European languages before Indo-European

[sangi39]

My wife and daughter had to be in her mother's home country without me when my daughter was learning to form sentences. Because of the make up of my wife's family, my daughter had worked out that she should use Central Thai with men, Northern Thai with women, but English with her Northern Thai mother.

That's very cool. But she had to have prior exposure, if at 2yo she could speak three languages?

All the Northern Thai speakers could also speak Central Thai. When they came back home to England, my daughter initially spoke to me in Central Thai! She soon learnt that it was easiest if she spoke to me in English - my Thais is poor.

She must've been quite shocked finding out the generalization didn't work .


JAL

Over the next few years, I'm going to be watching how amy friends' daughter speaks (or at least asking them about it now that they've moved). She's just over one year old now, and she's just begun to talk, but she's being raised in a home with a Russian father, a Croatian mother, both of whom speak English. Last time I saw them, back in June, about a month before her first birthday, she was responding to certain phrases, but only in set languages. She didn't seem to understand English cat or Russian кошка or кот, but she would respond to Croatian mačka, usually imitating a meow. On the other hand, she would respond when shown photos of herself only when asked the question (Russian) кто это?, but never English who's that? or Croatian tko je? (hoping I remembered that last bit right).

From what I can remember, which language/s they use around her are fairly random, but it seems to be that when the mother and father talk to each other they use English, when only the father's around he uses Russian and likewise the mother uses Croatian when it's just her around. Russian's used with his family, unless the mother's there in which case they switch to English (the ones living in England are all bilingual in English and Russian but the ones living in the Ukraine, from what I've been told, are mostly monolingual Russians or also speak Ukrainian as a second language) but if they're with the mother's family they mostly use either Croatian or Russian, although her sisters know more English than Russian. The majority of their friends either speak Russian and/or English (and in some case both alongside a third language, as in the case of a shared friend from Lithuania), but English is used the most, I think.

It's an interesting situation, in my opinion. I've seen children grow up in bilingual households (mostly Russian/German and English) and they usually seem to use English almost exclusively, even when speaking with their non-English-native parent and, further, even if that non-English-native parent is using their first language (which is pretty cool to listen to). I assume, given that my friends' daughter is being raised in a predominantly English speaking area (Edmonton, Canada) for as long as they're out there, that something similar might happen with her, but what I'm really interested in is how much she'll be able to use and understand either of her parents' first languages given that she has regular contact with non-English speaking relatives thanks to the joys of the internet.



As a kind of side-note, I've been quite interested in what languages they use with each other too. The father is bilingual in Russian and English and seems to switch fairly randomly between the two with his family and some of his Russian/English bilingual friends. The mother, on the other hand, is mostly bilingual in Croatian and English with some understanding of Russian, using Croatian with her family and English with friends over here and in Canada. What makes it interesting is that they're trying to learn each other's first languages as well. He's learning Croatian so that they don't have to switch when they both visit her family and she's learning Russian so they don't have to keep switching with his family, and it seems to be going quite well, although they still mostly use English at home together.



It's not overly helpful in relation to this topic, since we're looking at two people from two different language areas living in a third area, which doesn't seem to be too likely if we're looking at Neolithic Europe (I'd expect, as others have noted, that what we'd see there is one person from one language area moving in with a spouse from a second language area and staying there, e.g. some kind of in-group to out-group movement), but it could be somewhat useful in backing up certain claims about bilingualism in children, the main one being, as mentioned in this thread (if I've read it right), that children might be bilingual underlyingly, but they'll almost only ever use the language which they're most exposed to, especially when interacting with people beyond their parents, regardless of which parent is the primary care-giver.

In the case of one German-English bilingual child I knew, their German mother was the primary care-giver, and for the first few years they apparently spoke mostly German, even with their English father (also bilingual), presumably because they were exposed to more instances in which German was the language being used around them. However, once she started interacting with other children, most of whom were English monoglots, she switched to English outside the house and German at home, before switching over almost completely to English once she started school and spent more time out of the house.

