Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 19:59

ManishH wrote:
Ramanaji and Rajeshji: Probably this thread needs a split into strategic discussion of AIT/OIT which talks about ideology, strategic implications on Indian society etc.; keeping discussion of archaeology/linguistics/astrological evidence etc totally separate.

What is astrological evidence. How is astrology involved in this?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 16 May 2012 20:04

He is probably mixing up astronomical with astrological. However even astronomy is mixed up with linguistic analysis - as has been done in certain analysis of Homer. Maybe it is okay if it helps to establish the antiquity of European roots!

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 16 May 2012 20:08

Theories are as good or as bad as assumptions. If the foundation of linguistics is not sound or if it is still evolving science, then how can one base the entire historical truth of a nation's history on such assumptions? and if it is indeed sound, then why is that we keep hearing about linguistics has no scientific basis?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 20:12

Every little information and analysis is only to support the history of Europe and nothing else.
This is totally a bogus analysis and false research.

They may even come to conclusion that there is no history of India.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 20:30

brihaspati wrote:
Linguists are very very speculative in their origins hypotheses about language invention. But usual logical arguments based on optimum ease of use constrained by physiological restrictions , and the known fact that the basic mechanics of full human vocalization had already been genetically shaped before modern humans - makes any assumption of an "unnatural" original invention dubious. Any system that developed out of experimentation on vocalization for possibly more than 200,000 years would be unlikely to be non-optimal which needed so quick drifts to find their optimum as is envisaged within the IE timeframe.

The AIT supporter cannot leave the linguistics branch since their entire subject of the linguistics is also based on the migration etc.
All these colonial topics have lost their credibility since the original purpose was to show the superiority of the europeans

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 16 May 2012 20:58

Linguistics teaches that a language has the highest amount of dialects/branches nearest to its point of origin. This theory is used in favour of AIT and against the OIT claiming that the Lithuanian/Russian/Greek and other European languages represent that branching of dialects and in India there is only Sanskrit, so the point of origin is Easter Europe.

So is this theory correct? Can the learned Maulanas dissect this?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 21:06

Yogi_G wrote:Linguistics teaches that a language has the highest amount of dialects/branches nearest to its point of origin. This theory is used in favour of AIT and against the OIT claiming that the Lithuanian/Russian/Greek and other European languages represent that branching of dialects and in India there is only Sanskrit, so the point of origin is Easter Europe.

So is this theory correct? Can the learned Maulanas dissect this?

As per my knowledge - non expert - sanskrit has the largest amount of literary work over ancient times that all the european languages put together dwarfs in front of it. The modern Euro languages are only derived in the last 300 years after the discovery of Panini.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 16 May 2012 21:06

ManishH ji, brihaspati garu,

I think in all these PIE linguistics that is ignored is that any word, lets say when some English word is spoken by a Japanese or a Frenchman or an Indian, they all sound different. So has the word changed, or has its pronunciation changed?

So whenever say a original Vedic Sanskrit word originating in India was spoken by say the people mix in another place, lets say in Bactria–Margiana, the pronunciation changed.

Now this PIE linguistics seems to be based solely on increasing ease of speaking the word, where velars and labials of some consonant get dropped to bring the word in its final desired state.

But transformation of the word's pronunciation, as you say, is based on the speech-production apparatus of a certain people trained for a particular language and the sounds involved in that language.

As 'Aryans' moved out of India to neighboring areas and beyond, everywhere the natives used to have a different language and a different speech-production apparatus. As such the Sanskrit loan words and ultimately Sanskrit itself changed.

For that one needs to map the influence of each substratum language on Sanskrit at every stage as it migrates with the people. Without that mapping, one cannot really reconstruct language changes, as they are doing in PIE. All their PIE axioms are worthless, because they do not have the incremental influence from various substratum languages in the migration path.

Thus even if they wish to only use the end products - the spoken languages as their input, they cannot really know the direction of the linguistic change.

The Proto-Indo-European language they are constructing could have some truth to it, but they have no way of showing whether the change was from PIE -> Indic or from Indic -> PIE. PIE could just as well be some intermediate language morph of Vedic Sanskrit on its migration journey from Saraswati-Sindhu to Europe.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 16 May 2012 21:10

But how does one verify that one particular sound we are analyzing was pronounced exactly the way it used to be when the language was born? what if the phonetics changed over time? how does one account for degeneration and/or varying of sounds? how does one know? through records? what if there are no written records? what if like vedic indians, many generations pass before the people of the region depend only on the word of mouth? then how can one pin point the age of a language just based on phonetic changes? how can one even know there were changes?

