--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
> To: <fournet.arnaud@...>
> Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 11:14 PM
> Subject: [Courrier indésirable] In response to Wtizel's work
>
>
> These have been posted on Cybalist many times. Enjoy!
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrikant_G._Talageri
>
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/AITandscholarship.pdf
>
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/reply_to_witzel.pdf
>
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/RigVedicTownandOcean.pdf
>
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/english/documents/ReplytoWitzelJIES.pdf
>
> M. Kelkar
>
> =============
> Dear M. Kelkar,
>
> Thank you for the references.
>
> I can see nothing that really addresses the linguistic arguments
_against_ a
> possible origin in India.
> Namely :
> - retroflex consonants are a typical areal feature of India,
This feature could have develped after other dialects left the homeland.
"There is no agreement among scholars about what is "native" and what
is "foreign" in Indo-Aryan languages because of the subjective nature
of this decision. According to Emeneau (1980) "vocabulary loans from
Dravidian into Indo-Aryan] are in fact all merely 'suggestions.'
Unfortunately, all areal etymologies are in the last analysis
unprovable, are 'acts of faith', ...It is always possible, e.g. to
counter a suggestion of borrowing from one of the indigenous language
families by suggesting that there has been borrowing in the other
direction (p. 177)." Kuiper (1955) had detected 380 loan words in the
Rig Veda.
"But P. Thieme (1994) examined and rejected Kuiper's list in toto,
gave Indoaryan or Sanskrit etymologies for most of these words, and
characterized Kuiper's exercise as an example of a misplaced "zeal for
hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". In general, Thieme sharply
rejects the tendency to force Dravidian or Austric etymologies onto
Indoaryan words, and insists (1992) that "if a word can be explained
easily from material extant in Sanskrit itself, there is little chance
for such a hypothesis."
Rahul Peter Das (a believer in the Aryan invasion theory), likewise
rejects (1994) Kuiper's list, and emphasises that there is "not a
single case in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the
foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and probably Vedic in general) word
(Talageri 2000)."
These contradictory findings have lead Bryant (1999) to conclude: "The
hypothesis of a pre-Indo-Aryan linguistic substratum remains a
perfectly acceptable way of explaining the existence of the
non-Indo-European features in Sanskrit. Particularly significant in
this regard is the non-Indo-Aryan nature of the terms for the flora of
the Northwest. But this is not the only model. As I have attempted to
outline, the possibility of spontaneous development for many of the
innovated syntactical features, coupled with the possibility of an
adstratum relationship between Dravidian and Sanskrit for features
that are undoubtedly borrowings, are the most obvious alternative
possibilities. In conclusion, in my opinion, the theory of Indo-Aryan
migrations into the Indian subcontinent must be primarily established
without doubt ON OTHER GOUNDS (emphasis in original) to be fully
conclusive. The apparent 'evidence' of a linguistic substratum in
Indo-Aryan, in and of itself, cannot be used as a decisive arbitrator
in the debate over Indo-Aryan origins (p. 80)."
> - all words in Indic referring to things tropical and native to
India are
> obviously of non PIE origin,
Linguistic paleontology has been a complete failure in locating a
possible homeland for PIE.
See section 3.3 below
http://voi.org/books/ait/ch33.htm
"As Stefan Zimmer has written: �The long dispute about the reliability
of this �linguistic paleontology� is not yet finished, but approaching
its inevitable end - with a negative result, of course (Elst 2000)."
M. Kelkar
>
> These facts are explained (quite nicely) by Indic having integrated
a non
> PIE substrate.
>
> Until a satisfactory alternative explanation has been provided for
these
> basic linguistic facts, OIT does not make sense.
>
> Arnaud
>
> ============
>