Indo-European languages of Europe

We already talked about the theories that are out there in the Internet about the Indo-European language related to other hypothetical proto-languages. Well, I found a new one, related to creationism - not only to that of the American Mormons, but also to a Catholic Saint’s revelations, those of Anne Catherine Emmerich. The following text is taken from the Wikipedia Adamic language article. I thought it could be interesting to share it here, and thus let people compare it with Eurasian, out-of-India model, Paleolithic continuity theory, Nostratic, and the like.

The Adamic language is a term for the hypothetical proto-language believed spoken by Adam and Eve in paradise, either identical with the language used by God to address Adam, or invented by Adam as nomothete (name-giver, Genesis 2:19).

It is unclear whether the Bible assumes that this language was preserved by Adam’s descendants until the confusion of tongues (Genesis 11:1-9), or that it began to evolve naturally as a consequence of original sin (Genesis 10:5).

In previous centuries, many scholars believed that the Adamic language was Biblical Hebrew, and that all languages are descended from it. The Bible does not make a direct claim to that extent, however, and some Early Modern scholars based on Genesis 10:5 have assumed that the Japhetite languages are rather the direct descendants of the Adamic language, having separated before the confusion of tongues, by which also Hebrew was affected. The same is claimed by Anne Catherine Emmerich, that stated in her private revelations that most direct descendants of the Adamic language were Bactrian, Zend (Persian) and Indian languages. In this way Emmerich identifies Adamic language as Proto-Indo-European language.

Technorati Tags: hypothesis, Catholic, Anne Catherine Emmerich, Saint, Adamic, language, revelation, Bactrian, Zend, Indian, Persian, Genesis, Hebrew, nomothete, Babel, Eve, Adam, God, confusion, tongues, Bible, Japhetite

Indo-European is most commonly referred to by many - usually non-Indo-European - linguists as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. Also, people usually refer to other languages or language families without written remains as hypothesis. We could talk, then, about the hypothetical Indo-Uralic, Eurasian, Ural-Altaic, Proto-Pontic or Nostratic languages, for example.

On the other hand, there are some languages, like Minoan - already mentioned in the previous post -, which aren’t officially hypothetical. I guess that’s because we have some written remains (still undeciphered) of a probable language system, supposedly related to Eteocretan, a younger language (also with undeciphered scripts), probably non-Indo-European, possibly pre-Indo-European, maybe Semitic, as linguists usually describe it; I never saw the word hypothesis when reading about them, though.
Now, are such written remains sufficient to prove that a language really existed? Furthermore, are they necessary today to be able to prove the real existence of languages? Do renowned linguists actually think that Indo-European is a possibility, just like Nostratic or even Minoan? I don’t think so.
Late Proto-Indo-European, probably spoken between 3.000 and 2.500 BCE has 14 known dialectal branches; 2 of them (Indo-Aryan and Greek) attested as early as 1.500 BCE; and there is also another proto-language, Anatolian (1.900 BCE), split from a common ancestor to Late PIE, called Middle PIE.
Thus, we know most modern Indo-European branches and their grammars. We know many old languages, some very old, all of them allowing linguists to reconstruct a common ancestor: Late Proto-Indo-European. Some unexplained differences and another parallel branch, Anatolian, also allow many to discuss the (hypothetical) ancestors of Late PIE, i.e Middle PIE - probably spoken 3.500-3.000 BCE - or even Early PIE - possibly 4.500-3.500 BCE.

The reconstruction of Late PIE cannot therefore be considered a hypothesis anymore, given a) the number of well-known descendents, b) the short period between its disappearance and the appearance of the first dialectal known remains, and specially c) the work made in historical linguistics, mainly in comparative grammar, during the past centuries.

Our aim in Dnghu, however, is narrower than a thorough Late Proto-Indo-European reconstruction - and thus more easily contrasted under a scientific point of view - : we want to finish the reconstruction of the European language, i.e. the Northern Dialect of Proto-Indo-European, from which at least present-day Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Italic and Slavic languages are derived.

Since our first attempts to develop a complete grammatical system for Proto-Indo-European, we considered the output too loose. We decided then very early that we were looking for a European language system, and thus all those dialectal features (different among branches), like noun declension, aorist, perfect,… - should be decided upon by taking the Northern Dialect as standard.

Unlike the Sourthern Dialect - which was divided at least in Proto-Greek and Indo-Aryan branches in the first Indo-European split (around 2.500 BCE) -, the Northern one was probably still more or less spoken by 2.000 BCE, because of the cultural and linguistic contacts among the different Indo-European speaking peoples, who lived near each other in Northern Europe until the next major (Celtic and Italic) migrations.