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 16 May 2012 21:23

I am beginning to think linguistics and calculating the age of a language is a big farce, one can't know how old a language is, one can only surmise based on records, if no records exists, there is no way to know for sure there existed phonetic changes from the time the language was born to the time the language was written, if there is a substantial age differential from the time a language is born to the time recording of the language was initiated, this whole age determination through linguistic study is nothing but an big assumption.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 21:29

venug wrote:I am beginning to think linguistics and calculating the age of a language is a big farce, one can't know how old a language is, one can only surmise based on records, if no records exists,

This is a big fraud 'science'
But this is the foundation of the European languages and now the European identity
Before this Hebrew was considered the mother of all the European languages

link

Both because of a desire to read the Bible in its original tongue and a belief in Hebrew as "The Mother of Languages," it figured prominently in the Puritan movement in England, culminating in the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. A motion introduced into the House of Commons in 1649 sought to substitute Saturday as the "True Sabbath" in place of Sunday as the Lords Day. The poet, John Milton (1608-1674), was a devoted Hebraist and was appointed by Cromwell as "Secretary for Foreign Languages." John Selden (1584-1654) was a noted legal scholar whose study of the biblical and talmudic sources of ancient Jewish law (in Hebrew and Aramaic) helped reshape the British system of jurisprudence and establish the privilege of the individual against self-incrimination.

Our view of ancient history has been shaped by the enormous role Greece, Rome, and Christianity and their bias towards its Jewish origins played in the formation and development of what came to be known as Western Civilization. This term is actually a misnomer since many of its most important foundations - monotheism, the Judeo-Christian ethic, and the alphabet, originated in the heartland of the Ancient World which stretched from the Aegean Sea and the Nile Delta across the Levant, Phoenicia, Israel and Mesopotamia (including the kingdoms and empires of Akkadia, Assyria, the Hittites and Babylonia).

This view of history is wrongly compartmentalized into separate categories - Ancient Greece, Troy, Egypt, Rome, Israel and Carthage - without a proper understanding and appreciation of the common sources of the heritage which was eventually consolidated under the Roman Empire and identified as "western." It was not until the schism in the fifth century between the Orthodox Church based in Constantinople and the Catholic Church in Rome that it became common practice to separate "east" and "west."

It is now evident that many links existed between the Old Testament and the Hebrew language and the early civilization of Greece and the classic works of the Iliad and the Odyssey. More than 30 years ago, Prof. Cyrus Gordon pointed out in his epic work of scholarship, "The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations," that both drew on a common east Mediterranean heritage with many cross-currents between them. He pointed out that "only two of the ethnic groups that emerged historically in the eastern Mediterranean of the second millennium have enjoyed a historically conscious continuity down to the present: the Greeks and the Hebrews."

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 16 May 2012 21:38

I want experts to counter me in this thought experiment, say in 10000 BP, certain people started using a word 'rama', I am not a linguist, so please pronounce the way you want,the word 'rama'. But then as time lapse 2 thousand years, say the same people start to pronounce the same word as 'rame', then 2 more thousand years pass and word becomes 'rami' and another thousand years pass strangely it is now pronounced 'rama' exactly the way it was originally pronounced. Now can a linguist tell that the language was born 10000BP? how? he can only he see the language to be 4000BP or whatever, without written record from the time the language was born, there is no way to know the progression of a language and compare with similar ones for word roots. Please feel free to rubbish my logic.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 May 2012 21:49

http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/qu ... ent-from-p

If Hebrew is really an Indo-European language due to contact with Indo-European then English is a Romance language due to Norman French and a ton of loans from Latin. What nonsense. Languages don't go about changing what family they descend from. English certainly is a continuation of Norman French!

Check some of the discussion

The WALS chapter on consonant inventories shows that the distribution of inventory sizes across languages follows a normal curve, with average size inventories (22 ± 3 consonants) being the most frequent. This is approximately the number of consonants that Proto-Indo-European had. Not surprisingly, this is also the category in which most Indo-European languages (at least the ones charted) are classified.

But there are some exceptions. Lithuanian and Irish (Donegal), for example, were put into the "large" class (34 or more consonants). What happened to these languages that made them deviate from the most common size and from the size of their ancestor, PIE?

Check how questions are asked.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 16 May 2012 23:06

Yogi_G wrote:Linguistics teaches that a language has the highest amount of dialects/branches nearest to its point of origin. This theory is used in favour of AIT and against the OIT claiming that the Lithuanian/Russian/Greek and other European languages represent that branching of dialects and in India there is only Sanskrit, so the point of origin is Easter Europe.

So is this theory correct? Can the learned Maulanas dissect this?

Yogi-gaḷe: Apart from what you point out, Linguistic diversity can also depend on certain social conditions. Eg. self-sufficient communities tend to stick to their own language, instead of evolving a common language. As happened in India. Most civilizations arose in India around rivers and were self-sufficient.