What I found really interesting was another example of this with two bilingual children, both Polish-English from different families (both with English fathers and Polish mothers). Talking to their parents, it seemed like they went through the same stages of speaking Polish at home, and then switching to English once they started interacting with monolingual English children at school, even with each other, despite both being able to speak and understand Polish, although they did go through a period where they would speak Polish with each other. Something happened around about the age of 4 or 5 years old (when they started school) where they just stopped speaking Polish outside of the house (I wasn't around when it happened so I can't say what, e.g. whether it was a simple generalisation or whether it was externally enforced in some way).

[Pole, the]

My wife and daughter had to be in her mother's home country without me when my daughter was learning to form sentences. Because of the make up of my wife's family, my daughter had worked out that she should use Central Thai with men, Northern Thai with women, but English with her Northern Thai mother. All the Northern Thai speakers could also speak Central Thai. When they came back home to England, my daughter initially spoke to me in Central Thai! She soon learnt that it was easiest if she spoke to me in English - my Thais is poor.

You have just become the coolest person on the ZBB.

[M Mira]

Growning up in a Hokkien/Cantonese/Hakka family, the baby me (baby I?) learned to speak…… surprise Mandarin! to everyone, and now even my English is waaaay better than any of the three

[jmcd]

My wife and daughter had to be in her mother's home country without me when my daughter was learning to form sentences. Because of the make up of my wife's family, my daughter had worked out that she should use Central Thai with men, Northern Thai with women, but English with her Northern Thai mother. All the Northern Thai speakers could also speak Central Thai. When they came back home to England, my daughter initially spoke to me in Central Thai! She soon learnt that it was easiest if she spoke to me in English - my Thais is poor.

You have just become the coolest person on the ZBB.

Learnt fluent Thai for an addtional 9000 cool points!

[jal]

Over the next few years, I'm going to be watching how my friends' daughter speaks

Cool stuff!

or Croatian tko je?

That would be "kto" as well, iirc.


JAL

[WeepingElf]

I think we have lost the topic by now.

[Richard W]

... which was that R1b seems to have arrived at or before the time the Bell Beakers spread, suggesting a significant language replacement.

I don't know what to make of R1b concentrations peaking in Spain. It may just indicate a very successful clan, like the MacDonalds in Scotland. (It's worth remembering that the present Basque territory appears to have a Celtic substrate!)

[Generally_Illiterate]

I'm pretty sure I'm talking competely out of my ass here, but is it possible that, given the fact that the English dialects in Asia developed around the phonologies of the languages already there, the variations in PIE which formed the separate proto-languages underwent sound changes to bring their phonologies closer to those of the pre-IE languages?
This could only be the case if the Indo-Europeans assimilated with the people there before.

I don't think I explained that very well.

[jal]

s it possible that (...) the variations in PIE which formed the separate proto-languages underwent sound changes to bring their phonologies closer to those of the pre-IE languages?

Yes, if PIE replaced those languages but PIE speakers not the people speaking them (i.e., the people already living there started speaking PIE). I'm not sure that's a valid model given our current understanding of ppulation displacements around that time, or whether if true, is at all significant.


JAL

[Pabappa]

Thats the problem. Thank you. People seem to assume that Europe was just this one big monolithic "lets all just raise pigs for a living" place with just one or two language families instead of being like the rest of the world that had 862 different tribes each occupying just one hllside and living apart for 10000 years and having totally unrelated languages. Sure, maybe theyre right, because Neanderthals ruled Europe for most of known history, but your theory actually makes a lot of sense and I think it's at least worth considering that pre-IE Europe was not a farming co-op run by Basques and "deep Paleolithic Europeans" or whatever theyre calling them now.

[Generally_Illiterate]

Yes, if PIE replaced those languages but PIE speakers not the people speaking them (i.e., the people already living there started speaking PIE). I'm not sure that's a valid model given our current understanding of ppulation displacements around that time, or whether if true, is at all significant.

