Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[member_22872]

What does the word GAVA mean? We can go to Nirukta, the earliest book of etymology from India, and look up its meaning. The two primary meanings of the word ``gauh,'' from which GAVA is derived, are given in the following order:
Earth,
Cow
Now guess which of the two meanings was used by the famed Dutch translator of this book. The cow! His translation reads: ``The world of heaven is as far removed from this (earthly) world as a thousand cows standing the one above the other.''You'll say that I'm being unduly dramatic in my story and besides how do I know that this translation is wrong.

Now Manish ji from the above how do linguists pick the right meaning? (that too when this word meanings are picked by Western scholars) Because from the meaning of a word, I guess linguists pick a corresponding word in say Greek and look for a connection and there by saying that one is degenerate form of another and show the retrogression leading to PIE. But if you pick the wrong meaning, then the possibility is that you might find pattern which never was? So makes linguists so sure that their study is based on correct word meanings? Sometimes the meaning is derived from a regions social context as Shiv ji has been saying, sometimes the meaning is contextual, how do linguist guess the right meaning and there by make their connection to PIE? To anyone this doesn't sound simple and is not straight forward and has many pitfalls.

[Prem]

One thing we know is that basic premise behind all these shenanigans is to some how negate Indic contribution. For Gurus here, any idea about the following Language from deep south of India :-
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/sho ... p?t=616213

[shiv]

One thing that is becoming apparent to me is the fundamentally racist roots upon which Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan languages have traditionally been studied.

After Europeans came into India a racist picture was already built up of how the superior whites subjugated and drove away the inferior blacks. That racist picture was pasted on to translations of Sanskrit. So Sanskrit words and passages were pasted onto an earlier racist picture and the story was created that the Fair skinned Indo-Aryans who composed the Vedas looked upon Dravidians in exactly the same way as Europeans looked upon black people.

For example I have posted scans of basically racist texts from the late 1800s - 1900 or so speaking of "flat nosed" black people. The study of body structure and shape as a determinant of race was a "science" in those days. And when these assholes studied Sanskrit they mistranslated sanskrit words to suit their own bigoted biases. So the fair "Aryans" apparently referred to black Dravidians as "anasya" meaning without nose in an equalequal with racist theories extant in that era.

It is through biases such as these that a firm picture of a huge Aryan-Dravidian divide was created. The fair skinned Europeans somehow had to appropriate and claim as part of their own history the huge body of knowledge that sanskrit represented.

The fallout of that still exists today. It was these very worthies who cooked up hypothetical languages like "Indo-European" and "Indo-Iranian" to desperately seek that missing link with Sanskrit. And they conveniently ignored what did not fit in with their theories.

What did not fit in with their theories hits you straight in the face once you realize why Sanskrit has so many more letters and sounds than other "indo-European" languages. Words that occur in all Indian languages and Sanskrit are "retroflex" consonants caused by the tongue to roll back. The "L" in Gul (jaggery) in Marathi or the "zh" in Kanimozhi are such sounds. It turns out that these sounds are normal in so called "Dravidian languages". Sanskrit uses and admixture of "dravidian" consonants with so called 'indo aryan" consonant sounds.

So when people desperately search for the origins of Sanskrit in the "Uzbekistani steppes" they are already biased. They already believe the Aryan invasion theory in their minds because of all the "scholarly inputs" that have existed for more than a century. That is already accepted and done with. And any model they create simply MUST fit in with that theory. And they are ignoring the very strong possibility that Sanskrit is a purely local development based on a language admixture of older local Indian languages with some other language that corresponds to a variant of Indo-European. In other words - by all means search for roots of German, Greek Iranian etc but don't try and imagine that Sanskrit has the same origin. Sanskrit probably has a broader base that that.

[shiv]

Folks let me try and explain another oddity that I find.

Here is the current family of "Indo-European languages'

The great ancestor of them all is a mythical non exiting language that people thing must have existed - "Proto-Indo-European" (PIE)

This had two branches, the "Centum" anguages leading to European languages and the "Satem" languages
Centum
Satem

Satem languages had branches like Armenian, Baltic etc and Indo Iranian

Indo Iranian gave rise to Sanskrit. Indian languages came from Sanskrit

You know what is odd? Every modern language is claimed to be the "grandchild" of the mythical PIE

Only modern Indian languages are the "great grandchildren" of PIE with "dead" Sanskrit being the grandchild.

OK leave this fact aside.

Look at it from the other way. Look back at roots from Indian languages especially "non Dravidian" Indian languages. Do they all go back to their grandfather "Indo- Aryan"? No. they go back to Sanskrit. Sanskrit has unique Dravidian features that makes me wonder if the classic "Satem-Centum" classification made a century ago is bullshit. it was made at a time when Dravidians were thought to be defeated black people and no European was interested in studying their languages. So no one was bothered about looking at the strange Dravidian language influence on Sanskrit.