Contrast to Bronze age eurasian steppe - where interdependence between foragers and cattle rearers and semi-urban settlements led to fewer languages.

Same thing is happening today due to internet and globalization.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 16 May 2012 23:24

venug wrote:I want experts to counter me in this thought experiment, say in 10000 BP, certain people started using a word 'rama'

That's a fair question. In brief, the modern view is that all phonetic changes should be corroborated by archaeology.

If a language family has shared vocabulary on an archaeologically visible technology, one can use that to establish a "terminus post quem".

Eg. IE family has good reconstruction of chariot (including components like axle, wheel, nave etc). So we know the dispersal occured after the first evidence for chariot.

A "terminus ante quem" is the reverse.

So the best linguistics will do is establish a wide range.

Old linguistics would claim to predict rates of phonetic change (Swadesh lists) - but that did not meet test of real data - so stands rejected.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 16 May 2012 23:29

This is going highly OT: but the correlation of language complexity with civilizational complexity is severely criticized by professional linguists. None of the Asian communities can be archeologically proven to be "isolated" and self-sufficient. More ongoing research == increasing evidence of connections and exchange and trade. All of central Asia throws up evidence of exchange and trade. West Indians, and ME and CA were trading well before 3000 BCE. Does trade imply self-sufficiency or mutual exchange and dependence? If it implies non-self-sufficiency then all three zones must have evolved a common language?

I think the linguist peer group has reached the state of most empirical "science" claimants like modern professional historians. Archeology is acceptable if it supports linguist's inner agenda. It is bad if it doesn't. When an earlier used tool was used to legitimize pet positions but now throws up something that contradicts the pet position - the tool is sort of put in a shaking limbo. Just as historians with hidden political affiliations claim pompously that "stones do not speak" - "it is we historians who reserve the final right to interpret what the stones say". Similarly linguists use archeology with their own claim - that archeological evidence like isolation/self-sufficiency/civilizational complexity is to be contextually interpreted by linguists [it acts in one case and it doesnt in another case]- essentially according to their convenience.

Perhaps with a lack of formal science training, most linguists fail to realize that they must explain the contextuality of their use of the same situation to prove two completely different conclusions. If they cannot show any obvious logical chain as to why the same condition leads to two mutually exclusive conclusions - then it invalidates the use of the starting condition for any explanation/justification.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 16 May 2012 23:37

venug wrote:But how does one verify that one particular sound we are analyzing was pronounced exactly the way it used to be when the language was born? what if the phonetics changed over time?

Indeed it does. Textual evidence in Sanskrit itself gives us many pointers - r̥g prātiśākhya says that 'r' used to be dantamūla in those times, but nowadays it is cerebral or alveolar. Why do we see so many vedic 'r' sounds later change to 'l' sound in Classical Sanskrit - the original dantamūla is the clue. By articulating 'r' cerebrally, the chance of corruption reduced.

Then there is metrical evidence - some diphthongs were actually pronounced disyllabic in original r̥g but written manuscripts show them as unisyllables. Thankfully, strict rules on syllable counts in poetic metre allow us to recover the original sound.

Phonetic change is triggered by a degree of isolation of communities. Mull over some peculiarities of dialects of your mother tongue.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 16 May 2012 23:41

RajeshA-ji: fine insight into affect of bilingualism and substratum on phonetic change.

But this doesn't make PIE "worthless". It does explain what can be the catalysts in these phonetic changes we observe.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 17 May 2012 00:16

brihaspati wrote:Inside, or subconsciously you have already concluded that they are all "children" of a common "parent".

I'm eager to know - given the amazing similarities in vocabulary, morphology of these IE languages, what could explain all the data ? There is no parent, and all of them just happened to have very similar development of language ?

Without a common space-time point origin, and spread from therein - you cannot have this premise.

This is not the premise, the similarity of vocabulary and morphology is the data that led me to it.

Your claim, which is essentially the axiomatic bias of current linguistics, that changes from "x" sound to "y" sound [which will correspond to different instantaneous placement of tongue-lip-teeth and movement of air as well as muscle vibrations] go in a certain direction.

I request you to illustrate with a specific example; which change that I earlier claimed to be uni-directional; appears as bi-directional to you.

Historical migration and cultural spread assumptions. Otherwise there is no obvious reason to try and find similarities between Greek and Sanskrit.

I believe I'm in the right thread - it's called OIT. The 'Out of' implies migration. There is all the reason to do analysis of greek and sanskrit vocabulary and morphology

I'm not afraid if what it'll turn up.

linguists use on similarities that they have already decided to trash no matter what.

Any linguist will accept a phonetic similarity provided there is regularity. Propose a contrary view and give at least a handful of cognates to back them up.

Third, official linguistics presupposes directions of drifts but has no explanation as to why such a drift occurs in a particular direction.