I guess what I'm kinda asking is can we use the sound changes that occurred, say in the development of proto-Germanic from PIE, to work out phonological features of the languages present in the region before PIE?

[Zju]

Yes, if PIE replaced those languages but PIE speakers not the people speaking them (i.e., the people already living there started speaking PIE). I'm not sure that's a valid model given our current understanding of ppulation displacements around that time, or whether if true, is at all significant.

I guess what I'm kinda asking is can we use the sound changes that occurred, say in the development of proto-Germanic from PIE, to work out phonological features of the languages present in the region before PIE?

I've wondered sometimes about that, too, I guess if yes, then at most only very broad features would be deducible such as 'voiced fricatives present' or 'no distinctive vowel length'.
The question is, can we deduce the phonology of local continental Celtic languages from the development of Vulgar Latin to French? This is rather easily testable. Other cases where both substratum and superstratum are documented and known are of help, too.

[Richard W]

I guess what I'm kinda asking is can we use the sound changes that occurred, say in the development of proto-Germanic from PIE, to work out phonological features of the languages present in the region before PIE?

Generally, the best answer you're likely to get is lots of vowels and not many back fricatives, and I wouldn't have a lot of faith in that.

Possibly for the Indic substrate you might get an ear for coronal subtleties (whence the retroflex series) and a dislike of non-geminate clusters (compare Sanskrit and Pali). I've seen it argued that the difference between two coronal places of articulation (dental and retroflex) in Sanskrit and three coronal places in Dravidian (dental, alveolar and retroflex) led to Indic languages losing the Sanskrit distinction between dental and retroflex sibilants and nasals! Other than that, I don't think you get much substrate influence with normal language replacement.

[WeepingElf]

I think Europe was linguistically highly diverse before the spread of Indo-European and even more diverse before the Neolithic. For Mesolithic Europe ca. 10,000 years ago, I would guess at about 20 to 30 stocks (families with a time depth of ca. 5,000 years, i.e. what linguists studying them would use as top-level classifications), as there have been about 50 stocks in pre-colonial North America, and Europe is about half the size. See also this post to Language Log by Don Ringe. The diversity would have been highest in the Mediterranean, a bit less on the Atlantic coast, and lowest in the interior of the continent. Northern Britain, Scandinavia and northern Russia were covered by glaciers and thus uninhabited during the ice age, but rapidly peopled when the ice sheet receded.

The Neolithic revolution may have involved the spread of languages in some areas; at least, we have the evidence, how much it may be worth, of the "Old European Hydronymy", a seemingly uniform network of recurring river names spanning much of western Europe, which suggests the existence of a large linguistic stock in that area (identified with IE by Hans Krahe who coined the term, and with Vasconic, i.e. a family of which Basque is the sole surviving member, by Theo Vennemann; both theories have their problems, though), but the whole thing could be a mirage. At any rate, the dominance of such a language family would probably not be as absolute as that of Indo-European in later times. Many of the Mesolithic stocks would still have been alive in the Neolithic, especially in the Mediterranean.

Trying to reconstruct phonological traits of substratum languages from the developments in the IE languages that supplanted them is not trivial, but some reasonable guesses are possible. Apparently, whatever the difference between front and back velars in PIE was, it was alien to the languages of western Europe, hence the "centum" development in Germanic, Italic and Celtic where these two series fell together. The languages of eastern Europe may have had healthy palatal series which elicited the "satem" development in Balto-Slavic and Albanian - with the exception of the south of the Balkan peninsula, where we have the "centum" development in Greek.

[Salmoneus]

I think Europe was linguistically highly diverse before the spread of Indo-European and even more diverse before the Neolithic. For Mesolithic Europe ca. 10,000 years ago, I would guess at about 20 to 30 stocks (families with a time depth of ca. 5,000 years, i.e. what linguists studying them would use as top-level classifications), as there have been about 50 stocks in pre-colonial North America, and Europe is about half the size. See also this post to Language Log by Don Ringe. The diversity would have been highest in the Mediterranean, a bit less on the Atlantic coast, and lowest in the interior of the continent. Northern Britain, Scandinavia and northern Russia were covered by glaciers and thus uninhabited during the ice age, but rapidly peopled when the ice sheet receded.

