Re: beyond langauges

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:

>
> David,
>
> Your response is interesting but I think you keep missing some
> points yourself. But again, I think I will make myself clear
> on these aspects.
>
> > Anything Indo-Aryan is, by definition, also Indo-Iranian.
> > Indo-Iranian is an overarching category that encompasses
> > Indo-Aryan and Iranian both.
>
> That is your definition.

No, that's not my definition. It's linguistic terminology
and I'm trying to explain to you how linguists use it.

You don't have to accept what linguists conclude about the
history of Sanskrit, Mitanni, or whatever, but surely you
don't think that you can dictate to linguists what _they_
mean by their _own_ terminology, do you?

> My arguement is there is no Ilr at all. Cf my arguements to
> Rchard above.

But you've yet to make any proper case for there being no
Indo-Iranian at all. You've mistaken some facts that you
recently learned about Mitanni as having something to do
with why linguists have posited Proto-Indo-Iranian and an
Indo-Iranian language family, but which they do not.

Until you realize and acknowledge the mistake, we can't
really make any further progress.

> > We don't call the Indo-Iranian language that left traces
> > in Mitanni 'Indo-Aryan' because we believe it came from
> > India, but only because it belongs to the same family as
> > Sanskrit, Vedic, the Prakrits, etc., as is shown by its
> > actual linguistic features, and that family had already
> > been given the name 'Indo-Aryan' when Indo-Iranian loans
> > in Mitanni were first noticed.
>
> Indic is not understood geo way. It refers to languages so far
> our discussions here are concerned.

Yes, that's correct.

> > If we found evidence for Sanskrit nowhere else besides
> > the Planet Mars, and evidence for Avestan nowhere besides
> > Venus, we would still conclude that they'd split from a
> > common ancestor, we would _have_ to say so, because that
> > is what the languages themselves tell us. It has nothing
> > at all to do with geography and it never has.
>
> Exactly. The languages could be similar because of borrowing
> also, right?

No. The similarities in Avestan and Vedic can in no way
possible be due to borrowing. They're not of the nature
of loaned elements.

> (that substratum and superstratum thing) Just because you find
> 75% of Telugu is sanskritized, you would not say Telugu to be
> a sister [or daughter, the english one, not duhita :) ]of skt,
> would you?

No, of course not, because the Sanskrit element in Telugu
is primarily in the form of loanwords, with the Dravidian
element belonging to the language's "core" or "bones", as
I called it before, including the grammatical structure,
agglutinating system, pronouns, basic "homey" vocabulary,
etc.

> > > With the above paragraph, even this evidence seems to be
> > > destroyed and there is no common language called IIr. The
> > > following solution is nonsense anyway and just trying to
> > > fit the circumstances, so as to keep the common origin
> > > theory of all IE' alive. Frankly, i think PIE is finished.

- edit -

> Let me make a concession- Ilr is finished !

Nope. Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-Iranian are on even more
solid ground than Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European are,
involving less extrapolation from the level of the attested
as they do.

> > At this point in time the existence of P.I.E. is proven
> > beyond all doubt, and that would be so even if Sanskrit
> > and Avestan themselves were unknown, not to mention the
> > far less important traces left in Mitanni. Indo-European
> > encompasses more than just Indo-Iranian, and would still
> > stand as a valid category even if your claims here about
> > Indo-Iranian were to be accepted, Kishore.
>
> Please do accept them and see if you can add some scholarly
> stuff.

You mean I should make your argument for you? That would
be a bit difficult and unpleasant for me though, since I
don't believe it myself.

> Seriously, some of you can do much much better than than I. For
> eg., Fransesco has written a very good post in IER on Mitannis
> on Varuna getting transformed into Hittites' Aruna. I did say
> this earlier, but without much conviction nor with the scholarly
> reasoning given by Fr. The point I am trying to make here is you
> all can help me present things more in a scholarly way and
> acceptable to the mainstream social scientists.

Why would anybody want to help win acceptance for ideas
which they believe to be false?

> > What the mainstream theory says is that the Aryans divided,
> > naturally, into sub-branches, of which the Iranian, Indo-
> > Aryan, and Kafiri are the only to survive, with members of
> > the Indo-Aryan branch being the first to expand out of the
> > homeland in Central Asia onto the Iranian plateau, while
> > other Indo-Aryans moved in the direction of Afghanistan and
> > India. Later another wave of Aryans from the homeland in
> > Central Asia, this time of the Iranian branch, is supposed
> > to have arrived on the plateau, and eventually completely
> > absorbed or displaced the Indo-Aryans already there. Some
> > time after Indo-Aryans reached the Iranian plateau, members
> > of another branch of Indo-Aryan arrived in the subcontinent.
>
> This is interesting. Please give me references for elaborate
> online artilces. I would like to read on that, because this
> is what I too seem to be saying.

I don't know of any. A few years ago I rewrote Wikipedia's
article on 'Aryan' to include such information, putting a
lot of effort into the project, only to have it changed back
a few days later to the nonsense I had replaced.

Watching a few more pieces of my work bull-dozed like that
pretty much put me off of trying to contribute to Wikipedia
ever after.

> > It's supported, and I hope widely accepted, that there were
> > Indo-Aryans on the Iranian plateau before the Iranian Aryans
> > came, but it's not supported by your two factors, but rather
> > by sound scholarship of a sort you haven't yet read yourself.
>
> This is what You said above too, san the snide remarks about
> my 'scholarship'

They're not meant to be snide, Kishore. You truly haven't
read much on our topic, it seems to me, besides a lot of
online material that is ideologically predigested, rather
than collections of the basic facts needed for one to make
a start.

> Why can't you condermn the two factors?

What is the second factor?

> > You're not qualified to say to what the similarities are
> > due, Kishore, and they most definitely cannot be due to
> > borrowing. They go right down, in fact, to the "bones"
> > of the languages, including their pronouns, inflectional
> > endings and paradigms, including which roots belong to
> > which paradigm, phonological systems, etc., which are the
> > last features to be borrowed by one language from another.
> > The first features to be borrowed are usually nouns, and
> > naturally just those names of new items for which the
> > borrowers don't already have words of their own, and the
> > number of words that can be shown to have been borrowed
> > by Indo-Aryan from Iranian, or vice versa, isn't all that
> > large, so there's just no justification to claim as you do.
>
> I am not qualified to condermn you

It's not me whom you're not qualified to condemn, but
linguists and linguistics, which you don't understand.

> but Patrick will certainly have something to say.

No, he's not qualified either.

> He always holds a contra view to the mainstream and finds the
> scholarly proofs required/

On no occasion, on which he's contradicted a mainstream
view, have I seen him able to produce "scholarly proofs"
for his claims, Kishore, but if you choose him for your
champion, so be it, and good luck to you.

David