RajeshAji gave a good reason - bilingualism is one. Another is generalization and simplification of existing morphology. Eg. we see three sets of -ī stem nominal declensions in vedic. In classical, two of them merged. Less of morphology to remember.

For examples of bilingualism in well attested languages. See how Sanskrit 'arya' became 'ayya/aiah' in sougthern region. But 'ajja' in Prākr̥t/pāli.

Why would Sanskrit move in one direction and Greek in another?

The exact reason is not known to me. But now knowing the reason is not ground enough to reject the regularity of sound change that stares us in face. After all, we don't deny that Sanskrit is the parent for 'ayya/aiah' in southern languages, and 'ajja' in Prākr̥t, inspite of not being able to point the reason for that.

No one is going to record the reason for phonetic change.

If you say that change is deterministic or unidirectional - then the second problem you do not realize, is that why would a sound be invented initially and developed in a form that needs to change.

Nope, it's not as if only complicated algebraic looking parent sounds are susceptible to change. As the 'arya' example above shows, even simple consonant clusters are susceptible to transformation.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 17 May 2012 00:52

ManishH wrote: Indeed it does. Textual evidence in Sanskrit itself gives us many pointers - r̥g prātiśākhya says that 'r' used to be dantamūla in those times, but nowadays it is cerebral or alveolar. Why do we see so many vedic 'r' sounds later change to 'l' sound in Classical Sanskrit - the original dantamūla is the clue. By articulating 'r' cerebrally, the chance of corruption reduced.

ManishH ji, so that presupposes existence of textual evidence to exist and that the linguistic analysis fails without such evidence? how does one account for any changes to pronunciation in pre-record era? that cant be accounted for? if that is a fair to say, then linguistic analysis can only be approximate at the best? if so, how can linguistic evidence be taken as authoritative analysis tool to answer any migration theories?

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 May 2012 01:08

ManishH wrote:I'm eager to know - given the amazing similarities in vocabulary, morphology of these IE languages, what could explain all the data ? There is no parent, and all of them just happened to have very similar development of language ?

ManishH ji,

perhaps you could tell us a bit about what disqualifies Sanskrit from being the parent, with something similar to PIE being an intermediate stage. Why is Vedic Sanskrit -> PIE not possible?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 17 May 2012 02:08

ManishH wrote:
brihaspati wrote:Inside, or subconsciously you have already concluded that they are all "children" of a common "parent".
I'm eager to know - given the amazing similarities in vocabulary, morphology of these IE languages, what could explain all the data ? There is no parent, and all of them just happened to have very similar development of language ?

Yes there are apparent similarities and equally apparent dissimilarities. In fact there is modern research that thinks that the modern human brain is structured in such a way that any attempt at a language will evolve along certain hard-wired trajectories. You can start with arbitrary sets of symbols [phonetic or written] but human rearrangements to make them meaningful will evolve along predictable channels.

Question of parent is a false one. Similarities can evolve out of exchange or a third factor that need not be related to common origin. You can try to only infer the possible presence of a parent as one of the possible hypotheses. However you cannot still conclusively prove the existence of a parent. Almost every so-called parent hypotheses are now challenged. Did "English" really evolve out of an imposed and invasive old-Germanic that came with the Vikings or the saxons? Or was it actually a derivative of a language that was used independent of later Nordics in southern England in commonality with regions further to the north and east from the time of ice-age refugia in the Iberian phase? Who took which part of the language where?

Without a common space-time point origin, and spread from therein - you cannot have this premise.
This is not the premise, the similarity of vocabulary and morphology is the data that led me to it.

It is a premise because it is not conclusively provable. At best it is merely an apparent pattern of association observed based on a snapshot of languages. "Association" is not equal to "causation". This is a well known fallacy in applied scientists - X seems to be somewhat associated with Y does not necessarily imply X caused Y.

Your claim, which is essentially the axiomatic bias of current linguistics, that changes from "x" sound to "y" sound [which will correspond to different instantaneous placement of tongue-lip-teeth and movement of air as well as muscle vibrations] go in a certain direction.
I request you to illustrate with a specific example; which change that I earlier claimed to be uni-directional; appears as bi-directional to you.

You can take your own example of the wheel. As you have laid it out , you cannot rule out the Greek form changing into Sanskrit through the mythical intermediate form. Neither can you rule out the Sanskrit form similarly changing into the Greek form through the similarly mythological intermediate form. The only way you can still try to claim that the estimated intermediate form was the "parent" and not intermediate as I have put them - is by asking so where is the community that used the intermediate to go from Greek to Sanskrit or Sanskrit to Greek. But then similarly we can ask where is the parent community that used the intermediate form? Archeological evidence is flimsy or non existent to conclusively reject any of the three.

