From: Rick McCallister
Message: 53271
Date: 2008-02-15
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallisterhttp://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1995/147-08/14708-11.pdf
> <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> >
> > So, you're saying Johanna Nichols claims that IE
> > originated in India? Then why does she have an
> on-line
> > article that claims otherwise? Post what Johanna
> > Nichols says, not what your buddu claims she says.
> >
>
> That was a direct quote from Nichols I had posted.
> Here is another
> nice review:
>
> "Linguist Johanna Nichols of the University of
> California, Berkeley,
> says the key to Indo-
> European's ascent was the periodic movement of
> ancestral tongues
> across central Eurasia,
> beginning around 7,000 years ago. Every few thousand
> years, a new
> language would expand
> westward across the arid grasslands of central
> Eurasia what Nichols
> calls a "spread zone."
> These linguistic expansions, unaccompanied by any
> large population
> migration, altered the
> way people communicated across much of the
> continent.
> Reconstructed family trees of various branches of
> Indo-European show
> that these ancestral
> tongues split immediately into a dozen or more
> "daughter" languages,
> the Berkeley researcher
> says. This trait signals the rapid formation of
> regional dialects from
> an original form of speech
> and is a hallmark of spread zones.
> Linguistic evidence much of it derived from
> reconstructions of
> extinct tongues points
> to the spread across central Eurasia of a language
> family ancestral to
> proto-Indo-European,
> Nichols contends. Four successive spreads of
> Indo-European language
> families followed: proto-
> Indo-European around 5,500 years ago, Iranian about
> 4,000 years ago,
> Turkic nearly 2,000
> years ago, and Mongolian between 1,500 and 1,000
> years ago.
> Nichols places the proto-Indo-European homeland
> about 2,000 miles
> southeast of the homeland
> Anthony proposes. Various regional branchings of
> Indo-European
> accompanied the four
> major spreads, which began at different eastern
> points in central
> Eurasia, Nichols maintains.
> Eurasian peoples living to the east and toward the
> center of the
> continent inhabited sparse,
> dry landscapes that promoted nomadic animal herding
> and clan-based
> societies, she notes.
> Clans were dispersed clusters of people belonging to
> kinship groups
> presided over by a hierarchy
> of male rulers. Clan members were not necessarily
> biologically
> related, but they claimed a
> link to an ancient, often mythical ancestor.
> Clans on the eastern edge of the spread zone had a
> military or
> economic edge on their
> neighbors, who spoke different languages, and these
> eastern clans
> fomented the major linguistic
> diffusions, Nichols argues.
> Historical accounts, such as those describing the
> shift from Turkic to
> Mongol, indicate that
> these clan rulers often arranged alliances with
> their counterparts to
> the west. These agreements
> included a voluntary embrace by western rulers of
> the spreading
> language, she contends.
> A mixture of economic opportunism and military
> intimidation probably
> motivated clan
> leaders to accept an advancing language and its
> speakers' culture,
> Nichols suggests.
> Thus, the original Indo-Europeans may have made
> their linguistic mark
> without any of the
> cultural innovations often ascribed to them.
> "They did not bring agriculture to Europe, tame the
> horse, invent
> patriarchy and warrior
> cults, or initiate the Bronze Age," Nichols asserts.
> "They likely had
> a small competitive edge on
> other steppe societies, but the main reason why
> their language spread
> was that they happened
> to be in the right place at the right time."
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
> M. Kelkar
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> > Be a better friend, newshound, andhttp://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
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> >____________________________________________________________________________________
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>
>