Talk:Indo-European languages/Archive 4

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Other Expansion Theories 1.1 Protection 2 The Indo-European Family Tree is worthless 3 South Africa does not have a majority of IE speakers 4 Status of IE in South America 5 Satem and Centrum languages: diachronic map

Other Expansion Theories

The Kurgan Hypothesis is not the only theory of how the IE languages expanded. I added timelines for the three other main suggestions so as to provide a NPOV. However these have been deleted. I think that they should be reinstated or at least mention made of the alternative timelines. Adresia 16:50, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"NPOV" doesn't mean "discuss every position ever held with equal weight": please review WP:UNDUE. You'll need to establish the relative notability (that is, notability within academic Indo-European studies) of your favoured view. dab (𒁳) 17:48, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if anybody would be able to "establish relative notability" of the Kurgan hypothesis from 3rd millennium archeologic sources that unambiguously forward an exclusive and overall homeland of IE culture in the Pontic steppes. Rokus01 21:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

have you ever, in all your time on Wikipedia, bothered to actually read WP:NOR? The question isn't whether you believe the hypothesis is flawed, but whether it happens to be favoured in academic literature. dab (𒁳) 11:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Now you are dodging the issue and reversing the evidence. I am just asking here straightforward for a 3rd millenium archeologic source that confirms the Kurgan hypothesis to its full extend. I would say, the inconclusiveness of Kurgan theory towards the west has been the topic of all archeological publications since the 90s. Sure, if not any archeologist is referring to the Kurgan hypothesis anymore to confirm archeological features in the North European Plain west of Vistula, we could easily deduce the theory is flawed, if you wish to do so. To me it suffice to achieve balance. You could move this whole issue to your latest fork and delete the undue crap here, so we can continue there, or decently restore weight and include archeological research that points to linguistic impact of local developments and the importance of the hunter gatherers of the north european plain. Who cares the modern archeological point of view is favoured by other disciplines as long they draw their point of view from obsolete archeology? Rokus01 (talk) 02:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE says that an article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. This is an aim with which I concur. The difficulties are two-fold - what is "significant" and what is "reliable". Ultimately this is a subjective judgement. Elsewhere in Wikipedia more than the proposed three expansion theories are discussed, eg under Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses. The Kurgan theory is less favoured than it was while the Anatolian hypothesis certainly has many adherents. Though the PCT one has fewer it has many things going for it, and its implications on IE expansion should be outlined here. Incidently, I am not a supporter of the latter and regard the whole question as open. Adresia (talk) 10:50, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

you keep claiming that "The Kurgan theory is less favoured than it was." I've only ever heard this on Wikipedia talkpages. Convince us based on WP:RS rather than by simple repetition. Perhaps you'd like to get other Indo-Europeanists to comment? Try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics, or for WP:UNDUE disputes in general try WP:FTN or WP:RSN. Anything as long as you just stop waving your hands without providing any substance.

dab (𒁳) 11:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

An Indo-Europeanist that draws on obsolete archeological data will hardly convince. Just try to get your hands on archeological articles on the subject, for instance Marek Zvelebil and Arkadiusz Marciniak: proponents of the view that is cited by the Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology. Rokus01 (talk) 02:06, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Protection

it is unfortunate to protect this article due to a dispute on a barely related topic. This may be a valid content dispute, but it needs to be addressed at the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses article. We should only come back and edit the summary here once a stable consensus has emerged there. Edit-warring is bad enough, but edit-warring-by-proxy (i.e., at a barely related article instead of the article covering the disputed topic) is even worse. dab (𒁳) 12:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I think you are abusing your admin rights here. You neglect the consensus reached by the definition of WP:UNDUE and the multiple views that have to be respected according toWP:NPOV. The only "edit war" I can see is your fanatism to revert without discussion or arguments first. You evade giving a justification to your edits and protect the page when I ask you to do so first. Really, it is incredible you think it is worth the full weight of your adminship to push your personal point of view. Rokus01 (talk) 02:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