In fact the branch Indo Iranian itself may be a fake branch. There are so many languages related to India like Avestan and Baluchi there that there is surely something missing. Something has been left out. There is a mixture of languages in India that is not reflected in this Satem-Centum classification.

[member_20317]

My god, Jhujar ji the link you have provided is a real eye opener. The comments bazi is worth collecting for future generations. Our children must be shown the effect of the ‘Scholars’ on these countries. These new age ‘Buddhu’ want recognition equivalent to ‘Bhagwaan Budh’ for their ordinary drivel like Linguistics and cognates. Now their countrymen cannot even think in any way other than their own. And some of these commentariates are actually referring to Linguistics as some sort of Science. 1000 Cows on top of each other for all linguists in Madrassa-e-Harvard.

During an important part of my life I came across a beautiful rendition of ‘Bajrang Baan’ by Pandit Hari Parsad Chaurasia. This was also the first time I heard Bajrang Baan and I got hooked. There are a few line which are obviously of recent origin but I believe are inspired by hearings/practices of much older incantations.

Om hing hing hing hanumant kapisah; or
Om hanu hanu hanu hunumant agaadha.

The translation may not be exact but should be good enough for what I want to say.

Much older mantras carry such incantations.

This is a live tradition, which quite obviously is used in Bajrang Baan as an aid to further the verses. But this explanation is only by me for people, who like myself are not well developed in the indigenous life (basically by an intiate for other intiates). From the point of view of Gyaanies who have had the benefit of indigenous grounding these lines may carry an entirely different significance.

Also this is only the awareness of differences. The awareness of sameness is built into these incantations too. With repetition of these incantations people will at certain point begin to see themselves as natural heirs to the Rishis of that long gone yugas. These incantations are meant more to enable yog of different times, by cutting up the kleshas and vikaars that build up out of inertia, a meditation technique. These may not even be meant to be ‘understood’.

There could actually be much more. This much of my observations is when I am not very well trained in the traditions.

[member_22872]

From the link Jhujar ji had posted, found an excerpt of "Story of India" talking about tho oral tradition of Vedic mantra rendition which, to the commentator appeared more like 'bird song' and please note that one of the commentators says that some Vedic mantras cannot be written down, but can only be memorized through oral rendition, and Passed down from tens of thousands of years before the human speech was born. Question is, if such a tradition existed since very very long and the west and our own linguists found a link to written recorded form of Sanskrit and thus were able to connect to PIE, completely neglecting a Vedic Sanskrit which has no written record ever, how correct are these linguists making assumptions which are whimsical to begin with and then not including these oral Vedic Sanskrit in their analysis? Here is the clip:

[ManishH]

I'll try to explain what I find disconcerting in PIE.

These are very valid counterpoints, and can be called objections to not just PIE but the discipline of historical linguistics in general.

a) These sound change patterns are turned into sound change axioms giving them power. They don't remain simply observed data and data patterns, but become tools of theoretical projection. As such they change from simply analysis tools into synthesis tools.

What is axiomatic is : the human articulation won't change in large quanta, but builds up as small mispronunciations - based on how adjacent sounds affect articulation of a certain phone.

Other than that, I don't find any other axioms.

b) Also the sound change process, the evolutionary process, the circumstances, the reasons are completely ignored. Only the end result is deemed interesting.

Actually they aren't ignored. Just that they do not fall entirely under the study of phonetics but human behaviour. Eg. "Principles of Historical Linguistics", HH Hock, chap 20 is entirely devoted to studying these causes.

My personal impression is that humans imitate the accents of people with influence in their community. Actually not just accent, even other things.

1. two or more sibling languages being direct children of a common hypothetical parent language. They could be cousins of various degrees, rather than siblings. This has an effect on what sound change "axioms" are used.

Actually, not "direct children", in many cases, eg. we know from those very sound changes that Indo-Iranian was a single language, not independently separated from the parent. There are other conclusions too - eg. Slavic was a single language.

[*] the most notorious assumption is on the directionality of sound change between two languages, especially if one is hypothetical language. Just because a sound change pattern is found in one direction is some unrelated language pair and no sound change pattern has been found in the other direction between living/legacy languages, does not mean such a directionality is impossible. Secondly the other directionality could become probable if one uses other intermediate sound change possibilities.[/list]

I know; being from science/math background, we are used to see LHS = RHS and mathematical symbols are substitutable. But phonetics doesn't work like that.

I thought I explained with example of palatalization, why it is considered irreversible. I remember you had one objection, which I did reply to. If you have any other objections, do let me know.

