Re: Hindu noise-makers, Elst and OIT -- a review

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Francisco,

 

You may start with my review:

 

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.be/2009/01/great-book-about-great-book.html 

 

As for "first", it is too late to come up with anything as "first", for I have already opened two lines of argument: one about languages families tending to expand from a corner rather than from the centre, and a second about the Rg-Vedic gradient from east to west, as shown by the appearance of biological and geographical names in its early and late part. So, you may answer these first before I set myself to answering your additional challenges. You may, for instance, explain how the Aryan invaders encountered the Indian elephant first (that word again!) and the Bactrian camel later.

 

Kind regards,

 

Koenraad Elst

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

 

 

Koenraad Elst wrote:

 

> The whole point of this discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to

> finally get some people on both sides to really discuss the contentious

> issues, those that may make a difference. By contrast, so far the debate

> has been cloud by all sorts of diversions. In the present case, questions

> of the degree of Sanskit knowledge in Talageri’s, Fournet’s and Witzel’s

> case is one such diversion.

 

To start with, why don’t you tell us what is *YOUR* take on Shrikant Talageri’s implicit but transparent denial of the existence of an Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family? He reduces the genetic unity of Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages to mere “interaction” limited to a specific and late period, thereby suggesting nothing has ever been inherited from a common linguistic ancestor (i.e. from Proto-Indo-Iranian). What about Talageri’s negation of the most basic features and principles of historical linguistics and of Indo-European studies in spite of his claiming to address the issue of the Proto-Indo-European homeland? What about the absence from his works of basic words, generally appearing in the works and articles dealing with the Proto-Indo-European issues like cognate word, change, phonetic, correspondence, proto-language, etc.? What about his ridiculous map which mechanically (but unscholarly) translates the scheme of Indo-European isoglosses devised by H.H. Hock in geographical terms and ends up showing Proto-Greek in Afghanistan, Proto-Italic in Turkmenistan etc.?

 

If you wish to discuss Talageri’s works (and then Kazanas’, your own, etc.) on the so-called Out-of-India Theory, you should kindly reply to these and similar other preliminary questions *FIRST*.

 

Thanks and best regards,

Francesco

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear listfolk,

 

The whole point of this discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to finally get some people on both sides to really discuss the contentious issues, those that may make a difference. By contrast, so far the debate has been cloud by all sorts of diversions. In the present case, questions of the degree of Sanskit knowledge in Talageri's, Fournet's and Witzel's case is one such diversion. I don't care if anyone has the right background or not. Even village bumpkins can say the truth once in a while, and even qualified people may be wrong -- that is why they are challenged regularly by other qualified people.

 

Such questions are typical of both academics and Hindus: instead of dealing with the truth of the matter, they deal with the Adhikara ("entitledness") of the debaters concerned. Being of the anti-authoritarian generation (thrown out of a secondary school for growing my hair), I really don't care for this entitledness. As you can see for yourself surveying this debate, quite a few replies have already been wasted on these questions of Adhikara, and very few were about the actual AIT/OIT argumentation.

 

On the Hindu side, one of the main irritants, especially for the audience of the present list, is either the rejection of linguistics (as a "pseudo-science") altogether, or the attempt to try a linguistic argument for once but ignoring fundamental facts of this scholarly field, such as the distinction between genetic kinship and areal influence. With a record of truly laughable folk etymologies ("PN Oakisms"), Hindus should be extra careful not to mistake mere look-alikes (between, say, Munda and Sanskrit) for cognate words.

 

Kind regards,

 

Koenraad Elst

 

 

 

 

 

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Oregon based Living Tongues Institute for endangered languages conducted a project on Munda languages, Project team published a table of few Munda words, a sample. As usual, project team studies Munda words in isolation like students try to learn how to translate into a different language, They didn't investigate the origin of munda words in Sanskrit since project doesnt talk about Sanskrit, In the table below, I am prviding Sanskrit source of those few Munda words, some words have got direct origin in Sanskrit whereas some are taken from Hindi, the language spoken in surrounding Munda region. The methodolgy used in all such projects is ineffecient and error prone, since it doesn't study eco-system of a language and it's speakers, and as a result of such inefficent methodologies, Munda has become a language of Dravid family, Indian Linguistics have been obviously excelled in following outcome of such projects and pulishing their researches built on top of such errorneous outcomes.

 

From: Lalit Mishra <litsol@...>