The comparison to California and North America seems unjustified to me.
In Europe at the time of the IE influx, we are dealing with settled agricultural communities, the product of relatively recent influx and population expansion with the spread of agriculture. The result is a relatively genetically homogenous continent, with vast cultural zones. In particular, the mediterranean zone Ringe wants to be our California was in the neolithic occupied by a widespread cosmopolitan culture, with both culture and population associated with recent influx from the middle east.
Compared to north america, we have much fewer obstacles to east-west travel, so cultures should be less pinned to small, latitude-determined areas. Travel in the mediterranean, in particular, would have been much easier than in California: partly becaus the cape-and-bay shoreline allowed areas to be bypassed (to get from norther california to southern california you need to go through central california, whereas to get from, say, turkey to greece to italy to sardinia to spain only requires a series of short hops), and partly because the calm, sheltered Med is just much easier to sail on with primitive boats than the pacific is. Indeed, we know that these communities were engaged in substantial trading networks - the alpine passes, for instance, that Ringe wants to be New Guinea, were not isolated backwaters but trading routes.

More generally, the idea of Europe as a mountain of tongues seems to defy the general tendencies of the world, which is that almost all areas have been dominated by huge, consolidated language families. The exceptions have been mostly a few mountain and jungle areas, and in particular areas occupied only by hunter-gatherers, which Europe at the time of the IE invasion was not. I don't see why we'd see Europe as fundamentally different in this way - California is the exception, not the norm.

Indeed, the only pre-IE language family we're pretty confidant of appears to have stretched from Lemnos, just off the coast of Asia, all the way to northern Italy - exactly the area Ringe wants to be one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world!

---------------

I see no reason whatsoever to assume that 'centum' languages were the result of an IE substratum (which, after all, Tocharian and Anatolian did not have!). The centum change - a merger of palatalised and unpalatalised velars (or velars and uvulars, etc) - is so common and expected that there is no problem seeing it as a natural endogenous change, whether once or in many branches.

[jal]

Compared to north america, we have much fewer obstacles to east-west travel, so cultures should be less pinned to small, latitude-determined areas.

Why would lattitudes cause isolation ("pinning")? The Mediterranean allows East-West travel, but why would that be more significant than North-South travel? Granted, from a different era, but the Vikings also travelled North-South, for example.

Travel in the mediterranean, in particular, would have been much easier than in California: partly becaus the cape-and-bay shoreline allowed areas to be bypassed (to get from norther california to southern california you need to go through central california, whereas to get from, say, turkey to greece to italy to sardinia to spain only requires a series of short hops)

I don't understand what you mean. The distance between Nothern and Southern California is about the same as between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Why would Mediterranean travel be vastly different from Californian?

and partly because the calm, sheltered Med is just much easier to sail on with primitive boats than the pacific is.

I don't think the Polynesians got your memo. Also, coastal waters are typically much easier to navigate. Also the "sheltered" Mediterranean has vast open waters where it can be quite stormy.

More generally, the idea of Europe as a mountain of tongues seems to defy the general tendencies of the world, which is that almost all areas have been dominated by huge, consolidated language families.

It seems that Ringe disagrees. I'm not knowledgeable about these things at all, so you may well be right and Ringe a crackpot, but some evidence would be nice.

The exceptions have been mostly a few mountain and jungle areas

Don't forget deserts (i.e. Australia).

and in particular areas occupied only by hunter-gatherers, which Europe at the time of the IE invasion was not. I don't see why we'd see Europe as fundamentally different in this way - California is the exception, not the norm.

I don't know much about the Californians in the 1400s, but didn't they have agriculture as well?

Indeed, the only pre-IE language family we're pretty confidant of appears to have stretched from Lemnos, just off the coast of Asia, all the way to northern Italy - exactly the area Ringe wants to be one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world!