We already know that the Indo-European language speaking people belong(ed) to different races. The Ancestral North Indian group is hardly ethnically synonymous with Germans. So somewhere along the way, one ethnic group family has transmitted its language to another ethnic group family. It is obvious that the other ethnic group family was earlier speaking a different tongue.

All evidence from Indian texts points that more than race (as in skin colour/features etc.), language was a greater marker of ethnicity in vedic period. So at least I won't go so far as to say, there was transmission between races (the term as used today).

So there is bilingualism here at work and there are substrata languages here at work.

Again, bilingualism is not ignored. It definitely is one of the strong contenders for causes of sound change. See chapter 16 of Hock's book.

Due to substratum language(s) it is actually impossible to discern the directionality of any sound change axiom at work.

I think even here, the basic phonetic rules do not change - if I learn a new language, eg German, I won't pronounce the 'r' sound uvular, like a native German, I will still pronounce it in retroflex or alveolar, the way I speak in my native Indian language.

1) There can be intermediate sound changes which allow an opposite process to palatalization of sounds with front vowels. It need not be a single stage process. It can be a multiple stage process.

Ok, start by proposing it then.

2) Just because the palatalization of sounds with front vowels has been observed in some languages does not mean the opposite cannot be there in some other languages.

The problem here is the corroborating evidence of front vowel. If indeed, as you say, it is a reversible process, let's call it "velarization", wherein an original palatal becomes a velar (c > k), we won't expect the 'k' standing next to a front vowel like e/i most of the time. But it does in Greek. If velarization was true, we would find the 'k' standing next to a back vowel like 'a'. But we don't.

In case you want to further dissect this directionality, I found a freely available book ( on books.google.com ) that explains it with some examples ...
pp 56 - 58 in "Historical Linguistics" By Theodora Bynon

3) Then there is the distant possibility that kʷ need not be the parent or intermediate sound of both c and p in this case, and there can be theoretically some other intermediate sounds moving from c to p than kʷ.

Ok, not that it hasn't been tried before. The late Satya Swarup Misra did propose such sound changes in ...
S.S. Misra, 1992, The Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach, New Delhi.
and a shorter paper in "The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate", E. Bryant.

But unfortunately, he does not address the problem posed by the front vowel in palatalization.

If PIE is to be believed, PIE proponents need to show the presence of substratum language(s) in Sanskrit and Greek which

1. did not allow the pronunciation of kʷ

At least for Greek, that evidence for the transformation exists (Epic v's Mycenaean), also for English (Old English-> New English). However, in Sanskrit, there is no epigraphic evidence of labiovelars. There is only trace of the labio-velars which can be discerned by what is called u-colouring of liquids (r/l). Eg. sanskrit 'guru' appears as Latin 'gravis' and Greek 'barus'. The initial labiovelar gʷ causing the u-colouring in sanskrit.

1. not whether kʷ can change into c or p, but rather why kʷ changed into c and p in Sanskrit and Greek respectively.
2. what is the justification for migrating sound change patterns observed elsewhere to create hypothetical languages as if these were not just patterns but some laws.

[/list]

Like I said, substrate can be just one of the influencing factors in sound change. I'm afraid linguists can never recover the 'why' here

Also Kazanas speak of heeding more the presence of roots than stems in finding out the "parent" language. The language, where one can show more "root" sounds, would be much closer to the PIE, or synonymous with it, rather than a language which can only show "stems". That way Sanskrit surely wins hands down.

He hasn't claimed more roots, only more regular forms. No linguist makes the correlation between regularity and antiquity. In fact a robust grammatical tradition as in India has resulted in many iterations of Sanskrit (Vedic v/s Pāṇinian forms) which have only kept improving regularity.

We aren't taught this in Sanskrit classes, but several sanskrit words like 'नीड' (nest) have also lost their roots. These can easily be recovered by theory of sound change.

[shiv]

From the link Jhujar ji had posted, found an excerpt of "Story of India" talking about tho oral tradition of Vedic mantra rendition which, to the commentator appeared more like 'bird song' and please note that one of the commentators says that some Vedic mantras cannot be written down, but can only be memorized through oral rendition, and Passed down from tens of thousands of years before the human speech was born.

Singsong Veda is Samaveda. Will post an example from an MP3 when I get a chance. Don't know about birdsong.

[member_22872]

What is axiomatic is : the human articulation won't change in large quanta, but builds up as small mispronunciations - based on how adjacent sounds affect articulation of a certain phone.

Other than that, I don't find any other axioms.

Manish ji, but you never answered one question, how do you choose the time datum point of Sanskrit and say that Sanskrit had been spoken thus and hence is a representative sample and then use that for comparison? What if oral Vedic Sanskrit is different and in fact the written form is a only a subset of an oral tradition which is not taken into affect at all in your analysis? Then, whatever conclusions are not right? They will remain incomplete at the best? Is that reasonable to say? Please also see the above clip.

