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jal wrote:

KathTheDragon wrote:Something makes me suspect that television wasn't available when the Indo-Europeans were roaming the steppe...

Well, in about all Indo-European languages, the respective words for television are cognates. So I wouldn't so easily dismiss that idea!


JAL

Sorry, just being silly. I should go to bed.

I'm glad you realised it seems to be Proto-World.

KathTheDragon wrote:

jmcd wrote:I suspect .that raising children in non-native languages is being more common since the widespread availability of television unfortunately.

Something makes me suspect that television wasn't available when the Indo-Europeans were roaming the steppe...

Yes which is part of the reasons we can only imperfectly transpose current native language acquisition to the context of the first Indo-Europeans.

KathTheDragon wrote:Something makes me suspect that television wasn't available when the Indo-Europeans were roaming the steppe...

There are still a few Indo-Europeans roaming the steppes. Mongol nomads watch television - don't the Indo-European ones?

Incidentally, another thing I meant to add regarding genes, though not directly important to languages: apparently the Mesolithic population would have been dark-skinned, dark-haird, and frizz-haired - sort of african in appearance, although not closely related to africans. However, unusually by modern standards, the Mesolithic samples mostly seem to have blue eyes (which iirc developed at some point during the neolithic or early mesolithic, because the earlier samples don't). The Neolithic immigrants would have been paler, as would the Caucasians (so the old racist idea of a white 'Caucasian' race may actually be accurage). It may be that the slightly darker skin of mediterraneans reflects the much lower extent of Indo-European genetic colonisation of this area. Or it could be the later trans-mediterranean exchanges, or the progressive development of even paler tones in the baltic and scandinavia.

Also worth noting: apparently the IE conquests weren't one-way. Later IE steppe populations, including Indo-Iranians, seem to be closer to pre-IE europe - so when the IEs invaded Europe, there was also a smaller flow in the opposite direction (one idea is that maybe many later-generation migrants decided to return to their homeland?).

I would add that widespread public education is another factor in the learning of non-heritage languages. Of course these are not problems in and of themselves but in combination with the language policy of the country.

I recently came across a description and analysis of the Germanic strong verb system from the viewpoint of language contact - specifically with Semitic. The author (Mailhammer) of the book in question (here) doesn't seem to explicitly state how this contact was meant to have taken place, since he doesn't seem to question Germanic having its origins in northern Europe, and he also singles out Punic as a likely contact language. To me, the only way this theory of Semitic contact can be seriously entertained is if you assume that an otherwise unattested Semitic language was spoken in northern Europe before Germanic arrived, and was completely assimilated by this pre-Germanic. But that in of itself seems to have issues of plausibility, and I'm not convinced how realistic the whole notion of Semitic contact is in the first place. What do you guys think?

I've always found it dubious myself, but I've seen claims that there was a Semitic language spoken in pre-Celtic Ireland (I suppose as a way of explaining certain grammatical features like a VSO word order). I'm not sure how one would reconcile Proto-Germanic contact with Punic while at the same time accepting that Proto-Germanic was spoken in Northern Europe while Punic is in North Africa.

Zaarin wrote:I've always found it dubious myself, but I've seen claims that there was a Semitic language spoken in pre-Celtic Ireland (I suppose as a way of explaining certain grammatical features like a VSO word order). I'm not sure how one would reconcile Proto-Germanic contact with Punic while at the same time accepting that Proto-Germanic was spoken in Northern Europe while Punic is in North Africa.

Mailhammer mentions alleged cases like Celtic too, arguing for a whole series of contact situations along the whole Atlantic/North Sea coast (thus, Insular Celtic, Germanic, and a few others I can't recall off the top of my head)

The Semitic substratum hypothesis is IMHO utter bullfrogs. The Germanic strong verbs are inherited from PIE (with some analogical extensions such as schreiben schrieb geschrieben, where a pattern from rhyming strong verbs was transferred onto a Latin loanword), and have nothing to do with anything Semitic. The Insular Celtic languages have only one thing in common with Semitic: they are VSO, which is not all that rare. Whatever similarities can be found in Semitic and Insular Celtic syntax are typological correlates of VSO word order and found in VSO languages all over the world. Who claims a Semitic substratum in Mesoamerica, or the Philippines?

Contact with Punic is conceivable anywhere from Spain to Britain. There were obviously Punic cities in Spain (eg Cadiz), Punic explorers did reach Britain, and apparently there's considerable evidence of Punic trade routes extending there, either in person or through intermediaries. However, outside of regions of Spain, and maybe small areas of Cornwall, Brittany or the Scillies, it's not plausible to think there was sufficient Punic settlement to have any lasting impact on the languages (much less than, eg, Latin-speaking settlement in Britain). Nor do I think there's any particular reason to look for one, given the languages.