Technorati Tags: Indo-European, language, linguistics, hypothesis, Uralic, Nostratic, Anatolian, Greek, Indo-Aryan, Germanic, Italic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, dialect, Europe, writing system, grammar

There are, from time to time, some articles or speeches which address a common misconception hardly related to linguistics, namely that of Basque being ‘the oldest language’.

Firstly, let me say that I (as many others) like the Basque language specially because of its peculiarity: it is one of those strange language isolates that can be found in some corners of the world, having resisted the linguistic battle of those unending cultural wars that contact between different human societies usually generate. In this very case, the language resisted the spread of Indo-European dialects in Western Europe, just as Uralic resisted mainly in the North, and Caucasian languages did in the East. It is, so to speak, a European linguistic anomaly, as it could be said of Andorra, San Marino or Liechtenstein, if we were talking about the history of European states’ formation.

1. Basque as Europe’s oldest language: Europe’s oldest written language, as far as I know, is Minoan, possibly a language isolate of Crete (and not a Proto-Greek dialect), spoken before the Mycenaean invasion; and that only if we don’t believe that the Vinča-Tordos script or other known scripts were writing systems at all. Europe’s oldest attested language, with strong basis on archaelogical and linguistic findings combined, is of course Proto-Indo-European. That doesn’t mean that Indo-European is the oldest language, though, but only that it is the farthest we can go back in the prehistory of languages, with the linguistic (glottochronology) and archaeological (kurgan hypothesis) findings we have today.
2. Basque as Europe’s oldest non-Indo-European language: again, Minoan is the oldest, non-Indo-European language known to have been written within the European subcontinent; archaeologically attested, I guess, it could be argued that a hundred different non-Indo-European languages were spoken (or even written) at a very old time - some want to trace languages back into Palaeolithic! -, in this or that territory, because of this or that hypothetical cultural continuity found. Even if there were scientific basis to justify them, those cultural continuities obviously wouldn’t imply an ethnic or linguistic continuity; at least none we can ever demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt.
3. Basque as Spain’s oldest language: we can only talk about a Basque ‘ethnic group’ and basque-related toponyms, specially in Aquitania, since the first Roman invasions, thanks to the writings of Roman historian Strabo, who lived around the beginnings of our Era. Before those writings we only know that, apart from the Vasconians, the (also non-IE) Iberians and the (mainly IE) Celtiberians, Celts and Lusitanians inhabited what is today Spain. Then, if Proto-Indo-European is attested well before that Roman invasion and (knowing about the Celtic migrations’ timeline) if the Lusitanians were really, as suggested, Celtic-like tribes who migrated before them from central Europe - where Italo-Celtic speaking tribes lived - to the South West, then they are the oldest proven people of Spain. That, again, does not mean that any language is ‘oldest’ than others, as such exactness about the origin of a language is impossible to ascertain without a time machine; it is just to prove how wrong the general assuption about Basque is, to the extent that not only the discussion is in itself absurd, but also the common arguments used.
4. Basque as Spain’s oldest non-Indo-European language: again, if we are going to use myths (like some Paleolithic linguistic continuity theories), we should first look at those old written records that talk about Tartessos, a region located in present-day Western Andalusia, where the oldest non-IE attested language of Spain was spoken, Tartessian, possibly an Iberian dialect. We could also talk about Phoenician as a non-Indo-European language of some very old Spanish ports.
5. Basque as Spain’s oldest living language: this is a better approach to the matter, but still far from solving it. Clearly No: Spain’s oldest (attested) living languages are exactly all the Indo-European ones. The history of Spanish, Catalan and Galician (through Latin) can be traced back thousands of years, into its probable pre-Proto-Indo-European origin in the Russian steppes, near present-day Ukraine. Because Basque is only one language, its history cannot be extrapolated anywhere back from Strabo’s short description about the Vasconians; before him, it can only be speculated, not proven.
6. Basque as Spain’s oldest living indigenous language: still better than 5., but also wrong. What we could say is that, ‘since the Roman Invasion, Basque is the only living indigenous language of Spain‘ - that is because we don’t actually know if Basque was really indigenous (i.e. not resulting from migrations) to Spain, or if their speakers - or maybe only the language - arrived to the Pyrenees just before the Romans, maybe from Africa or Eastern Europe. What we do know is that Indo-European dialects didn’t originate in Spain, but we don’t know anything about the origins of the Basque language.

