--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...>
wrote:
> Which authoritative linguists or philologists make a distinction
> between Indic and Indo-Aryan? I wasn't aware of such a
> terminological distinction.
In fact, the two terms are synonyms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages
"The Indo-Aryan languages (within the context of Indo-European
studies also Indic) are a branch of the Indo-European language
family. They form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages... Note
that, unlike the generic adjective 'Indian', 'Indic' is the term
used in the context of Indo-European linguistics, and is not
strictly a geographical term; non-Indo-European languages spoken in
India are not included in the term, while the Indo-Aryan superstrate
in Mitanni, on the other hand, probably testifies to speakers of an
Indic language that never settled on the Indian subcontinent."
This means that all of the South Asian languages descending from
this or that dialect of Old Indo-Aryan (one form of which is
attested in Vedic texts, which at one time include linguistic hints
that yet other forms of this ancient language were current in
protohistoric South Asia), including among them the so-called Dardic
languages too, and the Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mittani, can be
indifferently labeled as either "Indo-Aryan" or "Indic".
In my opinion, the use of the term "Indic", having a geographic
flavour, is susceptible to determine more confusion than that of the
term "Indo-Aryan". At any rate, in either term the
qualification 'Ind-' only denotes the fact that the languages
belonging to this sub-branch of Indo-Iranian were historically
spoken in the Indian sub-continent, and not elsewhere. (But we think
we know their parent languages, soon after they split from the
Iranian sub-branch of Indo-Iranian, were originally spoken *outside*
of the Indian sub-continent...)
Regards,
Francesco