[member_22872]

Shiv Garu but Sama Veda is later Veda no?

[ManishH]

pardon me for digressing a bit, going back to horse domestication again, , while searching BR archive found a link to horse domestication in India 40000 years ago as a cave painting, guess one can see in the image proof of horse domestication. This is from 2002:

This is said to be a 40,000-year-old cave painting seen on a white silica sandstone rock shelter depicting existence of human civilization is seen in Banda district 800 kilometers(500 miles) southeast of New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2002. The painting shows organized hunting by men in Neolithic Age . These caves were discovered recently by Indian and British Archelogits.

Please don't tell me that that's not a horse.

venugji:
Can you please point me to a more detailed article on how the dating was done on this cave painting. I know that caves in Central India tend to have many strata. And archaeologists are cautious enough to date every artefact w.r.t the stratum it is found in. Eg. a cave like Bhimbetka has artefacts from mesolithic right up to medieval period. So when we say a cave is N years old, not every painting dates to the earliest period.

Cave engravings are hard to date, but a cave painting could be simpler if organic material is found.

[ManishH]

What is axiomatic is : the human articulation won't change in large quanta, but builds up as small mispronunciations - based on how adjacent sounds affect articulation of a certain phone.

Other than that, I don't find any other axioms.

Manish ji, but you never answered one question, how do you choose the time datum point of Sanskrit and say that Sanskrit had been spoken thus and hence is a representative sample and then use that for comparison? What if oral Vedic Sanskrit is different and in fact the written form is a only a subset of an oral tradition which is not taken into affect at all in your analysis? Then, whatever conclusions are not right? They will remain incomplete at the best? Is that reasonable to say? Please also see the above clip.

The oral Vedic Sanskrit is indeed different from Classical and Epic forms. But if you see the manuscripts if RV and compare it to recitations of RV, they don't differ much. In fact, strict rules of meter have ensured that not a syllable goes amiss (although in reality a few errors do sneak in).

BTW, techniques like permutational recitation ensure that what is recited today preserves the ancient one. Eg. my guru used to teach me to recite mantras in 1-2-2-1 pattern : a braid like jaṭāpāṭha. It's hard to introduce errors that way, because you begin to recite the same words with different sandhi - rules. The sandhi between 1-2 is not same as sandhi between 2-2. Eg.

वाकम्-वाकम्but वाकन्-द्विपदः

It's akin to doing a CRC (cyclic redundancy check). I never got to more complex ghana etc recitations, but those add even more layers of CRC.

To add to that, the oral tradition also does group recitations, so if one student makes a mistake, it promptly stands out (like an NCC drill). It's amazing how the ancient devised ways to preserve the texts.

PS: There are mostly notational and index differences between manuscripts is eg. how the pitch accent is marked.

[shiv]

One of the things that bugs me about "PIE" is that it is all about similarities.

If both German and French are descended from PIE, why did they become different? Mispronunciation? Or mixing of PIE with people who had different earlier languages?

[RajeshA]

I think even here, the basic phonetic rules do not change - if I learn a new language, eg German, I won't pronounce the 'r' sound uvular, like a native German, I will still pronounce it in retroflex or alveolar, the way I speak in my native Indian language.

Let's consider a hypothetical situation and take the assumption that Kurgans (I mean the hypothetical ancient people from Kurgan and not Kurgan from movie Highlander ) learn Vedic Sanskrit from Bharatiya migrants.

Now transposing your statement onto the new context of Kurgans it would be

If a Kurgan learns a new language, eg Vedic Sanskrit, he won't pronounce the 'r' sound uvular, like a native Bharatiya, he will still pronounce it in retroflex or alveolar, the way he speaks in his native Kurgan language.

At some point Kurgans start speaking a language similar to Vedic Sanskrit with some substantial dosage of their earlier Kurgan (non-IE) language but change the pronunciations of many Vedic Sanskrit words according to their native tongue intonation.

And there we get a child language of Vedic Sanskrit, spoken by a people whose native tongue was not Vedic Sanskrit.

The sound change rules were solely defined by what sounds the Kurgans had in their language (non-IE) which best approximated sounds in Vedic Sanskrit.

Coming out of our hypothetical scenario, it could have led to "velarization" (as you proposed).

[Sanku]

ManishH ji; If you could find time from the barrage directed at you to answer the question I raised, I would appreciate it.

[ManishH]

You know what is odd? Every modern language is claimed to be the "grandchild" of the mythical PIE

Nope. Exceptions: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Basque. What is not mentioned in these maps is that several native languages of Europe influenced classical and modern languages. They are called substrates.

