an ancestral Indo-European language..."
>
> p. 108 - "Trubetskoy criticized severely the dangerous assumptions
which led to the construction of a supposed Proto-Indo-European
language." Et seq.
Here he summarises Trubetskoy's views, not his own. I don't feel he
wholeheartedly agrees with Trubetskoy's idea of PIE as a Sprachbund
(which has not won much acceptance in the field, and with good reason).
> What's more, when he does use "Proto-Indo-European" in A&L, he DOES
NOT even
> limit it to Anatolia. For example:
>
> p. 161 - "Secondly, it is not clear from this model to what extent
the language of the first farmers in Greece was modified during the
wave of advance. On the one hand one might imagine that there was
little change initially, so that a somewhat similiar
Proto-Indo-European language might have been spoken from Greece right
through to Scandinavia with only dialectical variations at the outset.
The differentiation into the various Indo-European branches would
then have been a subsequent process."
>
> And when Renfrew states his conclusion in A&L, he certainly doesn't
use PIE:
> p.288 -- "It seems likely then that the first Indo-European
languages came to Europe from Anatolia around 6000BC, together with
the first domesticated animals and plants, and that they were in fact
spoken by the first farmers of Europe." A favorable interpretation
might of course translate "first Indo-European languages" as pre-PIE
languages -- just as pre-Celtic might be loosely called a Celtic language.
"Indo-European" = "pre-PIE"? Were they their own grandpa? I find this
terminology extremely confusing. The fact that Renfrew uses the term
"PIE" rather loosely is a shortcoming, if anything.
> Renfrew is not consistent of course and I'm not sure that he clearly
understood or understands that "proto-indo-european" refers to a
rather specific point in reconstructed linguistic development, rather
than just a generic term for "an ancestor" of IE languages.
> BUT some linguists of course can be just as guilty (or more so) of
crossing the same line when they start talking about such
extra-linguistic ideas as "Indo-European Culture" or worse, "the
culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans".
> For those linguists, criticizing Renfrew is like the pot calling the
kettle black.
I agree, and I try not to be one of "those linguists". I'm something
of a purist in distinguishing language from culture.
> PIOTR ALSO WRITES:
> <<He uses the term "Proto-Indo-European" often enough without
qualifying it in any way, and some of his dispersal scenarios
(see_Archaeology and Language_, subchapter 8.5) make it clear that he
treats Anatolia as _the_ PIE homeland rather than a pre-PIE
pre-homeland.>>
>
> I'm sorry but I don't see that in the chapter you've cited. He
definitely doesn't commit to any of the hypotheses he offers in that
chapter. And when he does use the word "proto-indo-european", it's
clear he is using it the same way he spoke of PIE as reaching from
Greece to Scandinavia in the quote above.
Well, in that chapter he considers a dispersal scenario with primary
splits taking place in Anatolia and IE branches radiating out of there
east and west. This means that the last comon ancestor of the family
was spoken in Anatolia itself, not in any kind of "secondary
homeland". I haven't got the book with me at the moment, so please
correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Renfrew is rather
consistent in believing that the Anatolian branch never left the
homeland area, and if so, PIE sensu stricto must be located in
Anatolia anyway, whether the scenarios in 8.5 are accepted or not.
> PIOTR ALSO WRITES:
> <<To quote Renfrew himself ("Nostratic as a Linguistic Macrofamily",
1999): "... the Proto-Indo-European homeland would be located in
Central Anatolia, around 7000 BC". I plead innocent of twisting his
words.>>
>
> Well, central Anatolia is certainly not the Fertile Crescent, which
is what you first mentioned.
OK. Still (importantly for Renfrew) it's very close to the middle part
of the Crescent
http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/rug/AR210/TransitionsToFarming/ferthtml.htm=
l
and the chronology is accordingly very deep.
> I'm not sure why so many linguists dislike the idea that
Indo-European languages spread when humans first began producing food,
instead of gathering it. Renfrew is of course guilty of confusing the
whole thing with genetics and wave theories and such. And of not
being careful in his use of terms.
>
> But the idea is clearly a powerful one in explaining the early
spread of a language group well beyond any single ethnic, genetic or
cultural boundary. ... Renfrew has said many things. But if nothing
else he helped breakthrough a long load of ethnic mythology and
provided a good, sound, basic human economic and social reason for why
the IE languages spread. There's nothing in Mallory or the old
conventional theories that even comes close.
I agree again. As you may have noticed, I side with Renfrew far more
than I do with Mallory, and I accept the idea that the IEisation of
Central and Northern Europe had everything to do with the initial
spread of Neolithic cultures there. I simply don't go with him all the
way back to Anatolia, since I don't find enough linguistic evidence to
speculate about the location of pre-PIE.
Piotr