Historical migration and cultural spread assumptions. Otherwise there is no obvious reason to try and find similarities between Greek and Sanskrit.
I believe I'm in the right thread - it's called OIT. The 'Out of' implies migration. There is all the reason to do analysis of greek and sanskrit vocabulary and morphology I'm not afraid if what it'll turn up.

Well I was writing in the context that linguist arguments which you were repeating inherently need non-linguistic reliance on other historical assumptions of supposed migration directions to support their unidirectionalities. As in the above example if all three a possible - you will need to lean over to Greeks came to Sanskritists assumption to kick out the others. Or to support the parent theory - that there was a mythical common social group [which under estimated restrictions on population numbers would mean localization and hence the whole thing getting fixed into a narrow space-time band].

linguists use on similarities that they have already decided to trash no matter what.
Any linguist will accept a phonetic similarity provided there is regularity. Propose a contrary view and give at least a handful of cognates to back them up.

Even the regularity is often and mostly assumed on the basis of a commonality outside of language itself.

Third, official linguistics presupposes directions of drifts but has no explanation as to why such a drift occurs in a particular direction.
RajeshAji gave a good reason - bilingualism is one. Another is generalization and simplification of existing morphology. Eg. we see three sets of -ī stem nominal declensions in vedic. In classical, two of them merged. Less of morphology to remember.

For examples of bilingualism in well attested languages. See how Sanskrit 'arya' became 'ayya/aiah' in sougthern region. But 'ajja' in Prākr̥t/pāli.

Sure! Well bilingualism complicates the issue even further. It necessarily assumes different parents, if not in misty antiquity - at least in the immediate past. That still does not answer the question as to why a more difficult version would at all be invented that then gets "simplified" facing the simpler "other", or why both invented the harder versions in two opposite extremes and only recognized that there was a simpler "middle" or average onlee when they met each other.

For the so-called arya->aiah and arya->ajja lets look at the problems your theory creates:

(1) if you say the transmutation was different because the north and south had different originals, then you have to assume that these languages had phonetically proximal sounds to arya but distinct from each other so strongly that the respective "averages" still differed. Each of them identifies the same word as approximate to their distinct words - implies that those original distinct words could not have been that far away from each other phonetically. If they were already "close" why would they wait to meet a third language to recognize their mutual proximity? [A <is close to> B, B <is close to> C, but A <is far far from> C].

(2) What rules out that "arya" itself was not the result of an averaging process between pre-existing closely-related-in-meaning versions prevalent over a wide and contiguous geographical region? After all "sanskrita" is itself saying that it is has been a cleansed and constructed language.

(3) if "arya" was a parent, which cannot prevent transmutation into supposedly simpler versions - why was the harder parent version at all invented?

Why would Sanskrit move in one direction and Greek in another?
The exact reason is not known to me. But now knowing the reason is not ground enough to reject the regularity of sound change that stares us in face. After all, we don't deny that Sanskrit is the parent for 'ayya/aiah' in southern languages, and 'ajja' in Prākr̥t, inspite of not being able to point the reason for that.

No one is going to record the reason for phonetic change.

Not knowing the reason is the first red sign - that conclusions are based on as yet unverifiable assumptions. If you cannot indicate the reason and think that both directional changes are natural - then we should see the presence of both directions in each of the child languages. Why one is excluded and the other chosen remains a key weakness of linguistics - which is sought to be broken by historical assumptions.

I don't belong to the "we" that thinks Prakrit and "southern" languages - having common meaning words or phonetically proximate words with Sanskrit - means they loaned those words from Sanskrit as the parent provider of words. I find the directional assumption of linguistics to be an axiom based on subconscious acceptance of historical theories on flows and directions in societies. Sanskrit could have been constructed out of proto-Praakrit languages that existed in the major river valleys of north central India, and coastal South.

If you say that change is deterministic or unidirectional - then the second problem you do not realize, is that why would a sound be invented initially and developed in a form that needs to change.
Nope, it's not as if only complicated algebraic looking parent sounds are susceptible to change. As the 'arya' example above shows, even simple consonant clusters are susceptible to transformation.

Well the arya example is problematic, to say the least.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 17 May 2012 06:28

RajeshA wrote: perhaps you could tell us a bit about what disqualifies Sanskrit from being the parent, with something similar to PIE being an intermediate stage. Why is Vedic Sanskrit -> PIE not possible?

This question is very pertinent. To be specific, let's pose a question to the current PIE model:

Q: why couldn't Sanskrit palatal 'c' be the parent, then transform to the intermediary kʷ and then break out into greek 'p', english 'w' etc. Ie. why couldn't Skt cakra > PIE kʷekʷlos

A: It's important to first read this wiki page on how following front vowels (i/e) influence a velar sound (back of mouth) like 'k' to turn into a palatal sound like 'c'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization

The influence of front vowels on palatalization is a phenomenon even for attested languages as late as 1600 AD. This is also seen in non-IE languages like Japanese.

