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Migration of Indo European Languages | ||
Tags: European Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4886 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 4 29 May 2014 at 4:57am | IP Logged |
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I thought this map showing the early spread of Indo European languages out of Anatolia
was pretty interesting. 
There's a good discussion on how this fits with various IE migration theories on the All Empires forum, though I can't find a citation for the creator of the map itself. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4241 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 2 of 4 29 May 2014 at 11:32am | IP Logged |
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I'm sorry, as someone trained in this stuff we clearly have very different conceptions
of what constitutes a "good discussion". I just see hilarious ineptitude. We've got people mashing the untenable (Anatolia) with the misunderstood (Central Asia) and the outdated (Kurgan). We've got one guy favouring Anatolia because it's close to Greece (wtf?) yet somehow thinking Sanskrit is as late as 300bc. Another one who misunderstands the link between Mycenaean and Greek while claiming a direct continuity between Old Persian > Farsi and Avestan reflexes in Pashto...rather controversial. All while happily linking to the kind of studies actual scholars of the field balk at but which, humorously, the general public seem to love because it's done by men in lab coats and easy to digest - logic and evidence be damned! Since PIE in the popular press via archaeology (bleh!) seems to be a growth industry we can only expect more of this in future. Alas, like most things understanding only comes off the back of hard work. That map btw is so improbable an explanation for our evidence it is rather hilarious btw. Here's some tips and a bibliography. i) Learn some Old Indo-European languages, properly. Yes properly, if you don't know how they were pronounced or how we know that or anything about proper register, shut your mouth and hit the books. This field is already polluted outside the academy by wannabe knowitall knownothings. ii) Acquaint yourself with the operant factors of language evolution and change, the best resources are the following: Fortson, B (2000?) "Indo-European Languages and Culture". (Oxford) - The second chapter on culture is an abomination but it does a good job of explaining methodology and evidence. It has solid chapters on most languages within the family and each one is filled with exercises and revision prompts. Clackson, J (2007) "Indo-European Linguistics" (Cambridge) - This is slightly more complex than the above and not as well suited to learning for a beginner. It's focus is on PIE itself and the text is divided by broad categories like "phonology" rather than each individual language. Lehmann, W (1997) "Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics" (New York) - Any field has its axioms and this book is actually an important guide to many of them, I must have swallowed this whole as an undergraduate student. Beyond these textbooks you then really need to start looking as focused areas: Jasanoff on the Hittite Verb is the best way to learn about the PIE verb for example. Once you've got down enough poetry, Wakins is the go to for poetics and so on. Sorry if I'm over passionate, I'm sure you can fathom why though and I hope this mini rant helps anyone who is genuinely interested and has a wee too much time on their hands over the next few years. P.S. I can't resist linking these papers by Garett on re-imagining sub groupings. They're essentially changing the field and are very insightful: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~garrett/BLS1999.pdf http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~garrett/IEConvergence.pdf Edited by Lykeio on 29 May 2014 at 11:37am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 4 29 May 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
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To Lykeio: the formulation "shut your mouth and hit the books" is not acceptable. Your informations in the message are so relevant that I chosen to have leave the message as it stands, but it must be possible to discuss the subject in less passionate terms.
What is your alternative to the map in the OP's message? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7153 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 4 29 May 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged |
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The map is interesting but it's quite busy, and it seems more like an exercise where someone tried to superimpose a bunch of hypotheses (of variable quality) with colours and arrows.
As for technical concerns, I find it a little troublesome that the circles for Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic assume the existence of such groups outright (see this paper by linguist Tapani Salminen). The Saamic circle in northern Fennoscandinavia is shaky to me since there's no date (are we to assume that Saamic as a distinct language group (let alone a subgroup of Uralic) has been there forever?). I've read research which suggests that the ancestors of today's Saami represent a mix of people (not necessarily associated with those speaking Uralic languages) with part of their ancestry tied to people from what is now southern Finland starting to move north about 2000 years ago for whatever reason (entry of other peoples from the south?). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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