He didn't protect the page; I did. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 08:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

he is still ranting against "my" protection of this article on my talkpage. Oh, and building a devastating case on it on "my" arbitration case.[1] A serious player, this Rokus. dab (𒁳) 19:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, in my "devastating case" [2] I evidence against Dbachmann "having" the page protected, semantically equivalent to Dbachmann protecting the page by himself: a mayor offense to any administrator. Whatever Dbachmann wants to make believe his colleages, his support to this protection is evidenced by his public declaration: "This may be a valid content dispute, but it needs to be addressed at the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses article. We should only come back and edit the summary here once a stable consensus has emerged there." And to User:Angr: this does not change the fact that your direct protection of the page is a more direct violation of WP policy, since "Full protection is to stop edit warring between multiple users or severe vandalism". The policy to keep this page protected is both blatant contempt towards WP policy from your side, and due to Arbcom escalation. Merry Chrismas! Rokus01 (talk) 17:35, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I imposed full protection to stop edit warring between multiple users, namely you and Dab. Fully within Wikipedia policy. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 18:18, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

the implication that my endorsement of another admin's action should be a "mayor offense" is ludicrous in itself, quite regardless of the fact that I did not in fact endorse it. Of course I believe Rokus is out of line pushing his eccentric pov, duh, otherwise I would not revert his edits. I don't think any further comment is necessary, Rokus doing an excellent job discrediting himself all on his own. I merely submit to Angr that this is not an even-handed content dispute, but a case of trolling and/or pov-pushing, hence sanctions should be taken not against the article under attack, but against the offending editor. So, no, I do not believ the article should have been protected, I believe Rokus should have been warned, and if necessary blocked, instead. dab (𒁳) 22:59, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

While Rokus may have engaged in POV pushing elsewhere, the specific edit warring happening here, namely the removal of the timeline of Indo-European expansion, doesn't qualify in my mind. Frankly, I don't see the relevance of that section in this article, which is supposed to be about Indo-European languages, ancient and modern, not about the Proto-Indo-Europeans. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 08:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

true, much of the timeline may go elsewhere. this wasn't the point of the dispute, and there can be a reasonable compromise (between reasonable editors aware of WP:CONSENSUS, that is). I was hoping you would give your own opinion, Angr, because that might result in a solution to the present deadlock. Note that the timeline (as opposed to the PIE sections) is not about Proto-Indo-Europeans, but about early Post-PIE daughter languages. dab (𒁳) 09:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is that this article should stick to linguistics and leave archaeology to the archaeologists. In general (not just here) I think Wikipedia's articles on proto-languages have too much discussion of archaeology and genetics, when neither field has anything to add to the discussion. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 10:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"I imposed full protection to stop edit warring between multiple users, namely you and Dab". Again, please explain why you accuse me of editwarring, while all edits have been properly announced and motivated from my side, and none had been properly contested at TALK or otherwise responded at by Dbachmann for at least half a month. My edits are: removal of the Kurgan Timeline for being WP:UNDUE to a linguistic article, and a neutral location hypotheses summary that represents multiple points of view according to WP:NPOV. I suppose now, according to WP policy, an agreement has to be discussed. My arguments are already waiting for one month to be answered by now. I don't see how this last revert in combination with failure to answer my comments at TALK, could be interpreted as anything else but vandalism. I expect any representative admin intervention to act accordingly. Rokus01 (talk) 17:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I accused you of edit warring because you kept removing the same material over and over and over again. However, it's clear that protection wasn't helping the matter, so I unprotected it. It's also clear that there was way too much discussion of non-linguistic issues in this linguistics article, so I removed the timeline and the section about location hypotheses, because frankly they're irrelevant to this article. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:21, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Right, the location is irrelevant. The interaction between location and speech is not. Since I saw you deleting somewhere else an otherwise very unclear edit referring to the issue, I gather you are not informed about the most recent ideas concerning the origin and spread of Indo European in the North European Plain. The Kurgan hypothesis is not heard of anymore in archeological circles, instead the most recent widely discussed theory is the Neolithic Creolisation Hypothesis of Marek Zvelebil (supported for instance in archeological publications of Marek Nowak and Arkadiusz Marciniak, and compatible with the linguistic conclusions of Peter Schrijver and Frederik Kortlandt). Also, the statement that the early history of Indo European is incommensurable before 4000BC is incompatible to the results of Peter Schrijver, that claim reminiscence of (Neolithic) language features since 9000 BP. Could this two details be changed as well? Thanks. Rokus01 (talk) 21:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