If cakra was the original, it would be counter intuitive for PIE to turn the original 'a' vowel into a front 'e' vowel, but throw the palatal 'c' back to velar 'k'. This runs counter to the observed tendency of all collected data on human articulation to palatalize under the influence of front vowels and glides.

Note: "front" vowel is kind of a misnomer - actual term should have been a quasi palatal vowel - one articulated near the palate of the mouth. Eg 'o' is not a "front" vowel. So you have:

A front vowel prompts palatalization ...
PIE kʷe > Sanskrit 'ca' (means and)

but a non-"front" vowel merely elides the labial element ...
PIE kʷod > Sanskrit 'kad' (means what)

PS: the above is only one specific example of why I think Vedic is not the parent of the entire IE family. The PIE argument doesn't "hinge" on this example alone.There are many more important reasons; in case you'd like a comprehensive list, I'll expand further.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 May 2012 09:45

it would make sense for africans to make a beeline for north and south india rather than colder climes of the north because of the warmer climate, high prevalance of fruits, trees, wild grasses (ancestors of our staple foodgrains), deer and domesticable animals like cows, fowl and goats.

central asia is nobody's paradise and even today the pop of most of these countries is less than NCR itself.

arab peninsula was probably well on its way to desertification by then and hence unsuitable.

a lot of iran is very dry and inhospitable.

india and south china were the only place where very large populations could be sustained without recourse to high energy burn rates or modern technology.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 17 May 2012 10:19

brihaspati wrote: In fact there is modern research that thinks that the modern human brain is structured in such a way that any attempt at a language will evolve along certain hard-wired trajectories.

Please point me to references to this modern research. The data runs counter to this.

Compare fundamental numerals:
IE: Skt dvi, Latin duo, Lithuanian du, Czech dvě
Dravidian: Kannada eraḍu, Tamil renḍu
Ugric: Finnish kaksi, Estonian kak, Hungarian két
Altaic: Turkic iki, Kazakh eki

We see language families stick to their core vocabulary. Even if closely located. Counting is an apt example, because even things like long distance trade etc doesn't seem to have affected cardinals and ordinals.

You can take your own example of the wheel. As you have laid it out , you cannot rule out the Greek form changing into Sanskrit through the mythical intermediate form.

Please see my previous post to rajeshji, on why it cannot be - effect of so called "front vowels" on palatalization.

Sure! Well bilingualism complicates the issue even further. It necessarily assumes different parents, if not in misty antiquity - at least in the immediate past. That still does not answer the question as to why a more difficult version would at all be invented that then gets "simplified"

The answer is that there is no one universal definition of "difficult". What is easy and rolls off the tongue for one group may be difficult for others. Eg. I find nothing difficult saying "varṇa", but ancient bilingual speakers of Kannada and Sanskrit found it easier to simplify it to "baṇṇa" when they incorporated the word into Kannada vocabulary.

For the so-called arya->aiah and arya->ajja lets look at the problems your theory creates:

(1) if you say the transmutation was different because the north and south had different originals

I did not say that

the original for this word is same - sanskrit 'arya'. It's not as if north didn't have 'ayya'. There is early evidence for 'ayya' in pāli too. But later it consolidates to 'ajja'. See:

"Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit: Its Rise, Spread, Characteristics" pp 70 - 74

Influence of bilingualism is clear because even Kannada words that are non-Sanskrit in origin, like maṇṇu, haṇṇu etc. have a tendency for repeating a consonant. Even if you compare Old Kannada (parand) versus Modern Kannada (haṇṇu), you will see that trend.

Skt varṇa Kannada baṇṇa
Skt parva Kannada habba
Skt svarṇa Kannada chinna

So we can safely say: Kannada speakers started favouring repeat consonant instead of consonant clusters involving 'r' sound.

(3) if "arya" was a parent, which cannot prevent transmutation into supposedly simpler versions - why was the harder parent version at all invented?

Indian grammar tradition itself calls these tadbhava (thus it became) as against 'tatsama'. Indian grammarians themselves testify to these words being derived. For derivation of ayya from arya, Refer to this book by K. Mahadevshastri on Telugu grammar:

"Historical grammar of Telugu: with special reference to old Telugu, c. 200 B.C.-1000 A.D" pp 103

And as I said earlier, "harder" is a relative thing. For a non-Kannada speaker like me, pronouncing Kannada "haḷḷi" was "hard", so I, like other bilingual Kannada/Hindi speakers just started with 'halli'. With comical effect no less.

(2) What rules out that "arya" itself was not the result of an averaging process between pre-existing closely-related-in-meaning versions prevalent over a wide and contiguous geographical region? After all "sanskrita" is itself saying that it is has been a cleansed and constructed language.

