Indo European Conference 2006

Indo European Conference 2006.pdf in the files sectin.

"The publishing company wrote me (Koerner) that the present
book "contains two articles
that relate to the question of the I-E Homeland" (John H. Brown, e-
mail of 6 Oct.
2007), which, admittedly, was the reason why I asked for a review
copy. In fact,
only Johanna Nichols' paper "A Typological Geography for Proto-Indo-
European"
(191–211) comes near the topic that I believe to be of particular
interest to the
historian of linguistics, since the debate concerning the original
location of the
Indo-European peoples (from where the various Indo-European languages
are
supposed to have been spread to India, to Ireland and much beyond)
has occupied
many scholars from the time of Leibniz until the present day (see
Mallory's 1973
historical account, interestingly published in the maiden issue of
Journal of Indo-
European Studies), but also because the subject was particularly
prone to ideological
underpinnings. Depending on the intellectual climate, national
prejudice, or
political exigencies, the `cradle' of the Indo-Europeans could be
placed in India,
the Caucasus, Anatolia, Scandinavia, Germany, etc. (cf. Koerner 2000,
for details).
When Nichols concludes, from typological-linguistic evidence, that
the homeland
of the Indo-Europeans was located somewhere in the western portion of
northern
Eurasia, more precisely "in the western steppe" between Europe and
Asia (p. 204),
she is largely showing by other means what Victor Hehn (1813–1890)
and, largely
following him, Otto Schrader (1855–1919) had already argued in favour
of more
than one hundred years ago (see Hehn 1870, 1885; Schrader 1883,
1890)."

M. Kelkar