Dear Francesco,
I do not think the theory of Alinei and his co-workers
and supporters has been discussed here. Which is most
unfortunate as it represents an extreme development of
indigenist/continuity theories and yet Alinei is, as
you correctly point out, an established academic
figure. Alas, such a position does not guarantee the
veracity of his claims. I cannot help reminding the
Cybalists of what he has claimed about the situation
in Uralic studies (both linguistics and archaeology).
This is what Alinei claims in
http://www.continuitas.com/intro.html
The Uralic Continuity Theory
In the last thirty years, there has been an important
breakthrough in the history of European origins, which
only recently has begun to attract the attention of
specialists of other areas. This is the so called
Uralic Continuity Theory (in Finnish: uralilainen
jatkuvuusteoria), developed in the Seventies by
archaeologists and linguists specialised in the Uralic
area of Europe, that is the area of Finno-Ugric and
Samoyed languages. This theory claims an uninterrupted
continuity of Uralic populations and languages from
Paleolithic: Uralic people would belong to the heirs
of Homo sapiens sapiens coming from Africa, they would
have occupied mid-eastern Europe in Paleolithic
glacial times, and during the deglaciation of Northern
Europe, in Mesolithic, would have followed the
retreating icecap, eventually settling in their
present territories (Meinander 1973, Nu�ez 1987, 1989,
1996, 1997, 1998).
The relevance of this theory for our problem lies
in the following points:
(1) it replaces an earlier �invasion theory�, quite
similar to the traditional IE one, and practically
modelled on it.
(2) It represents the first claim of uninterrupted
continuity from Paleolithic of the second European
linguistic phylum, thus opening the way to a similar
theory for IE.
(3) It is now current not only among specialists of
Finno-Ugric prehistory and of Finno-Ugric languages,
but has become part of the general culture in all
countries where Uralic languages are spoken.
(4) It obliges to question the validity of the
until now accepted chronology for the innumerable
Uralic loanwords from contiguous IE and Turkic
languages.
There is thus every reason to advance a similar
theory for the major linguistic phylum of Europe.
....
Actually, here Alinei (deliberately or because of
misunderstanding) confuses the widely accepted
moderate continuity theories of Uralic dispersal to
extreme views which are largely rejected by the
scholarly mainstream. The former simply assert that
Finland has been inhabited without any breaks since
the end of the LGM and that Uralic language-family has
been in Finland probably since the spread of the Comb
Ceramic culture around 4000 BCE or so. See, for
instance,
http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/where_do.html
by Christian Carpelan or Prehistoric Contacts between
Indo-European and Uralic (Thirteenth UCLA
Indo-European Conference,Los Angeles, November 9-10,
2001, JIES) by
Petri Kallio.
A very polemical attack on some of the extreme views
by Merlijn de Smit can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/isolintu/voodoo.html
There is a lot more to be said about the topic, but I
shall return to it later. One things is clear: Alinei
is totally unreliable on matters Uralic...:)
Cheers, Juha
--- Francesco Brighenti <
frabrig@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <gpiotr@...>
> wrote [Re: the "Paleolithic Continuity Theory on
> Indo-European
> Origins" website at
>
> http://www.continuitas.com/index.html ]:
>
> > Of course this completely static view of general
> history
> contradicts > what we know from _historical_
> sources. There was no
> Anglo-Saxon > colonisation of Great Britain, because
> Great Britain
> has been partly > Germanic-speaking since time
> immemorial (4.5c),
> right? There have > "always" been Slavs in the
> Balkans (4.5e),
> right? The fact that the > former Roman Empire is
> largely Romance-
> speaking is just coincidence -- it was "Italoid"
> since the
> Palaolithic (4.5d), right? Why doesn't the > author
> go the whole
> hog? Perhaps Pre-Columbian North America was also >
> part of the
> Germanic area and the rest of the New World has been
> Italoid
> > since the first Proto-Hispanics came over from
> Asia during the
> > Pleistocene? But why propose _any_ migrations at
> all? The most
> > parsimonious hypothesis is that we were all
> created in situ and
> haven't > moved at all. Sorry, but that stuff isn't
> worth anyone's
> time.
>
> Dear Piotr,
>
> Perhaps that stuff isn't worth anyone's time, but
> yet it is
> necessary to point out that the founder of the
> linguistic school in
> question is a respected linguist who has his own
> followers within
> the linguistic academia.
>
> The Italian linguist Mario Alinei is Professor
> Emeritus at the
> University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to
> 1987. He is the
> founder and editor of the Italian journal _Quaderni
> di semantica_.
> Until recently he was president of _Atlas Linguarum
> Europae_ (ALE)
> at UNESCO. Some of his main linguistic contributions
> which were
> instrumental in creating the Paleolithic Continuity
> Theory (PCT)
> were those about the tendency toward conservation of
> languages as
> opposed to the theories of "biological laws" of
> linguistic change
> and the method of lexical self-dating. Alinei and
> his work group
> have basically argued that the distribution of the
> IE family of
> languages is a reflex of the initial Paleolithic
> settlement of Homo
> sapiens in Eurasia from Africa.
>
> Here are the URLs of some of Prof. Alinei's online
> articles:
>
> http://www.continuitas.com/invasionless.pdf
> http://www.continuitas.com/towards_generalised.pdf
> http://www.continuitas.com/interdisciplinary.pdf
> http://www.continuitas.com/problem_dating.pdf
> http://www.continuitas.com/merits_limits.pdf
> http://www.continuitas.com/conservation_change.pdf
>
> Has Alinei's PCT ever been discussed on the cybalist
> before?
>
> Kindest regards,
> Francesco Brighenti
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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