The IE people wouldn't have been the first to travel by water. And the fact that a certain language family is widespread says abolutely nothing about the linguitstic diversity elsewhere.

I see no reason whatsoever to assume that 'centum' languages were the result of an IE substratum (which, after all, Tocharian and Anatolian did not have!). The centum change - a merger of palatalised and unpalatalised velars (or velars and uvulars, etc) - is so common and expected that there is no problem seeing it as a natural endogenous change, whether once or in many branches.

Agreed. I think any substratum is difficult to prove phonetically, as sounds can change pretty fast. Weird grammar is much more likely to be the result of a substratum, I think.


JAL

[Zaarin]

the calm, sheltered Med is just much easier to sail on with primitive boats than the pacific is.

I'm not sure the natives of the Pacific Northwest would agree with you, where extensive oceanic trade occurred from Alaska all the way to California and from teh coast as far out to sea as Haida Gwaii.

I don't know much about the Californians in the 1400s, but didn't they have agriculture as well?

I'm not very knowledgeable about California per se, but it's my understanding that not much agriculture or even horticulture made it west of the Rockies. Maize was introduced to the Plateau cultures in historical times, and the natives of the Pacific Northwest, while practicing some cultivation of wild crops like camas and salal, practiced no gardening or farming, being strictly hunter-gatherers (albeit with a more settled agrarian lifestyle thanks to the abundant resources of the seas). My understanding is that the situation was similar in California, though my more general knowledge doesn't tend to extend south of Oregon.

[Salmoneus]

Compared to north america, we have much fewer obstacles to east-west travel, so cultures should be less pinned to small, latitude-determined areas.

Why would lattitudes cause isolation ("pinning")? The Mediterranean allows East-West travel, but why would that be more significant than North-South travel? Granted, from a different era, but the Vikings also travelled North-South, for example.

Latitude has a big influence on culture. It is easy to transplant some people from, say, southern Greece, and put them into, say, Spain, or some people from, say, eastern France and put them into, say, Bohemia. Taking people from southern Greece and putting them in Estonia is much harder. [Likewise, cultures being more difficult, it's less likely that languages will spread in that way, all else being equal]. In particular, a big part of US diversity was having the immense Rockies isolate the western coast, and then the coastal ranges split that western area into two, and then climate splits that into several bands as well.

Travel in the mediterranean, in particular, would have been much easier than in California: partly becaus the cape-and-bay shoreline allowed areas to be bypassed (to get from norther california to southern california you need to go through central california, whereas to get from, say, turkey to greece to italy to sardinia to spain only requires a series of short hops)

I don't understand what you mean. The distance between Nothern and Southern California is about the same as between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Why would Mediterranean travel be vastly different from Californian?

I think I sort of explained the difference?
But let's say you have the locations A - B - C - D - E. First, let's imagine they're all on a linear coast. For people at A to expand, they have to go to B, then C, then D, then E. Then, let's imagine instead that they're on a coast of capes. People on the cape at A can now easily reach the cape at C, and then the cape at E, without having to go through B and D.

Or put it another way. Put two pins in a map of the coast of California, and then work out how much of the coast can be reached from pin A WITHOUT going near pin B (in this case a particularly hostile or powerful rival tribe), given a set possible distance to travel without landing. Then do the same on a map of the coast of the Med...

and partly because the calm, sheltered Med is just much easier to sail on with primitive boats than the pacific is.

I don't think the Polynesians got your memo.

...the Polynesians did not have primitive boats. They had extremely sophisticated boats, which required a number of rare inventions (the outrigger, the crab-claw, and of course their navigational methods though that's not relevant here). They were much better ships than we had in the Med until a few hundred years ago!

Also, coastal waters are typically much easier to navigate. Also the "sheltered" Mediterranean has vast open waters where it can be quite stormy.

It can be quite stormy anywhere. But the Med is vastly easier to sail, and vastly less of a threat to ships, than the Pacific, or indeed the Atlantic, as the history of Atlantic vs Mediterranean naval architecture will inform you!

