Re: Proto Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian) Langauges

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:

> Of course not. But, really, the invasionist historical paradigm was
> demised long ago by most of serious researchers. Modern Indologists
> and Indo-Iranian historical linguists tend to speak of transfers of
> ideologies, subsistence systems, language, and spiritual culture
> from one group to the other as often as movements of people. Such
> processes do not necessarily involve large-scale migrations,
> although actual physical movement (starting with, e.g., transhumance
> tricklings in involving the transference of pastoralist innovations
> from one population to another, and the emergence of 'khanate'-like
> territorial domains) and intermarriage are not excluded. Various
> types of military interaction, such as cattle raids, actual war-like
> clashes, battles and even the incidental invasion of smaller or
> larger bands, groups or tribes may or may not be part of the
> picture.

Can you give a better documented example of such processes causing
language replacement? The nearest example I can think of is the
replacement of Russian by French among the Russian upper class in the
18th century, but could that have resulted in Russia becoming
French-speaking? Possibly Brussels's speaking French rather than
Walloons or Flemish is a better example.

Richard.