|
 |
Is there any evidence of (pre)proto-IE? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6451 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 9 of 18 04 November 2011 at 12:56am | IP Logged | ||
Actually, assuming that such a language continuum existed is equivalent to assuming that there once was a common human language that then evolved into different languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 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 10 of 18 04 November 2011 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
|
Not necessarily. The languages we speak now could have evolved from a continuous sequence of continua reaching all the way back to something that hardly could be called a language. Our reason for speaking about separate languages is that we can see clear differences between neighbouring speech comunicaties - and those differences can arise because of migrations/conquest or because several centres have radiated their influence in different directions, and the speech variants of even close neighbours may therefore develop in different directions. In some cases there will be a zone with a mix of influences, but with the tendency of Homo sapiens to organize hierarchical and territorial societies chances are that there will be some kind of clashes between standards, even if the local populations continue to speak something in between.
On the other hand it is possible that all the Indoeuropean languages go back to the speech of one small and compact group. We simply don't know (and may never know). Edited by Iversen on 29 May 2012 at 1:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6058 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 11 of 18 23 November 2011 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
|
In central England, there is a place called Tardbigge, if I recall the name rightly. It is thought that the placename may be derived from a non-Indo-European language, spoken before the Celts arrived, as it does not seem to be derived from either a Celtic language or from Anglo-Saxon.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| verbalnerd Newbie United States Joined 4357 days ago 18 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 12 of 18 28 May 2012 at 6:29am | IP Logged | ||
|
Most of the way we think of historical linguistics is still dominated by the visual image of a family tree/genealogy, a
tree with branching nodes. Biology is moving towards a more complicated and nuanced way of understanding what species are, what the (often more fuzzy than we thought) boundaries between them are like, how they are related to one another, and how they evolve. The same sort of thing is going to have to happen with historical linguistics. For instance, merely saying that English is a Germanic language with a bunch of French vocabulary tacked on is not quite right. It might be more correct to say that several important organs of French origin were transplanted into the body of English. Or, with a question that fascinates me, although I have as yet no expertise to bring to it--the relation between Indo-European and Uralic. I suspect that the story is something like: Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic did not spring directly from some common ancestor that we'll call Proto-Indo-Uralic. But they did interact enough (if we agree with the theory that they originated in a location near to one another) that we can say that some PIE organs were transplanted into PU, and traces of these transplants live on in the descendants. And that that's no "less" of a relationship than the whole direct-descendence thing. PS to William Camden: It's a common, though as I understand altogether unsubstantiated (though also unrefuted) theory that Basque represents a language that was present in Europe before the arrival of the "Indo-Europeans". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4558 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 13 of 18 28 May 2012 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5042 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 14 of 18 06 July 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sacha Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4313 days ago 22 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Quechua | Message 15 of 18 06 July 2012 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Proto-Indo-European is by definition as far back as can be reconstructed for Indo-European. If something were reconstructed further back, it would not be "pre-proto," it would mean that proto-IE were reconstructed to an earlier point than before.
I remember in comparative/historical linguistics class how they used linguistics clues to pinpoint the geographical origin of Indo-European to the Caucausus or western Asia. The language can't be traced further back than that, but genetics might pick up from there to give clues where the first speakers of Indo-European came from, which would suggest the earlier origins of the language. In my comparative/historical linguistics class, the text we used was written by a professor at a university in Papua New Guinea for use by students there, and all the examples used were from Melanesian and Australian aboriginal languages. The point was to show how the systematic techniques developed for reconstructing proto-Indo-European and tracing the Indo-European family tree worked equally well for reconstructing other proto-languages and language family trees. We practiced those techniques with those completely unfamiliar languages to analyze which languages were related and how closely and how long ago they diverged. Edited by sacha on 06 July 2012 at 9:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sacha Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4313 days ago 22 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Quechua | Message 16 of 18 06 July 2012 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Oops. I keep hitting "quote' when I mean to edit a post. Edited by sacha on 06 July 2012 at 9:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