More generally, the idea of Europe as a mountain of tongues seems to defy the general tendencies of the world, which is that almost all areas have been dominated by huge, consolidated language families.

It seems that Ringe disagrees. I'm not knowledgeable about these things at all, so you may well be right and Ringe a crackpot, but some evidence would be nice.

Black and white thinking and strawmen...
But for evidence, how about...
Europe: entirely dominated by IE. One isolate. Couple of Uralic languages in the east.
Africa: north africa entirely dominated by AA. Southern africa entirely dominated by NC. Some NS in the middle, and between one and three Khoisan families spoken traditionally by hunter-gatherers in the south.
Australia: excluding from the rainforest area, entirely dominated by PN
North and Central Asia: excluding handful of languages in mountainous far east, entirely dominated by Uralic and between one and three Altaic families
East and Southeast Asia: dominated primarily by ST; (other) AA, Tai-Kadai and bits of Austronesian cling on in rainforest areas and Taiwan, but Tai and AN are probably branches of the same family; fragments of Hmong-Mien survive in densely forest mountains, and three families (Korean, Japonic and Ainu) survive on peripheral islands and a peninsular - these may be less than three families, or may be connected to Altaic.
Indonesia and the Pacific: excluding PNG, dominated solely by AN (also reached Africa)
Southwest Asia: excluding Causasus, dominated by IE, Dravidian, and AA in the west. A few stray (other) AA languages in the east, and one or two isolates
South America: many isolates and small families, particularly in the high Andes and in remote rainforest areas - many of these are doubtless related, but have either not yet been demonstrated to be so, or have not left enough data to be classified, or have had their relatives go extinct before being recorded. In general, SA is the least-documented area, so almost certainly has the most undiscovered (and sometimes undiscoverable) connexions. There are something like 150 families currently proposed. Despite all this, huge areas can be shown to have been dominated by expansive language families: the Tupi, Je and Carib families dominate the Amazon basin and the northeast coast, and are probably all related as Je-Tupi-Carib. Arawakan likewise was spread from the Caribbean to Argentina, and may represent an earlier radiation out of the Amazon. JTC and Arawakan (possibly with a few additional languages thrown in for Macro-Arawakan) together represent around two thirds of the surviving languages. Quechuan, and Pano-Tacanan, comprised large parts of the Andes.
North and Central America: seems to have been diversity in California and on the Gulf Coast. EA, ND, Algic, Siouan and Uto-Aztecan grew to dominate their own climate niches, and further south Chibchan, Mayan, and Mixe-Zoquean. Caddoan, Kiowa, Muskogean and Iroquoian maybe represent holdout groups, though iirc connexions to them have been proposed.

The exceptions have been mostly a few mountain and jungle areas

Don't forget deserts (i.e. Australia).
[/quote]
Not an exception - the desert isn't just all one family, much of it is all one dialect-chain.

and in particular areas occupied only by hunter-gatherers, which Europe at the time of the IE invasion was not. I don't see why we'd see Europe as fundamentally different in this way - California is the exception, not the norm.

I don't know much about the Californians in the 1400s, but didn't they have agriculture as well?

I don't think so? Or if they did, they hadn't had it for that long.

Indeed, the only pre-IE language family we're pretty confidant of appears to have stretched from Lemnos, just off the coast of Asia, all the way to northern Italy - exactly the area Ringe wants to be one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world!

The IE people wouldn't have been the first to travel by water. And the fact that a certain language family is widespread says abolutely nothing about the linguitstic diversity elsewhere.

Well... yes, it does. Because a) if one family is widespread, that removes space for other families to be diverse in; and b) why would the languages we know about in that family be the only ones; and c) why would that family be the only one to have spread?

[jal]

Latitude has a big influence on culture. It is easy to transplant some people from, say, southern Greece, and put them into, say, Spain, or some people from, say, eastern France and put them into, say, Bohemia. Taking people from southern Greece and putting them in Estonia is much harder.