Thankfully, there is both grammatical tradition of Indian pandits, as well as epigraphic evidence to support this. Ayya was used as honorofic for kings, just like arya.

Sanskrit could have been constructed out of proto-Praakrit languages that existed in the major river valleys of north central India, and coastal South.

Of course, there is no denying that Sanskrit as a live language, picked up the diversity and rich elements from other languages. Sanskrit wasn't just a source. It borrowed elements too eg. the well known grammatical element 'iti'.

At the same time, note the fundamental differences in Vedic v/s Dravidian languages: presence of three genders, Numeral names, personal pronouns, case endings etc. etc.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 May 2012 10:25

ManishH wrote:it would be counter intuitive for PIE to turn the original 'a' vowel into a front 'e' vowel, but throw the palatal 'c' back to velar 'k'. This runs counter to the observed tendency of all collected data on human articulation to palatalize under the influence of front vowels and glides.

Do I understand it correctly: Are you saying Palatalization is a unidirectional process?

member_20317 · Post by **member_20317** » 17 May 2012 10:25

RajeshA ji, while I am with you on every thing but I believe we should seriously consider the request put up by ManishH ji.

I also want Itihaas, Genetics, Astrology, Astronomy, Zoology, Botany, Studies of Ancient Technology & Military, Grammer, Geography, Earth Sciences, Darshan, Demographics as applied to Bharatvarsha, at one place alongwith the Geo-Strategic & Cultural significance of it all. An ‘Out of India Fact’ thread perhaps.

We can with all due respect have Linguistics, Archeology, History, Philosophies, Teherikh, Harvard, Social Scientists, Political Science, Nobel Prizes, Developmental Economic Theory, World Peace etc. having as its subject the ‘Ancient IE culture’, at some other place (in fact this very thread itself, since apparently everybody on the thread wants this here).

You are concerned about the misuse of India by outsiders and so you want to understand/counter their language. After a time you will also begin to talk about the ‘True’ Horse.

I am concerned about my self-education. Where I can better understand cause & effect & probability & acceptance. I have little use for co-relation. The reality is More Indians have much more in common with other Indians then with Uropains and whatever with no way of changing this except perhaps with the Prophecies coming true.

BTW a blade of grass growing with other blade of grass has a correlation of ____! and considering that the whole of our country came out of Africa so all blades of grass in India having come Out of Africa is ____!. Now what theory can be made out of this.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 17 May 2012 10:35

Singha wrote:it would make sense for africans to make a beeline for north and south india rather than colder climes of the north because of the warmer climate,

Climatic conditions when Africans spread out were not the same as today's.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with Chalcolithic and Bronze age archaeology of Eurasia or the Pontic Caspian region; but please don't take today's demographics to be an indicator:

- First evidence of chariot is in Eurasia: Sintashta Arkaim
- First evidence of horse domestication in Kazakhastan : Botai

Central Asia wasn't a barren wasteland in Bronze age. See Anthony, "Horse, Wheel and Language" for a good treatment of Eurasian climate change and archaeology.

india and south china were the only place where very large populations could be sustained without recourse to high energy burn rates or modern technology.

This is quite right.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 17 May 2012 10:42

RajeshA wrote:[
Do I understand it correctly: Are you saying Palatalization is a unidirectional process?

Yes; when in the context of front vowels. Like in Vedic. I should add a contrarian viewpoint too to mine though:

Dr. Koenraad Elst in his article accepts that palatalization is a one-way process, but yet gives lucid arguments on how a pre-palatalized PIE could have been in India. See sec 2.2 here.

He has given datapoints on Bangani - a kentum language in India. It's not something I know well about - but worth exploring.

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 17 May 2012 11:19

ManishH wrote:Ramanaji and Rajeshji: Probably this thread needs a split into strategic discussion of AIT/OIT which talks about ideology, strategic implications on Indian society etc.; keeping discussion of archaeology/linguistics/astrological evidence etc totally separate.

ravi_g wrote:We can with all due respect have Linguistics, Archeology, History, Philosophies, Teherikh, Harvard, Social Scientists, Political Science, Nobel Prizes, Developmental Economic Theory, World Peace etc. having as its subject the ‘Ancient IE culture’, at some other place (in fact this very thread itself, since apparently everybody on the thread wants this here).

ManishH ji,

As per your request and that of ravi_g, I have set up a Linguistics Thread in GDF. Perhaps we should continue our discussion there. Please do cross-post your posts on linguistics there as well.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 17 May 2012 19:47

Bji, Are you talking about psycho-linguistics? The study of language and brain?