Look at it from the other way. Look back at roots from Indian languages especially "non Dravidian" Indian languages. Do they all go back to their grandfather "Indo- Aryan"? No. they go back to Sanskrit. Sanskrit has unique Dravidian features

The features only barely started in later stages of Rg. Eg. in Rg Mandala 1, there are no Dravidian loan words. But in Epic and Classical phases, there are many more commonalities both ways.

One thing worth trying is to pick basic verbs in your own native Dravidian language, see if any of them made it to europe's IE languages. Eg. Kannada:

tinnu (eat), nadi (walk), kudi (drink), malagu (sleep), maataadi (talk), heLi (tell), kari (call), cook (adige maadi)

But lot of Sanskrit verbs do make it to Europe ...

adati (Grk. edo), chalati (Lat colo), pibati (Grk pino), drāti (Grk edrasthon), vakti (Lat voco), navati (Lat nuntius), pacati (Lat coquo).

Verbs are more important to decide what constitutes a language family - because they often provide roots - basic building blocks for nouns and other grammatical forms.

Sure Sankuji.

[ManishH]

Coming out of our hypothetical scenario, it could have led to "velarization" (as you proposed).

Umm no. Velarization would require a telltale influence of a back vowel like 'a' in the hypothetical "kurgan" language which descended from vedic.

IOW, we'll have to find a hypothetical vedic word 'ceXYZ' which turned into Kurgan word 'kaXYZ'.

We find none of that. Whereas what we do find is a Vedic word like 'aśva' and Greek equus. Vedic 'śatam' Grk 'centum'.

The"front" vowels are misnomers: these cause palatalization (e / i / y )
These vowels are "back" vowels: do not cause palatalization ( a / o ) again misnomer

Of course, this pattern is seen in an overwhelming majority, but not a 100%. If you read SS Misra's work, he shows 3-4 instances where palatalization happens where it shouldn't. But Hock has shown in a subsequent paper by citing example of Avestan that these handful of cases are not violations of palatals rule. If you want to dig in, let me know.

[brihaspati]

ManishH ji,
the problem with the velar+palatalization is that the particular example you drew upon, the "ch"-"k" dynamics is itself a highly stylized snapshot of something that is indeed phonetically much more complex. My experience with the supposedly "older" non-IE or supposedly pre-IE dialects of Europe, suggests that these languages had a much more general stress on gutturals (phonetically pharyngeals, glottal and epiglottal - consonants as well as vowels). I spent some time acquainting myself with welsh and basque, and the relatively more apparently IE influenced Gaelic.

If a pre-existing language had more usage or familiarity with "gutturals", a heard "ca" or ch sound will be drawn back into the oral cavity towards the velar. I carried out such experiments on my lone treks among native speaker sub-regions and saw the tendency.

In such a tendency - the second "k" is less likely to be under the pull to draw further back - if the guttural preference or ease of use by practice for pharyngeal/glottal articulation exists. in fact if you hear an actual articulation of kyklos by native greek speakers, the "y" is very nearly suppressed - to almost have a k-k sound.

If the "centre of gravity" theory holds, [sound changes are reluctant changes and based on compromises - half-ways etc - which is the essence of what you put forward as the historical linguist axiom], this retreat of "ch" from front to rear makes perfect sense if the original recipient population had greater usage of pahryngeals/glottals.

If there was an absolute reluctance to go away from the velar - then the frontal vowel itself should not have appeared in kyklos, as it makes them go away to the front from a velar and then come back. If they preferred glottals/velar before the second "k" would already be a good compromise and hence moving the first "ca"/ch back to the same glottal/vellar approximation would reduce the overall degree of change for pharyngeal/glottal practitioners.

[shiv]

Coming out of our hypothetical scenario, it could have led to "velarization" (as you proposed).

Umm no. Velarization would require a telltale influence of a back vowel like 'a' in the hypothetical "kurgan" language which descended from vedic.

IOW, we'll have to find a hypothetical vedic word 'ceXYZ' which turned into Kurgan word 'kaXYZ'.

We find none of that.

Manishji. PIE is completely hypothetical. NONE of its words exist. There is no existing candidate language with all the words that "should be there" in PIE.

[brihaspati]

In fact I remember in one particular village, I tried to get them to say "cakra", and it turned out like "khakra" most of the time, and in some "khakla".

[shiv]

Sanskrit has unique Dravidian features

The features only barely started in later stages of Rg. Eg. in Rg Mandala 1, there are no Dravidian loan words. But in Epic and Classical phases, there are many more commonalities both ways..

It appears that retroflex consonants are there in the Rig Veda from the outset. Not loan words. At least that's what I find repeatedly in related searches for Rig Veda and retroflex consonants. Wiki has something on this as well and parts of that page look like you might have written it.