Though I think you're right in general, the large displacements of peoples that happened after the fall of the Roman empire crossed various climate zones, iirc. So it's not entirely impossible to do. Also, think of the Romans wandering far from home into the North. I'm not entirely sure though these examples are counterexamples of the type of movements we are talking about, given they occured much later in history.

let's say you have the locations A - B - C - D - E. First, let's imagine they're all on a linear coast. For people at A to expand, they have to go to B, then C, then D, then E. Then, let's imagine instead that they're on a coast of capes. People on the cape at A can now easily reach the cape at C, and then the cape at E, without having to go through B and D.

True, but the distances would be the same. In the Mediterranean, the sailors simply can't stop, in California, they can chose to do so - or not.

Or put it another way. Put two pins in a map of the coast of California, and then work out how much of the coast can be reached from pin A WITHOUT going near pin B (in this case a particularly hostile or powerful rival tribe), given a set possible distance to travel without landing. Then do the same on a map of the coast of the Med...

It would be easier to evade enemies, true. But that's assuming that they'd be enemies or rivals or more poweful. Also, when sailing off the coast a bit (out of sight) one could easly sneak past.

...the Polynesians did not have primitive boats. They had extremely sophisticated boats, which required a number of rare inventions (the outrigger, the crab-claw, and of course their navigational methods though that's not relevant here). They were much better ships than we had in the Med until a few hundred years ago!

The Polynesians were a "primitive" people (compared to say the ancient Greek), that sailed a lot and learned to built better boats all the time. I'm sure the Mediterranians improved their boats as well. I have no knowledge on shipbuilding, so I can't argue about what "better" means in this case.

It can be quite stormy anywhere. But the Med is vastly easier to sail, and vastly less of a threat to ships, than the Pacific, or indeed the Atlantic, as the history of Atlantic vs Mediterranean naval architecture will inform you!

I can't argue here, as my knowledge here lacks. It'd be interesting to know why the Greek never went much beyond Gibraltar.

Black and white thinking and strawmen

Not intended as such, exaggerating at most.

But for evidence, how about...

Seems legit, thanks.

the fact that a certain language family is widespread says abolutely nothing about the linguitstic diversity elsewhere.

Well... yes, it does. Because a) if one family is widespread, that removes space for other families to be diverse in; and b) why would the languages we know about in that family be the only ones; and c) why would that family be the only one to have spread?

Our knowledge of these languages comes from a handful to slightly more than a handful of inscriptions. That proves that these languages had a great geographical reach, and their people had writing, but doesn't say much per se about their cultural influence and the "space" they occupied. "Widespread" doesn't necessarily mean "everywhere" (especially in the Mediterranean, for reasons you've yourself outlined above!).

As for b) and c), "why would X not Y" is never good for anything but speculation, but I'll humor you. As for why they would be the only languages, well obviously they needn't be. But in this specific case I would find it odd (though not impossible) that the languages we know of produced writing we discovered, but their sister languages in between or beyond (geographically) did not. As for why it would be the only one, again it needn't be. But a few cases where it did happen is no proof for or against others doing so. Sometimes there's really just a single instance of something occuring, and though we can speculate it must've happened more often, there's no proof for it. In this specfic case I think you're wrong that it spread from Lemnos to Italy - I think it's the other way around, given that Lemnian is much closer to Etruscan than Rhaetic is (assuming Rhaetic is related to Etruscan instead of just influenced by it).


JAL

[Richard W]

The exceptions have been mostly a few mountain and jungle areas

Don't forget deserts (i.e. Australia).

The Australian desert belongs to Pama-Nyungan.

[Matrix]

Re: agriculture in California:

They didn't quite have agriculture, no, but they had a maybe sort of proto-agriculture? The Chumash managed large groves of oaks from which they gathered acorns which they ground up into flour to make food out of. This was of course an eminently storable food source, and they did so. As such, they had surpluses normally associated with agriculture, and the attendant cultural complexity.