However, point 6. is also wrong, as today’s Basque language is not the same as the old Basque (or Aquitanian) language; in fact, if today’s Basque is a probable dialect of the attested primitive Aquitanian language, is it not Latin also a dialect of Indo-European? or, still better, is it not Latin a dialect of the Italo-Celtic Indo-European dialectal group of Central Europe? And isn’t Italo-Celtic still spoken in Spain, in the form of different modern dialects, like Spanish, Catalan or Galician? Now, if the answer is yes, then Basque cannot even be considered the oldest living indigenous language of Spain since the Roman invasion, as Italo-Celtic - in the form of Lusitanian, Celtic and Latin - could be considered the oldest language really attested, and therefore modern Indo-European languages of Spain could also be considered indigenous.
7. Basque as Spain’s oldest living non-Indo-European language: nope. Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese and other Spanish immigrants’ languages can be traced back well before Basque, and they are also non-Indo-European.
8. Basque as Spain’s oldest living indigenous non-Indo-European language: yes, that’s true. It is tautological, though, as Basque is the only living non-Indo-European language of Spain, so it is necessarily also ‘the oldest’ one.

As a conclusion, not being able to use the above descriptions, one could be tempted to promote it saying that Basque is not related to any other language. This is obviously untrue. Basque hasn’t any known linguistic relative; that does not mean that it isn’t actually related to any language or language family, whether dead or alive. In fact, what many romantics believe is the panacea of the Basque language - namely, the lack of proofs on its origin, history and linguistic relationships - is exactly what makes its study in historical linguistics somehow boring: if there are no known languages related to Basque - with which its evolution could be compared -, but only a linear history from Aquitanian to modern Basque through some mediaeval texts, then the study of the language history is done for the most part. What remains open is just a huge historical linguistic vacuum before the Roman sources, usually filled up with speculation.

Technorati Tags: Basque, language, history, linguistics, Europe, European, Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, Spain, Iberian, Celt, Celtic, Italic, Latin, Roman

I read in some Slavic-oriented personal website, with a tiny section dedicated to Indo-European studies, that Brugmann’s old approach was wrong due to his wrong assumptions about PIE - confusingly enough, he mixes Brugmann’s (late) PIE with an early PIE, in turn related to a hypothetical Indo-Uralic -, and subsequently also every single work published since his Grundriss which didn’t correct those mistakes. In this very case - which is not the only one that can be found out on the Web - the author emphasized the importance of the wrong accusative reconstruction of the German linguist; I’ve also read about some (usually interesting) online studies on PIE ergativity, on wrong relations of languages considered within or outside the Indo-European language family, on strange theories about the Urheimat (some of them can be read in our grammar), etc.

All those personal sites are possibly well-minded works if considered individually, but peculiarly enough I’m sure that more than 50% of online freely available works about the Indo-European language are theories rejected by most IE researchers, another reason why the Internet can be a great source of misinformation, as neither Googlebot nor Wikipedia (and its future ’social’ search engine Wikisahahari.. whatever) have yet the ability to sort websites by better knowledge, instead of better web design or online social support.

The question is whether those scholars are to blame for such a mess the Internet is becoming, created by our human egoistic desire of self-promotion; the answer, I think, is yes - they could solve it easily by explaining the reconstructed Indo-European, whilst presenting their articles as alternative theories, instead of constantly trying to present their works as if they were as well-documented, as scientific, and as possible as the others, thus undermining the real scientific reconstruction, which is undervalued by those who read their pages, who will think that they all are equal hypothesis, instead of accepting (late Proto-)Indo-European as a real language, considering the rest as mere possibilities.

I am not the linguist here, so I can only say it is possible that Brugmann’s junggramatische approach was partly wrong, and thus also the works of some of those who followed his opinions. Undoubtedly, his sin (if any) was to pay too much attention to Sanskrit and Greek, leaving most other proto-languages aside. A problem that was mostly due to the lack of research on those other Indo-European proto-languages, and an imperfection that has certainly been reexamined, corrected and reduced more and more during the last century, thanks to the work of hundreds of researchers.

Whichever the reasons one has to believe himself as the one who will revolutionize an academic field, I must say I cannot disagree more with such a behaviour, trying to obtain supporters through different channels when one’s scientific theories are rejected in the traditional ones. Obviously, science is about discussing theories, and there’s room for all of them in research, but science is also, to some extent, about achieving solutions, at least in social sciences; and historical linguistics is indeed not about humanities, where each expert or group of experts can have different opinions on the same artistic work.

It is true that comparative linguistics is not a science that can be proven beyond all doubt; nevertheless, most (if not all) scientific knowledge is mainly based on trust: there is always a point where we simply have to trust something, to believe that something said or perceived or (as in this case) approved by somebody else is true.