[member_20317]

Manishji. PIE is completely hypothetical. NONE of its words exist. There is no existing candidate language with all the words that "should be there" in PIE.

And you forgot this Shiv ji,

Them of the superior scholarship kind admit they dont need a 'Why' to explain the PIE in the sky.

Quote:
1. not whether kʷ can change into c or p, but rather why kʷ changed into c and p in Sanskrit and Greek respectively.
2. what is the justification for migrating sound change patterns observed elsewhere to create hypothetical languages as if these were not just patterns but some laws.


Like I said, substrate can be just one of the influencing factors in sound change. I'm afraid linguists can never recover the 'why' here ”

Oh but elsewhere we can find this too:

Quote:
b) Also the sound change process, the evolutionary process, the circumstances, the reasons are completely ignored. Only the end result is deemed interesting.



Actually they aren't ignored. Just that they do not fall entirely under the study of phonetics but human behaviour. Eg. "Principles of Historical Linguistics", HH Hock, chap 20 is entirely devoted to studying these causes.

My personal impression is that humans imitate the accents of people with influence in their community. Actually not just accent, even other things.

[ManishH]

I however fail to understand how, that example goes to show that any of the primary tenets of linguism in the current context hold

1) Of trying to find a "fixed way of sound change with time"

Some sound changes are reversible eg. Japanese turn all English 'l' -> 'r'. But we see many 'r' -> 'l' between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.

But then there are also a set of sound changes that are irreversible. If you search my posts for "front vowel", you'll find some of my explanation.

2) Of trying to find a common ancestor language for the same through the above.

The enormous evidence of shared verb roots between Latin/Greek/Sanskrit/Iranian/Slavic is hard to ignore.

3) Ascibing sounds to long dead languages.

If a technique predicts discoveries, it cannot be so bad. At least the reward of proving it is false should be enticing to study this technique right ?

Can you explain, to begin with, how presence of Labiovelars is "established" for certain.

Consider languages X/Y/Z having a series of similar sounding words. X maintains the labial element (b/p), Y shows a velar element (k/g) and Z shows a palatal (c/ś), it makes some people stare real hard at the human mouth and wonder how can these people mispronounce words so drastically different. They come up with a labiovelar kʷ. Established linguists laugh at them.

After some years, someone discovers Mycenaean Greek inscriptions in Knossos - that predate Epic Greek. They find funny spellings of Greek - turns out they are labiovelars kʷ.

Same script is played in Hittite inscriptions.

Once we have that we can try and see if it is indeed a "pattern" and not a one-off case?

[/quote]

Here are a few instances kʷ I could dig out in 30 mins ...

Code: Select all

PIE              Sanskrit      Various other IE languages
kʷod             kad           quod/hwaet/what
kʷos             kas           hwa/who
kʷetwor          catvār        quoattor/four
penkʷe           pañca         pente/quinque/five
entbhi-kʷolos	 abhichara     anculus/amphipolos
kʷrei            krīṇati       priamai/krinuti/kreino/kary/crenaid
kʷei             cayati        poine/cena/kay
gʷou-kʷolos      gocara        boupolos/buachail
nekʷt            nakt          night/noks/nuks/innocht/nekuz/nokte
kʷsep            kṣap          psephas/xsap
kʷe              ca            que
wekʷ             vacate        voco/eipon/wackitwei
wlkʷos           vṛka          lupus/lukos/vilkas
enikʷo           anīka         enope/enech
enikʷo           pratīka       prosopon
yekʷrt           yakṛt         iecur/hepar
kokʷr            śakṛt         kopros/shiku
kʷes             kāsate        hwosan/wheeze/kosiu/kosi
kʷerus           caru          coire/hwer

Evidence of labiovelar comes from palatal/velar/labial element in european branch and palatal/velar in Indo-Iranian.

[ManishH]

It appears that retroflex consonants are there in the Rig Veda from the outset. Not loan words. At least that's what I find repeatedly in related searches for Rig Veda and retroflex consonants. Wiki has something on this as well and parts of that page look like you might have written it.

Retroflexes are not uniquely Dravidian - they are a pan-Indian phenomenon. Linguists do not term presence of retroflex in Rg as a Dravidian feature.

[ManishH]

If there was an absolute reluctance to go away from the velar - then the frontal vowel itself should not have appeared in kyklos, as it makes them go away to the front from a velar and then come back. If they preferred glottals/velar before the second "k" would already be a good compromise and hence moving the first "ca"/ch back to the same glottal/vellar approximation would reduce the overall degree of change for pharyngeal/glottal practitioners.

B-ji: I'll need time to think about what you said. Do you think you can write this up in structured form. If you have access to this paper of H.H. Hock ...