You can't compare archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence; they're apples and oranges. Archaeology tells you nothing about language, and linguistics tells you nothing about pottery, weapons and the like. This is a linguistics article, and archaeology has no place in it. The Kurgan hypothesis, Anatolian hypothesis, Paleolithic Continuity Theory, and all the others are amusing in their own way, I suppose, but have no bearing on Indo-European linguistics. You're right; I'm not informed about the most recent ideas concerning the spread of Indo-European in the North European Plain. Why? Because I'm a linguist, and those theories are unrelated to linguistics. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:06, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The claim concerning the several competing theories that "its most recent form being the Kurgan hypothesis", is wrong in many ways. I think this is a peculiar version of dodging of my question, already featured by Dbachmann here above. I repeat: "I wonder if anybody would be able to "establish relative notability" of the Kurgan hypothesis from 3rd millennium archeologic sources that unambiguously forward an exclusive and overall homeland of IE culture in the Pontic steppes." I even might have been too careful here, since Mallory seems to be the last archeologist that gave an assessment to this theory and ever since archeologists have mainly testified against it (at least with respect to the supposed expansions to the west). If here you intend to represent a linguistic claim, I would remind you to the folly to focus on claims by linguists that are based on obsolete archeology. For a quick solution, you could leave this sentence out altogether as well. Otherwise, like I already proposed before, the article could focus in a separate section on the linguistic contribution to the homeland issue, rather than otherwise. So far, to comply to WP:UNDUE indeed while the article still focussed on the Kurgan Hypothesis, no linguistic evidence had been forwarded in this article to support the restriction to the Sredny Stog homeland, or the expansion pattern of the Kurgan Hypothesis. However, this does not mean no linguistic evidence exists at all or is not valuable to include here, in a linguistic article. To give a neutral representation of such evidence according to WP:NPOV, no prevalence to any archeological theory should be forwarded beforehand in giving an assessment. Such an assessment should include the linguistic details gathered by Mallory, Kortlandt, Schrijver and, to forestall the eternal Begging the question issues so frequently displayed here, should only be backed up by the existing hypotheses when this would contribute to a rightful interpretation. Rokus01 (talk) 11:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Even if it were possible for there to be a linguistic contribution to the homeland issue, this article wouldn't be the place for it. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 13:44, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Any sourced linguistic assessment to the Indo-European languages is of interest to this article, even when this - by coincidence - also relates to other, non-linguistic research. However, the first priority is to clear this article from unsubstantiated claims and bias. Rokus01 (talk) 21:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Rokus, do you have anything to add that could be argued to lie within the scope of WP:TALK? If not, couldn't you just drop it? dab (𒁳) 13:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

This is rightly about widely different views that somehow you still can't resist merging into one unsourced nonsense OR statement: [3]. Well, indeed I've had it here, if this is what you are asking for. If you don't make it worse I'll forgive you this one. Discussion closed. Rokus01 (talk) 21:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The Indo-European Family Tree is worthless

It's so small (even when I click on it) as to be unreadable. - Theaveng (talk) 15:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

click it again to open the actual file, it should be legible then. --86.148.57.131 (talk) 23:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Even when double clicked..the format is unknown, an abstract format. I agree, it should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.179.86.238 (talk) 09:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

South Africa does not have a majority of IE speakers

This is factually incorrect and should be corrected on the map. The majority (est. 40 million) of South Africans speak variants of Nguni with English/Afrikaans as a second or third language as pointed out in a previous comment. English and Afrikaans are spoken as a mothertongue by approx. 8 million South Africans. Even so, these two languages' classification as Indo-European is dubious, since Afrikaans is a Dutch/Khoi/Malaisian creole and English is, well, a modern language riddled with influences and neologisms. The thrust of this Indo-European Language field of study seems absurd since it actively excludes Arabic and Chinese variants; there is no scientific method; and, all this is in reality speculation about an arbitrary point in pre-history. The major weakness of this field is that it seems to be so hard at work creating a genesis that there is a total lack of acknowledgement of the African, Arabic and Oriental influences upon it. A snapshot of what? and why?

Please correct the South African classification which, in its current form, is false and also offensive.