Again, I am nobody - in this field or in any other - to say where that line - which defines the minimum trust to accept - is, but if you say that the best language reconstruction that science has achieved - and probably will ever be able to achieve -, that of Proto-Indo-European, is wrong, and that only you and some followers are right in your opinions, while the majority of scholars mistakenly ignore the truth, then you are simply saying science is not reliable. Then, we should probably only follow your revolutionary thoughts… no, wait! and what if there are more like you or your group, who think they are right? Yes, that’s the answer: the rules of peer-reviewed journals and acceptance by the majority of experts are still the best rules to be followed if we want to keep improving scientific knowledge.

I have to say, before finishing the post, that:

1. Exactly because the Internet can reach anyone, such linguistic controversies are found frequently due to individual promotion efforts, but actually represent a tiny percentage of what IE experts are really discussing: when one publishes his controversial research (usually dismissing commonly accepted premisses) on the Net, mainly for non-experts to read it, it is probably to advertise an idea fiercely rejected within such academic field’s publications.
2. Thus, if you want to learn something about Indo-European, you should look up at least two or three good (printed) grammars - I won’t tell you which ones, only try to choose modern books with different but thorough approaches to PIE - to obtain a good image of what is really going on in PIE research, and also, if possible, get access to your Public or University library to read some modern publications on PIE and comparative linguistics. To form one’s opinion on the subject is not really that difficult, and it will save you from many (no, I mean really many) online nonsense.
3. I discuss (and thus advertise) such theories in this weblog just because that’s what people who arrive here usually read, and also because I like looong, non-practical dissertations, as any reader can easily notice; if I wrote for a printed, peer-reviewed journal, I would probably discuss other minor problems on PIE reconstruction, instead of completely new theories that try to break the whole reconstructed system.
4. Even though I criticize them because of the aforementioned reasons, I like such unproven but brave theories, when they don’t flood the Web; specially the ones on (early PIE’s) ergativity and an Indo-Uralic proto-language are very appealing, given that 97% of Europeans speak Indo-European languages, whilst most of the rest speak Uralic languages - real proofs on such a common linguistic ancestor for both branches would boost even more European integration, based on our common culture and history!

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We are entering a new year, hopefully The first Indo-European Year.

I have been thinking about where we started, and what I thought exactly a year ago that it was going to happen with our Indo-European revival projects. Even though I usually complain a lot about our lack of resources, I shall say that if the coming years are so good as the last, then the language revival is certainly going to succeed.

I am quite happy now looking at the past, and I am usually very pessimistic. I won’t make an extensive report - we will publish one at Dnghu, I guess, around its first official anniversary, in March or so -, but here is why:

1. Firstly, we had to deal with experts who knew about Indo-European and the EU, people in a poor region like Extremadura who, apart from supporting free software (GNULinex) and licences, usually want to fund only agricultural and industrial projects. After English, Latin, and also Esperanto and a thousand conlangs,… Still another language? We believed in the project, but never expected Extremadura to support it. Surprisingly, the University, the regional government and other public institutions liked it; also, two professors wanted to permanently support the idea, and so too the Department of Classical Studies.
2. Secondly, the people: we thought they were not prepared for another language; in fact, the media repeated again and again “a new language for Europe“, when they wrote about our project. Some wanted us to talk for them in the radio and tv, and I think we didn’t do it that bad. At least we had the opportunity to say everywhere “It is not an invented language!“
3. Then, the Internet: well, this is the worst part, and we are not done with it. Having seen the success of social-driven projects, like the Online Free Encyclopedia (Wikipedia), we wanted people from all Europe to collaborate, so that - unlike past revival projects, lead by tiny groups of experts - it was really a common European project, and we planned accordingly a roadmap for the installation and promotion of different free sites and collaboration-based projects. As with many plans, I suppose, ours was wrong, and there is still no Internet community to support us.

So, people and institutions in our region supported the project, but, on the other hand, the Internet hasn’t been able to help the project any further! We are now trying to fix some common mistakes in our web pages, and even in some legal and web design aspects, possibly an important source of the misinformation about ‘Europaio’ that can be found in the Web right now. If you think our projects are interesting, and know how to help spreading the word, please do it! We trusted specially the Internet and free technologies and licences instead of traditional channels, and by now it is exactly that what isn’t working the way it should - or at least the way it could. Examining Wikipedia’s history, one could say we should hire an expert in Indo-European languages to work in the websites, until they have grown into well-Google-ranked pages; the only problem is that, unlike Jimmy Wales, we don’t have enough money to hire such an expertise, and the University of Extremadura won’t spend more resources on us…