Indo-European studies

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Indo-European
Indo-European languages
Albanian | Anatolian | Armenian
Baltic | Celtic | Dacian | Germanic
Greek | Indo-Iranian | Italic | Phrygian
Slavic | Thracian | Tocharian
Indo-European peoples
Albanians | Anatolians | Armenians
Balts | Celts | Germanic peoples
Greeks | Indo-Aryans | Indo-Iranians | Iranians
Italic peoples | Slavs | Thracians | Tocharians
Proto-Indo-Europeans
Language | Society | Religion
Urheimat hypotheses
Kurgan hypothesis | Anatolia
Armenia | India | PCT
Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics, dealing with the Indo-European languages. Its goal is to uncover information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language of the early Bronze Age dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and its speakers, the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

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[edit] Comparative Linguistics

The existence of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been inferred by comparative linguistics. The discovery of the genetic relationship of the various Indo-European languages goes back to William Jones, a British judge in India, who in 1782 observed, that,

"The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists."

At first, the related languages were simply compared, with no attempt at reconstruction. August Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a tentative text in the extinct common source Jones had predicted. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) represents, by definition, the common language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. In the 20th century, great progress was made due to the discovery of more language material belonging to the Indo-European family, and by advances in comparative linguistics, by scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure. Purely linguistic research was assisted by attempts to reconstruct the culture and religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans by scholars such as Georges Dumézil, as well as by archaeology (e. g. Marija Gimbutas, Colin Renfrew) and genetics (e. g. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza).

[edit] History of the Field

The formative phase of the field may be considered to begin in the 18th century, with Jones' 1782 discovery, and the beginning research into the grammar and philology of individual non-classical languages. This early phase culminates in Franz Bopp's comparative grammar of 1833. The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from Bopp to August Schleicher's 1861 compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss published from the 1880s. Brugmann's junggrammatische re-evaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "contemporary" Indo-European studies. The Indo-European proto-language as described in the early 1900s in its main aspects is still accepted today, and the work done in the 20th century has been cleaning up and systematization, as well as the incorporation of new language material, notably the Anatolian and Tocharian branches unknown in the 19th century, into the Indo-European framework.

Notably, the laryngeal theory, in its early forms discussed since the 1880s, became mainstream after the 1927 discovery by Jerzy Kuryłowicz of the survival of at least some of these hypothetical phonemes in Anatolian. Julius Pokorny in 1959 published his Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, giving an overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated until the early 20th century, but neglecting then-recent trends of morphology and phonology, and largely ignoring Anatolian and Tocharian.

The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century, such as Calvert Watkins, Jochem Schindler, Helmut Rix, developed a better understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie, ablaut. The Lexicon of the Indo-European verb edited by Rix appeared in 1997 as a first step towards a modernization of Pokorny's dictionary; a corresponding tome addressing the noun is in preparation [1]. Current efforts are focussed on a better understanding of the relative chronology within the proto-language, aiming at distinctions of "early", "middle" and "late", or "inner" and "outer" PIE dialects, but a general consensus has yet to form. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian began to be of a certainty sufficient to allow it influence the image of the proto-language, see also Indo-Hittite.

Such attempts at recovering a sense of historical depth in PIE have been coupled with efforts towards coupling the history of the language with archaeology, notably with the Kurgan hypothesis. J. P. Mallory's 1997 Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture gives an overview of this. These speculations about the realia of Proto-Indo-European culture are however not part of the field of comparative linguistics, but rather a sister-discipline.

Some concepts of Indo-European studies also influenced the Nazis. (See Aryan Race). In the period after World War 2, several Indo-European scholars (e.g. Roger Pearson, Jean Haudry and the influential Dumézil[1]) and writers influenced by Indo-European studies (e.g. Alain de Benoist) were accused of having sympathies for fascism or nazism, and it was alleged that their political beliefs may have influenced their studies.[2] Arvidsson speculated that the fact that many Indo-European scholars identify themselves as the descendants of the ancient Indo-Europeans may explain why the field of Indo-European studies has also been ideologically abused.[3] Anthony remarked that "Indo-European linguistics and archaeology have been exploited to support openly ideological agendas for so long that a brief history of the issue quickly becomes entagnled with the intellectual history of Europe."[4]