62.24.195.87 (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

according to Languages of South Africa, IE languages are indeed only spoken by 21% of South Africans. The image should be corrected to this effect. Your other points do not make sense. Claiming that PIE studies "actively excludes Arabic and Chinese variants" is about as sensible as claiming that African studies deny the existence of Australia, or that Zoology denies the existence of plants. dab (𒁳) 14:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The map does not claim to show only native speakers. The vast majority of South Africans are competent speakers of either English or Afrikaans (the Indo-European status of neither of which can seriously be disputed), or both, even if they are not native speakers. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

vast majority...competent...both - this is conjecture and speculation without any basis in fact and employing the blunt instrument of hyperbole - kindly address the issue. 62.24.195.87 (talk) 13:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I see... but this creates a misleading impression. Claiming that South Africa has "a majority of speakers of IE languages" appears to imply that only a minority speak non-IE languages. The map should show native speakers. dab (𒁳) 14:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

consider Hungary: it is shown grey on the map because its only official language is Hungarian. At present (2006), 42% of Hungarians speak a second language besides Hungarian (mostly German, Spanish, Russian or English, all IE). It is only a matter of time (say, ten years) before this figure exceeds 50%. Once that happens, Hungary would need to be painted "orange" in our map, as a country with a majority of IE speakers, even though no IE language has any official status. This would clearly defeat the point of this map. In Estonia, this has probably already happened: Eurobarometer says 47% of Estonians speak Russian, and 22% speak German. It appears very likely that this corresponds to a figure >50% of Estonians that speak either German or Russian. And yet the country is grey in our map, because neither German nor Russian has official status, and there is no majority of native IE speakers. dab (𒁳) 14:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, you convinced me, but why did you update the PNG instead of the SVG? Those shades of orange and yellow are making me nauseous. I corrected South Africa on the SVG and will revert back to it directly. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

because I don't have the necessary tools to update the svg and can't be bothered to install them. Feel free to do it. --dab (𒁳) 14:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for actioning the factual correction regarding the status of IE in South Africa. Please disregard my comments questioning the notion of IE and its basis in scientific method. Following a discussion with a learned friend I have altered my perspective on this field. You addressed the main concern , namely acknowledgement of the majority of South Africans' bitter struggle against IE languages as instruments of state education and administration and for the recognition of the Bantu and Nguni languages as official languages. The map now represents the reality on the ground. 62.24.195.87 (talk) 13:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

it is really enough to just point to the factual issue without all the ranting, thanks. dab (𒁳) 13:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Status of IE in South America

What to do about Paraguay? According to our article, 94% of the population speak Guaraní and 75% speak Spanish (most of them presumably as a second language, though some will be native monolinguals and some will be bilinguals). —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

we'll need to figure out how many are native speakers of Spanish. I do think that we should count bilinguals as native speakers (of both the languages they are bilingual in). dab (𒁳) 14:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Paraguay seems to be a problematic case. According to our Guaraní language,

the two languages have a very complicated relationship. In practice, almost nobody in Paraguay speaks "pure Spanish" or "pure Guarani", but rather a combination which varies according to the social class, lifestyle and racial origin of the speaker. Thus, the more well-educated, more urban, and more European-descended population tends to speak Argentine-influenced Spanish with short phrases of Guarani thrown in, while the less educated, more rural, and more Amerindian-descended population tends to speak a Guarani with significant vocabulary-borrowing from Spanish.

i.e., here we may really have a sliding scale of bilingualism to secondary language acquisition. I suppose it would be arguable to have Paraguay either dark or light green on our map. Since we note that 56% of Paraguay's population lives in urban areas, it may be more advisable to keep the dark green, assuming that just about a majority speaks Spanish-with-Guarani rather than Guarani-with-Spanish... dab (𒁳) 13:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Satem and Centrum languages: diachronic map

How can the reader make sense of a diachronic map when no estimated dates have been included?

I am also concerned about the lack of citation for the source of the map or the data used to generated it. Without this, the diagram must be considered unreliable.Prof Wrong (talk) 21:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

it illustrates the content of Centum-Satem isogloss, just as Image:Dielectric.png illustrates the content at Capacitor. Pray point out what are your concerns with it. The lack of absolute dates is not problematic: indeed, if absolute dates were given, they would need to be attributed to a specific reference. If you have concerns about the content of Centum-Satem isogloss, pray raise them at Talk:Centum-Satem isogloss. I fail to see anything controversial here. --dab (𒁳) 07:23, 15 January 2008 (UTC)