[jmcd]

@Salmoneous: That is basically proof that the current languages are as you describe them. However, all of the major language families are known to have had major expansion periods, not just their initial expansion:
-Niger-Congo (Bantu in this case) expanded in the first millenium BC, having previously been confined to Western Africa.
-Chinese also expanded in the first millenium BC. Without that, SIno-Tibetan would be the 12th most spoken language family, not the 2nd.
-Afro-Asiatic expansion appears to be the earliest of them and was supplemented by Arabic expansion into Sudan (and possibly other countries?).
-Indo-European expanded from its Urheimat and later also with the Age of Exploration.
-It's with the Malayo-Polynesian branch that Austronesian expanded most.

So most of the expansion was done by one or two subfamilies within the past three or four millenia.

Theoretically, assuming that prehistoric Earth had a similar makeup of language families might be a bit like assuming that there were continent-crossing superpowers the size of the US or Russia centuries before Jesus.

[Salmoneus]

Actually, I think that quite supports my line of argument.

What we see is that time and again, when there have been major technological developments, like agriculture or pastoralism or metallurgy, there have been big family expansions. We can even see that this has happened in pre-agricultural societies like the Amazon.

So yes, the introduction of agriculture (and more developed ceramics, and more sophisticated sociopolitical systems, and large-scale trade routes, etc etc) MAY have been different. There might have been different solar rays that made humans act differently from how they've acted ever since. But what is the evidence for this? Wouldn't it be simpler to assume that the same phenomena happened in Europe as have happened everywhere else?

Especially when we do know (well, strongly suspect) that there WAS at least one widespread family before IE? [After all, does anyone really believe that the Tyrrhenians migrated only to ONE, randomly-selected tiny Greek island, and otherwise only lived in northern italy?]

[jmcd]

I do not necessarily think Europe was as varied as analysis of California would suggest but it was surely more varied than it is now. A family stretching from Northern Italy to the Bosphorus is still smaller than the language family which replaced it.

Yes,when there have been major technological developments, there have been big family expansions. Not only this, but each time, the expansion is greater than before. We can see this with the most recent developments e.g. IE expansion into the Americas and Oceania.

EDIT: I suspect that the California picture corresponds closer to pre-Neolithic Europe, pre-IE Europe being somewhat intermediate in terms of linguistic diversity.

[TaylorS]

The comparison to California and North America seems unjustified to me.
In Europe at the time of the IE influx, we are dealing with settled agricultural communities, the product of relatively recent influx and population expansion with the spread of agriculture. The result is a relatively genetically homogenous continent, with vast cultural zones. In particular, the mediterranean zone Ringe wants to be our California was in the neolithic occupied by a widespread cosmopolitan culture, with both culture and population associated with recent influx from the middle east.
Compared to north america, we have much fewer obstacles to east-west travel, so cultures should be less pinned to small, latitude-determined areas. Travel in the mediterranean, in particular, would have been much easier than in California: partly becaus the cape-and-bay shoreline allowed areas to be bypassed (to get from norther california to southern california you need to go through central california, whereas to get from, say, turkey to greece to italy to sardinia to spain only requires a series of short hops), and partly because the calm, sheltered Med is just much easier to sail on with primitive boats than the pacific is. Indeed, we know that these communities were engaged in substantial trading networks - the alpine passes, for instance, that Ringe wants to be New Guinea, were not isolated backwaters but trading routes.

More generally, the idea of Europe as a mountain of tongues seems to defy the general tendencies of the world, which is that almost all areas have been dominated by huge, consolidated language families. The exceptions have been mostly a few mountain and jungle areas, and in particular areas occupied only by hunter-gatherers, which Europe at the time of the IE invasion was not. I don't see why we'd see Europe as fundamentally different in this way - California is the exception, not the norm.

Indeed, the only pre-IE language family we're pretty confidant of appears to have stretched from Lemnos, just off the coast of Asia, all the way to northern Italy - exactly the area Ringe wants to be one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world!

I agree with this. The spread of the LBK Culture up into central Europe and the Cardial Ware Culture across the Mediterranean look to me clearly like horizons of colonization spreading non-IE Balkan linguistic stocks along with them.