Re: In response to Witzel's work

----- Original Message -----
From: "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 4:37 AM
Subject: [Courrier indésirable] [tied] Re: In response to Witzel's work


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
> =============
>> Dear M. Kelkar,
>> 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.
=========
Indic Words having retroflex can be divided in two groups :

1. inherited PIE words have acquired this feature thru regular processes.
And by the way, these processes must be rather early,
as Uralic Moksha has *krsni > kshni "gold".
(ksni is a possible word too hence -sh- in kshni tells us something)

2. All the other words having retroflex are non PIE,
they must hence be borrowed, and we are back to the starting point :
Indic displays a specifically Indian set of LWs, that other IE languages do
not have.
Iranian, the closest relative of Indic, has none of these LWs.

============

> "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.

========
I think the criteria are 100% phonetic and morphological.
Any trained student with the right criteria can reach the standard
conclusion with 100% certainty.
There is nothing subjective in there.
Arnaud
======

>Rahul Peter Das (a believer in the Aryan invasion theory),

========
I don't like the undertones carried by the word "invasion".
We are not dealing with an Anschluss over Austria, or a Blitzkrieg or the
Warsaw's Pact dealing with Hungary in 1956.
The arrival of Indic is not an _event_ but a _process_.
I would rather describe this process as a percolation or infiltration of
Indic speakers,
which ultimately led to the creation of a new ethnic and social synthesis,
when Indic speakers took the power.
this ethnogenetic process probably took centuries.
So I would rename the standard theory : Indic Infiltration Ethnogenesis
theory.
Arnaud
=========

>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)."
=======
It might not be decisive but it has to be addressed and dealt with
satisfactorily.
I woud describe this as a major arbitrator.

Arnaud
=========

>> - 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

======
This is not relevant to the fact that Indic words related to things tropical
and native to India are non PIE.
This clearly shows that Indic _acquired_ a particular set of words, that PIE
did not have before.
When it comes to complete failure, OIT fails to account for the most basic
and obvious features and fabric of Indic.

Arnaud
=======