Re: Origins of I-E; was: Re: Problems with Bomhard

Gerry:

>Dear Glennie,
>Who is locating "the homeland" north of the Black Sea other than
>Madame Kuzmina (likely built on info from Gimbutas who placed it in
>the Russian Steppe)?

The sane people :)

>Ivanov and Gamkrelidze locate the Indo-Iranian motherland in western Iran.

That's nice. They also posit ludicrous phonemes that haven't gained
acceptance
at all, and their glottalic idea, while typologically reasonable, doesn't
guarantee that the final stage of IE had ejectives. It remains on the fringe
of IE studies. When spoken in comparison to other IE theories, it is most
often mentioned as a side-note or an afterthought.

>John Croft

'Nuff said. John's ideas are very unique to the world. John seems to be deep
into the archaeology but hasn't shown any deep understanding of IE
morphology
last time I checked. When speaking of the IE language, there has to be a
knowledge of the language first, archaeology second, not vice versa. Sorry,
John. Just my sharp-tongued opinions again.

>Renfrew has placed it in Turkey and Lamberg-Karlovsky in Pakistan.

But the question is why anyone would place it there. Anatolian peoples
appear to be from elsewhere, displacing original inhabitants of the area.
You'd expect loanwords back and forth between IE and other Anatolian
languages but where are they??

>Polosmak has placed it in the Altai.

Well, then. Who are we to argue with Polo... Polo-who? Nobody places it in
the Altai Mountains unless they want to be funny or lunatic.

>In a recent lecture at Stanford, J.P. Mallory identified the Indo-European
>homeland not as a single geographic spot but as a sweeping swatch of land
>extending from Ireland/GB in the north to N. Africa in the south and
>extending across Eurasia (via Egypt and the Middle East) to the Altai,
>Mongolia, and Russia. He didn't include China or other East Asian
>countries.

And that is the least sensical of all since the IE language must surely have
been in a localized area at one time for it to be a parent of the
languages now in Europe and India! How on earth could a language stay
cohesive across such a broad area? Get real.


- love gLeN



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