""Out of India? The linguistic evidence", J. Bronkhorst & M. Deshpande, Aryan and
Non-Aryan in South Asia. Evidence, Interpretation and Ideology. Harvard Oriental Series.
Opera Minora, vol. 3. Cambridge 1999, 1-18

You can rebut each of his examples with counter-data from Indian languages, it will be great. Because palatalization in presence of front vowels is cited as one of the clinching uni-directional features.

Unfortunately, I don't have permissions from publishers to circulate Hock's paper.

[shiv]

It appears that retroflex consonants are there in the Rig Veda from the outset. Not loan words. At least that's what I find repeatedly in related searches for Rig Veda and retroflex consonants. Wiki has something on this as well and parts of that page look like you might have written it.

Retroflexes are not uniquely Dravidian - they are a pan-Indian phenomenon. Linguists do not term presence of retroflex in Rg as a Dravidian feature.

Pan Indian, but not Indo-Iranian or Indo-European?

[shiv]

If a technique predicts discoveries, it cannot be so bad. At least the reward of proving it is false should be enticing to study this technique right ?
<snip>
After some years, someone discovers Mycenaean Greek inscriptions in Knossos - that predate Epic Greek. They find funny spellings of Greek - turns out they are labiovelars kʷ.

So the motivation for this intense desire to create a non existing language is based upon the hope that someone, somewhere along the line will actually find it and someone else can say "Ah! I had predicted that"?

Sounds like a fun game that anyone can join.

[RajeshA]

ManishH ji,

I don't wish to get in right now into the "velarization" issue. You suggested that term so I used it to make a general point, and that is:

... that the pronunciation change of a language is some times dependent on evolution in which case PIE holds and sometimes it is dependent on the substrata language, in which case it breaks down.

... and that in the case of Eurasia, where IE language was passed on from one ethnic group to another, it is more a case of the latter - pronunciation change due to substrata.

Depending on what kind of substrata language is spoken a Vedic word would be pronounced in a variety of ways. All one needs to do is just check how a Japanese, a South African, a Palestinian, a German, and an Inuit would pronounce some Vedic Sanskrit word. They would all pronounce it very differently. So it is difficult to give some sound change rule arbitrarily without knowing the substrate language.

[sudarshan]

My first time posting a link on this forum, so please pardon any transgressions. Don't know what the protocol is with posting a yahoo news link - any reason not to (besides the fact that it may be temporary)?

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civi ... 49804.html

Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of how the "Harappan" civilization ended. The first half of the article made no mention of the Saraswati river - it was Indus all the way. When the Saraswati finally made her appearance (in the article, I mean), it was basically dismissed as a legend. I lost interest when I read this sentence, which I think sums up the attitude of the "researcher(s)":

"We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River," Giosan said.

So, the article started off positively, acknowledging that the "Harappan" civilization was "bigger than Egypt or Mesopotamia," "highly urbanized," and "pretty democratic," and then went off saying the Saraswati was "mythical," that the entire "Harappan" civilization depended on "monsoon-fed" rivers, and that the civilization ended with an eastward migration towards the Gangetic plain.

More knowledgeable gurus - what do y'all think? A noob like me is confused.

Sudarshan

[member_22872]

This is new report dated 5/29/2012:

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Now Giosan and his colleagues have reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers where this long-forgotten civilizationdeveloped. Their findings now shed light on the enigmatic fate of this culture.

"Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization," Giosan said. [How Weather Changed History]

The researchers first analyzed satellite data of the landscape influenced by the Indus and neighboring rivers. From 2003 to 2008, the researchers then collected samples of sediment from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert to determine the origins and ages of those sediments and develop a timeline of landscape changes.

Some had suggested that the Harappan heartland received its waters from a large glacier-fed Himalayan river, thought by some to be the Sarasvati, a sacred river of Hindu mythology[sic]. However, the researchers found that only rivers fed by monsoon rains flowed through the region

{ But doesn't mean there never was Sarasvati, only that it's direction of flow in question? or does it mean Saravasvati dried up even before 4000BCE? but then how does one explain the mention of Sarasvati river mention as a mighty river during Mahabharata approx 3100 BCE? }

Previous studies suggest the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons, may best approximate the location of the Sarasvati. Archaeological evidence suggested the river, which dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, was home to intensive settlement during Harappan times.

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civi ... 49804.html

So end of AIT/AMT? what would linguists say? move PIE to Indus valley now?


Added later: I apologize, I didn't see that Sudarshan ji has already posted the same article.

[ramana]

venug, What do you mean? Please be more clear. Dont want to waste bandwidth exploring what you could have ment!

[brihaspati]

Climate change as a hypothesis for decline of SSC has long been a strong candidate in academia - what so new about this earth shattering claim? Even satellite and micro-sedimentary analysis has not matured so strongly [and lithic records in the whole piedmont zone so mixed up as to make every flow estimates, direction estimates and dating estimates with likely false scaling down of estimated periods ] as to bring to a conclusion as yet. Hence they cautiously cover their skin.