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 17 May 2012 20:07

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is supposed to be one of the oldest. The somewhat controversial 6th adhyaya has the following formulas and earnest prayers: 6.4.14-16 -
FROM "sa ya ichhet putrO me shuklO jAyet vedamanubruveeta...." TO "atha ye ichhet putrO me shyAmO lohitAkSho jAyeta treenvedAnanubruveeta..."

A translation:

14. In case one wishes, 'That a white son be born to me! that he be able to repeat a Veda! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice cooked with milk and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].

15. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a tawny son with reddish-brown eyes be born to me! that he be able to recite two Vedas! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice cooked with sour milk and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].

16. Now, in case one wishes, 'That a dark son with red eyes be born to me! that he be able to repeat three Vedas! that he attain the full length of life!'--they two should have rice boiled with water and should eat it prepared with ghee. They two are likely to beget [him].

One explicit or implicit assertion of the AIT or AMT is that the migrators into India were fairer skinned while the subaltern natives were darker. The fairer migrants were supposed to have then created the Vedic philosophical-religious system long after they had made India their home along with a race-based "caste system" - incidentally just like the colonial Turko-Arab colonials and their Europian "apartheid" style successors. If the Vedas were created by this fair elite, how does this Brihadaranyaka Upanishad associate increasing degrees of Vedic expertise with darker skin?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 17 May 2012 20:39

I guess for reciting all the four Vedas one has to be very dark skinned by this formula. I want that rice for I value knowledge of the four Vedas above all elese. I already have red eyes due to computer monitor.

May be its Satanic verse?

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 17 May 2012 20:42

But seriously, the AMT saahibs need to explain this color correlation. to me it indicates that the Vedic knowledge was always indigenous, whether or not there was migration into or out of India.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 17 May 2012 20:43

If linguistics are to be believed, 'Aryans' are progenitors of Sanskrit, but then Vedas upanishads don't seem to support any non-native composition by white race, genetics talk about diverse genetic pool of Indian subcontinent and subsequent branching into Europe, Archaeology too doesn't seem to suggest AIT, then what does all this counter proof says about linguistics? isn't it then the responsibility of linguistics to prove why their theory is correct in spite of all the proof heaped against linguist experts?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 17 May 2012 21:45

Carl wrote: But seriously, the AMT saahibs need to explain this color correlation. to me it indicates that the Vedic knowledge was always indigenous, whether or not there was migration into or out of India.

This is what Telegeri talks about. He says the Vedas clearly says that it is local and it has been built over several centuries in the same region by dark skinned people. There is absolutely no doubt about it and this is very clear.

But the lingustics refuse to look at it and keep coming with new terms such as PIE etc.

Linguistics is directly related to the European search for their history and languages.
They used the information of vedas to just show antiquity of European languages but refused to connect it logically.
PIE is a way out so that they can show the origin and history of European languages but they still need some branch to show Sanksrit and Indian region to show antiquity to their language history.

Remember they need to show antiquity and also history of the origin.

Indian languages dont have this problem since India has antiquity and also history of the pre-sanskrit languages .

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 17 May 2012 21:51

The Elam/Ilam civilization in ancient Iran (before the ancestors of most present-day Iranians and Kurds came into the region) is also sometimes linked with "Dravidian" roots. How true is this?

There are still Brahavi/Brahui speaking people in Baluchistan. they are also supposedly connected with "Dravidians".

So even if there was an ebb and flow of peoples, it looks like the memetic substrate of the spiritual civilization was from a dark-skinned type?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 17 May 2012 21:55

Acharya wrote:
Carl wrote: But seriously, the AMT saahibs need to explain this color correlation. to me it indicates that the Vedic knowledge was always indigenous, whether or not there was migration into or out of India.
This is what Telegeri talks about. He says the Vedas clearly says that it is local and it has been built over several centuries in the same region by dark skinned people. There is absolutely no doubt about it and this is very clear.

But the lingustics refuse to look at it and keep coming with new terms such as PIE etc. This is directly related to the European search for their history and languages.

After Renaissance, Europe wants to move out of the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman ethos of Western civlization to a post Christian world. Hence all these distortions of others' past and claiming others past as their own to get rid of their present and move into a brave new world.

Rome did that to the Jews. They took over Christ and blamed the Jews for the crucification and created a blood fued running thru past two millenia. After the fall of Rome, converted Goths who had no clue persecuted the Jews of Iberia even those who had left Jerusalem centuries before Christ!
Islam did that successfully. They took over a female parts worshiping cult and put a Judeo-Christian mask on it called it Islam. And to cover up their stealing they relegated women to a very subservient role in their society.
This the stealing from/dispossesing the heathen and despising him for having first come up with valuable goods in first place.

Same thing. They want Sanskrit from the Hindus and despise them for being heathen!

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 17 May 2012 21:58

Now you have the MO

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 17 May 2012 22:02

What is 'MO'?