A semitic language in the Germanic areas of northern europe before Germanic reached them would seem... silly? It's not completely impossible, as the Punic civilisation were great seafarers and explorers, and MIGHT (at least in Phoenician form) have arrived there before the Germans. But you'd think someone would have mentioned it at some point - they mentioned circumnavigating Africa, after all, and Carthage recorded reaching Britain. You'd think a huge Phoenician settlement in Denmark or wherever would have been worth making a note of... and certainly archaeologists should have found it.

WeepingElf wrote:The Insular Celtic languages have only one thing in common with Semitic: they are VSO, which is not all that rare. Whatever similarities can be found in Semitic and Insular Celtic syntax are typological correlates of VSO word order and found in VSO languages all over the world.

Do the personal inflections on prepositions come under this heading?

WeepingElf wrote: Who claims a Semitic substratum in <snip> the Philippines?

I thought that Philippine languages were a family of escaped conlangs inspired by Semitic:

• Triconsonantal stems CVCVC, with additions to indicate focus just like Arabic conjugations
• 2-consonant CVC roots plus extensions, except that Austronesian extensions are at the beginning rather than the end of the triconsonantal root.
• The /s/ of the instrumental corresponds to the *s of the Semitic causative
• 3 vowel qualities in Arabic / Proto-Semitic, and three vowels in pre-conquest languages of the Philippines
• The Philippine scripts are simple abugidas, with none of the inlining of vowels seen in many modern Indic scripts

WeepingElf wrote:The Semitic substratum hypothesis is IMHO utter bullfrogs. The Germanic strong verbs are inherited from PIE (with some analogical extensions such as schreiben schrieb geschrieben, where a pattern from rhyming strong verbs was transferred onto a Latin loanword), and have nothing to do with anything Semitic. The Insular Celtic languages have only one thing in common with Semitic: they are VSO, which is not all that rare. Whatever similarities can be found in Semitic and Insular Celtic syntax are typological correlates of VSO word order and found in VSO languages all over the world. Who claims a Semitic substratum in Mesoamerica, or the Philippines?

Mailhammer does admit that the basic morphology was inherited, but gives ablaut as the main reason for choosing Semitic as the contact language. To paraphrase, he claims that ablaut was a redundant feature of marking morphological categories in PIE, but in Germanic, ablaut is the primary marker of the present/preterite distinction in strong verbs, which is typologically very different to the neighbouring IE languages. He then goes on to claim that in Germanic, the root vowel is of little lexical significance, but of great functional significance, exactly as in Semitic. _{maybe you should read the book}

It may be I'm imporperly informed, but it seems there's no archaelogical evidence of any people associated with Semitic in Europe during the time Germanic emerged, even though it also seems Semitic is much older than Germanic.

Has there been any theory as to what (Proto-)Germanic ultimately derives from? It seems to have emerged rather late in history, given that Common Germanic is dated up to the 4th C. AD.


JAL

I consider it unlikely that Punic traders, even if they reached the North Sea, were a strong enough force to alter the structure of the Insular Celtic languages, or of Proto-Germanic, to such a degree as the proponents of the Semitic substratum hypothesis claim.

As for the Insular Celtic "conjugated prepositions": I don't know whether they have analogues in Semitic, or in other VSO languages elsewhere in the world.

The bottom line: There is no evidence of a Semitic language anywhere in Northwestern Europe.

WeepingElf wrote:The bottom line: There is no evidence of a Semitic language anywhere in Northwestern Europe.

Agreed, but it could make an interesting alternate history...

WeepingElf wrote:As for the Insular Celtic "conjugated prepositions": I don't know whether they have analogues in Semitic, or in other VSO languages elsewhere in the world.

Conjugated prepositions also turn up in Semitic, but they're not universal in Semitic. Arabic and Hebrew have them. Wikipedia has no good examples of non-Celtic, non-Semitic conjugated prepositions.

WeepingElf wrote:There is no evidence of a Semitic language anywhere in Northwestern Europe.

Except for lots of apparent Semitic influence, going back to Proto-Indo-European. An Anatolian homeland only explains some of the evidence. Perhaps some of those early farmers were Semitic-speaking, or at least, AA-speaking.

Richard W wrote:

WeepingElf wrote:There is no evidence of a Semitic language anywhere in Northwestern Europe.

Except for lots of apparent Semitic influence, going back to Proto-Indo-European.

Such as?

Richard W wrote:An Anatolian homeland only explains some of the evidence.

The Anatolian Hypothesis is pretty bullshit, though. There's no linguistic evidence for it. Its supporters are mostly archaeologists who, for the most part, know nothing of linguistics and indeed in some cases entirely reject comparative linguistics as a valid field of study.

Matrix wrote:

Richard W wrote:An Anatolian homeland only explains some of the evidence.

The Anatolian Hypothesis is pretty bullshit, though. There's no linguistic evidence for it. Its supporters are mostly archaeologists who, for the most part, know nothing of linguistics and indeed in some cases entirely reject comparative linguistics as a valid field of study.

Indeed, the linguistic evidence points fairly unanimously at a steppe homeland, about 3500-4000BC or so.