[member_22872]

Ramana garu,

Regarding Saravasti river, they first thought that it flowed through Indus valley and might have dried up by 1900BCE. But now the above report suggests that Saravasvati never flowed to Indus valley, so I am puzzled, does it mean Sarasvati dried up by 4000BCE itself? bu then there is mention of it being a mighty river during Mahabharat era in 3100BCE, so it existed during that time? but only the direction of flow is not into Indus valley?

Regarding my last comment:

From Manish ji and others, what I was able to understand is that, PIE is a conjecture and the liguists are stil in the dark regarding the birth place of hypothetical birth place of PIE. They thought it could be somewhere in Europe so eplaining AIT/AMT is convenient. But now with the above report, it means that Indus civilization dies because of climate changes but not due to AIT/AMT. That means Indus valley was never over run by PIE speaking aryans or that Indus valley itself is the birth place of PIE.

[member_22872]

B ji, sorry I think I will edit that, I meant this is anew report dated today, yes you are correct, this is not new.

[ramana]

Lets see. If it does not serve their purposes then it will die away.

Meantime

Reconstructing the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppe

I dont have the full text.

[sudarshan]

Venug, no probs. The way I read the material in that article was that certain undeniable facts about the civilization on the banks of the Saraswati river have forced a recalibration of the canned message that's being fed to the masses, but that there's some management going on behind the scenes to downplay inconvenient truths anyways. Like, for example, denying the existence of the Saraswati river (!?!) in the first place, shifting the goal posts, so that the opponents of the AIT have to scramble to get their response straight. Seems like it's being played as a game, with the rules in the control of the establishment (AIT'ers) and the playing field tilted against the upstarts.

Sudarshan

[RajeshA]

Meantime

Reconstructing the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppe

I dont have the full text.

ramana garu,

this was posted earlier as well in this thread. [1] [2]

[tyroneshoes]

The enormous evidence of shared verb roots between Latin/Greek/Sanskrit/Iranian/Slavic is hard to ignore.

Hard to ignore for whom?
Indian's as far as I know are not craving to seek a relationship
for Sanskrit or Kannada to Latin/Greek/Iranian/etc.
Historically, they have been pretty happy with being told they
were SDRE and that were civilized by TFTA mard onlee.

Now that roti, kapada, makan and HTC tablet are available,
the quest for identity has emerged....
So just like the Europeans have funded PIE in the sky research,
there will come a day when the SDRE will fund their own.

Personally, it is depressing. Truth maybe that the non-existent
Aryans (racists term) rode their non-existent horses North and
to the West and back again East and to the South.
He who is in the highest heaven knows and if someone funds
this theory, they may also know. Or does Bagwan Gidwani

3) Ascibing sounds to long dead languages.

If a technique predicts discoveries, it cannot be so bad. At least the reward of proving it is false should be enticing to study this technique right ?

Sounds very much like Green House emissions, er research. I am all for Linguists helping someone with a speech impediment. Of course they would never stoop to such lowly, unproductive activity. Now when it comes to pontificating and proposing boondoggle models, they are very efficient. Especially, when scarce data is misused to present models of 'flat earth' or PIE. Of course, non-science does have oodles of such papers written in esteemed journals. The life and cycle of model generators is indeed amazing, gets even more so when the model has very little practical value (other than perhaps suppressing those raging right wing lunatics).

[ramana]

Sorry for reposting the horse (manure) related stuff.

[shiv]

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civi ... 49804.html

<snip>

"We think we settled a long controversy about the mythic Sarasvati River," Giosan said.

I don't think the man is denying the Saraswati, but what made me laugh was this.

"If we take the devastating floods that caused the largest humanitarian disaster in Pakistan's history as a sign of increased monsoon activity, than this doesn't bode well for the region," Giosan said. "The region has the largest irrigation scheme in the world, and all those dams and channels would become obsolete in the face of the large floods an increased monsoon would bring."

This is what comes out of consulting a digger of old graves when your house plumbing needs repair. The man is bullshitting convincingly

Statement: It remains uncertain how monsoons will react to modern climate change.:
Translation: Nobody knows the future. Neither do I

Statement: "If we take the devastating floods that caused the largest humanitarian disaster in Pakistan's history as a sign of increased monsoon activity, than this doesn't bode well for the region,"
Translation: I watch TV too. I know there were floods. The biggest that I know about. They were not good

Statement: "The region has the largest irrigation scheme in the world, and all those dams and channels would become obsolete in the face of the large floods an increased monsoon would bring."
Translation: I have no idea why those canals and dams were built and I have no clue about why those floods occurred.