[edit] List of Indo-Europeanists

(historical, see below for contemporary IE studies)

[edit] Journals

[edit] Contemporary IE studies

The following universities have institutes devoted to IE studies (incomplete):

[edit] Origin of the Term

The term Indo-European itself now current in English literature, was coined in 1813 by the British scholar Sir Thomas Young, although at that time, there was no consensus as to the naming of the recently discovered language family. Among the names suggested were:

In English, Indo-German was used by J. C. Prichard in 1826 although he preferred Indo-European. In French, use of indo-européen was established by A. Pictet (1836). In German literature, Indo-Europäisch was used by Franz Bopp since 1835, while the term Indo-Germanisch was introduced by Julius von Klapproth in 1823, intending to include the northernmost and the southernmost of the family's branches, as it were as an abbreviation of the full listing of involved languages that had been common in earlier literature. Indo-Germanisch became established by the works of August Friedrich Pott, who understood it to include the easternmost and the westernmost branches, opening the doors to ensuing fruitless discussions whether it should not be Indo-Celtic, or even Tocharo-Celtic.

That many of the names include the Germanic languages, this does not mean that the German language is somehow more related to the origins, it is, rather, because Germanic branch was considered the (north-western) geographical extreme, as opposed to the (south-eastern) Indo-Aryan branch.

Today, Indo-European, Indo-Européen is well established in English and French literature, while Indo-Germanisch remains current in German literature, but alongside a growing number of uses of Indo-Europäisch.

[edit] Criticism

Indo-European studies have been described as a modern "myth" by Colin Renfrew, Bruce Lincoln and others.[5][6] Historical interpretations of linguistic data by Indo-Europeanists have also been criticized, such as the speculative reconstruction of an (artificial) Proto-Indo-European language, or the quest for an Urheimat.[7] [8] Historical interpretations of archaeological cultures on the basis of reconstructed proto-languages were also criticized. Erdosy thus argued: "The archaeology of the Indo-Europeans, in particular, is bedevilled by reliance on an outmoded view of archaeological cultures, which readily ascribes linguistic atributes to recurring assemblages of artefacts..."[9] Communists in Soviet Russia were generally skeptical of Indo European Studies, even claiming that "the belief in the original homelands comes to the same thing as the belief in God's sovereign authority."[10]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Arvidsson 2006:2, 3, 241 ff., 306
  2. ^ Arvidsson 2006. Lincoln 1999
  3. ^ Arvidsson 2006:3, 308, 320
  4. ^ David Anthony 1995 "Nazi and Eco-Feminist Prehistories: Ideology and Empiricism in Indo-European Archaeology. In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology (82-96) Ed. P.Kohl and Fawcett. Cambridge University Press.
  5. ^ Arvidsson 2006:5. Indo-European research has, in many ways, been an attempt to write the origin narative of the bourgeois class - a narrative that, by talking about how things originally were, has sanctioned a certain kind of behavior, idealized a certain type of person, and affirmed certain feelings. Certainly, there have been some scholars who have not identified themselves with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, but they are few. Arvidsson 2006:319-320
  6. ^ C.f. also e.g. Tremblay, X. in Fussman, G.; Kellens, J.; Francfort, H.-P.; Tremblay, X.: Aryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale. (2005) Institut Civilisation Indienne. Bryant 2001.
  7. ^ The question is what one makes of these similarities, and one steps onto a slippery slope whenever analysis moves from the descriptive to the historic plane of linguistics. In specific, reconstructing a "protolanguage" is an exercise that invites one to imagine speakers of that protolanguage, a community of such people, then a place for that community, a time in history, distinguishing chracteristics, and a set of contrastive relations with other protocommunities where other protolanguages were spoken. For all of this, need it be said, there is no sound evidentiary warrant. Lincoln 1999:95
  8. ^ C.f. e.g. Tremblay, X. in Fussman, G.; Kellens, J.; Francfort, H.-P.; Tremblay, X.: Aryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale. (2005) Institut Civilisation Indienne. Bryant 2001.
  9. ^ Erdosy 1995:21-22, also p.14. George Erdosy (ed.) (1995). The Indo-Aryans of ancient South asia. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 0948-1923
  10. ^ Arvidsson 2006:287

[edit] Further reading

  • Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Bruce Lincoln. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (1999)

[edit] External links

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