KathTheDragon wrote:

Matrix wrote:

Richard W wrote:An Anatolian homeland only explains some of the evidence.

The Anatolian Hypothesis is pretty bullshit, though. There's no linguistic evidence for it. Its supporters are mostly archaeologists who, for the most part, know nothing of linguistics and indeed in some cases entirely reject comparative linguistics as a valid field of study.

Indeed, the linguistic evidence points fairly unanimously at a steppe homeland, about 3500-4000BC or so.

So does the genetic evidence. At least, that's the simplest explanation of it.

As for semitic neolithic farmers: that would be no. Afroasiatic came from Africa into the middle east thousands of years AFTER the neolithic invasion of europe (which is why the current inhabitants don't have genes similar to neolithic europeans, but rather a combination of neolithic europeans plus africans).

It's possible, technically, that an AA language might have spread throughout the near east in the neolithic without any genetic trace. And that they then migrated to Europe. While the same language then was adopted by a different group of Caucasians and taken into India (but not by other caucasians). And that both Europe and India were then invaded by steppe warriors who completely culturally and genetically replaced the AA population of europe (and a lot of the indians), except for not leaving any linguistic trace whatsoever.

However, since there is no evidence for any of this, it probably shouldn't be our default assumption. Particularly combined with the lexical evidence.

Salmoneus wrote:As for semitic neolithic farmers: that would be no. Afroasiatic came from Africa into the middle east thousands of years AFTER the neolithic invasion of europe (which is why the current inhabitants don't have genes similar to neolithic europeans, but rather a combination of neolithic europeans plus africans).

Substitute Natufian for Semitic, then. There are claims, though, that the Natufians were AA-speakers.

The discernible Semitic influences on PIE that I've heard of are in vocabulary. For starters, there are the Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 17(?) loan words, which one can find, for example, in Black Athena: The Linguistic Evidence by googling for unquoted 'Gamkrelidze Semitic'. The discussion there seems sound, which I hadn't expected from such a secondary source. Semitic influence on PIE has also been explained for AA-PIE connections cited in support of Nostratic.

Matrix wrote:in some cases entirely reject comparative linguistics as a valid field of study.

Sorry, I just have to ask... how exactly does one go about rejecting comparative linguistics as a valid field of study? I mean, what does that even look like? Do they offer any reasoning behind that? That just seems so weird...

TSSL wrote:Sorry, I just have to ask... how exactly does one go about rejecting comparative linguistics as a valid field of study? I mean, what does that even look like? Do they offer any reasoning behind that? That just seems so weird...

Littman, Robert J., 2007 wrote:Archaeologists who agree with Renfrew must dismiss what linguists have been saying about PIE for the past 200 years. Most linguists would be loath to do so. On the other hand, most archaeologists have agreed with Renfrew. They see comparative linguistics as unreliable and based on incomplete premises in reconstructing historical situations. They argue that there is not one piece of archaeological material that can unequivocally be called Indo-European.

I have a couple questions:
(1) Where does the term "Yamna(ya)" come from?
(2) Do we know what the Indo-Europeans called themselves? (Maybe *teuto ?)
(3) What do the genetics of the Basques look like, relative to those of Northern Europe, Southern Europe, and the Caucasus?

I suspect .that raising children in non-native languages is being more common since the widespread availability of television unfortunately.

I think it's been more common ever since people started gathering into cities. I recently read a paper (Maybe it was a book on Google books? I can't remember. Unfortunately, I can't find it in my history.) about endangered languages, and it talked about the situation in Papua New Guinea, and the difficulty of declaring a language endangered or not. They gave an example of a language that's spoken by a single remote tribe that has only 200 speakers. This sounds bad, but 98% of the tribe's kids are monolingual speakers of it! The language is going strong!, Is this language endangered? In the immediate future, no, but they note that a big impetus for people to learn a language is the economic advantage it gives, and they note that the nearest city is growing ever-larger, and getting ever-closer. Eventually, it'll pull this tribe into it's economic circle, probably push it off its land so they can extract its resources, and give them no choice but to have their lives revolve around the economics of the city. At this time they'll probably very quickly lose their language.

Another example: German. "Surely German isn't an endangered language?" you may say. Actually, I haven't given you enough information to say so. I need to say where, and how the potential speakers live. German in Germany is doing just fine, but German in America is either (a) very much endangered, or more accurately, already nearly extinct among the descendants of the German immigrants of 100 years ago, who depend on the economics of the city, (The very few German/Norwegian/Swedish/Polish speakers left from this wave of immigration that I know unsurprisingly come from the most rural part of the countryside, but even then, they still know L1 English.) or (b) doing well, because it's speakers (the Hutterites, and the Amish) are independent from the economics of any city, and live nearly completely in their own enclaves.

Urbanisation did take its toll as well, yes. Basically nowhere was majoritarily urban before the 20th century. And the non-standard language varieties of France were still going strong in the early 20th century, before widespread urbanisation and television usage.