Talk:Indo-Iranian languages

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Contents

[edit] Judging dead people by appearance is not always accurate

mtDNA of Scytho-Siberian skeleton Human Biology 76.1 (2004) 109-125

Genetic Analysis of a Scytho-Siberian Skeleton and Its Implications for Ancient Central Asian Migrations

François-X. Ricaut et al.


Abstract The excavation of a frozen grave on the Kizil site (dated to be 2500 years old) in the Altai Republic (Central Asia) revealed a skeleton belonging to the Scytho-Siberian population. DNA was extracted from a bone sample and analyzed by autosomal STRs (short tandem repeats) and by sequencing the hypervariable region I (HV1) of the mitochondrial DNA. The resulting STR profile, mitochondrial haplotype, and haplogroup were compared with data from modern Eurasian and northern native American populations and were found only in European populations historically influenced by ancient nomadic tribes of Central Asia.

...

The mutations at nucleotide position 16147 C→A, 16172 T→C, 16223 C→T, 16248 C→T, and 16355 C→T correspond to substitutions characteristic of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a (Richards et al. 2000). The haplotype comparison with the mtDNA sequences of 8534 individuals showed that this sequence was not found in any other population.

...

The N1a haplogroup was not observed among the native American, east Asian, Siberian, Central Asian, and western European populations. The geographic distribution of haplogroup N1a is restricted to regions neighboring the Eurasian steppe zone. Its frequency is very low, less than 1.5% (Table 6), in the populations located in the western and southwestern areas of the Eurasian steppe. Haplogroup N1a is, however, more frequent in the populations of the southeastern region of the Eurasian steppe, as in Iran (but only 12 individuals were studied) and southeastern India (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh territories). More precisely, in India haplogroup N1a is absent from the Dravidic-speaking population and is present in only five Indo-Aryan-speaking individuals, four of whom belonged to the Havik group, an upper Brahman caste (Mountain et al. 1995).

...

The absence of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a in the 490 modern individuals of Central Asia (Shields et al. 1993; Kolman et al. 1996; Comas et al. 1998; Derenko et al. 2000; Yao et al. 2000; Yao, Nie et al. 2002) suggests changes in the genetic structure of Central Asian populations, probably as a result of Asian population movements to the west during the past 2500 years.

AAPA 2004

East of Eden, west of Cathay: An investigation of Bronze Age interactions along the Great Silk Road.

B.E. Hemphill.

The Great Silk Road has long been known as a conduit for contacts between East and West. Until recently, these interactions were believed to date no earlier than the second century B.C. However, recent discoveries in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang (western China) suggest that initial contact may have occurred during the first half of the second millennium B.C. The site of Yanbulaq has been offered as empirical evidence for direct physical contact between Eastern and Western populations, due to architectural, agricultural, and metallurgical practices like those from the West, ceramic vessels like those from the East, and human remains identified as encompassing both Europoid and Mongoloid physical types.

Eight cranial measurements from 30 Aeneolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and modern samples, encompassing 1505 adults from the Russian steppe, China, Central Asia, Iran, Tibet, Nepal and the Indus Valley were compared to test whether those inhabitants of Yanbulaq identified as Europoid and Mongoloid exhibit closest phenetic affinities to Russian steppe and Chinese samples, respectively. Differences between samples were compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity were assessed with cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis.

Results indicate that, despite identification as Europoid and Mongoloid, inhabitants of Yanbulaq exhibit closest affinities to one another. No one recovered from Yanbulaq exhibits affinity to Russian steppe samples. Rather, the people of Yanbulaq possess closest affinities to other Bronze Age Tarim Basin dwellers, intermediate affinities to residents of the Indus Valley, and only distant affinities to Chinese and Tibetan samples

[edit] Aryan Language

A new page with this title has just been created by User:172.203.147.132 . I'm not sure whether its separate existence is valuable. Contributers here may have their own thoughts. Aryan language (small L) already redirects to Indo-European languages. Perhaps that should become a disambiguation page. Paul B 09:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a difference between Dardic and Nuristani?

CiteCop 23:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Dardic and Nuristani are different languages, I do not know about Nuristani languages but Dardic languages were firstly considered as distinct branch of indo-iranian family but now because of the new research it is believed that Dardic languages are abberant form of Indo-aryan or indic group, the speciality of Dardic languages is that dardic languages still posess the archaic vocabulary of vedic sanskrit which shows that dardic languages are descended directly from proto-vedic sanskrit thus different in this case from modern indic languages which are descended from the middle prakrit form of sanskrit. Nuristiani languages , however are still considered a distinct branch of indo-iranin though they are also more drifted towards indo-aryan rather than iranian brach.

[edit] Grammatical gender in Indo-Iranian languages

The article on Grammatical gender says that most Indo-European languages have grammatical gender, but it has just occurred to me that some Iranian languages do not. Is this a widespread trait in the Indo-Iranian branch? FilipeS 16:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

All indo-aryan dialects/languages have two genders masculine and feminine and the verbs,adjectives have separate declensions for singular and plural cases. In ancient times there were three genders in indo-aryan proper which were masculine,feminine and neutral. neutral case has been given up in modern indo-aryan dialects.(Usman Pakistan)

Thanks for replying, but what about Persian?... FilipeS 01:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Persian does not have grammatical gender. According to this article, the Sorani dialect of Kurdish doesn't have grammatical gender, while Kurmanji Kurdish does. –jonsafari 22:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unnecessary Map

I think hilighting that a minority group exists in a country which speaks an Indo-Iranian language is completely unnecessary. Since that would cover nearly every country in the world. But someone just wanted to highlight United States? I suggest someone just stick with "official language". 66.171.76.138 21:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Sorry the merger is for the templates only. Enlil Ninlil 05:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Grouping Iranian and Indic together is based on solid grounds.

Grouping Iranian and Indic together is based on solid grounds. The affiliation between Iranian and Indic is not a solid one. It is as strong as each are with Slavic and Baltic. (All are Satem languages, and honestly Baltic shows strong resemblance with Sanskrit). The only fact which led the linguist to construct the Indo-Iranian (hypo)thesis was the fact that vestan and Sanskrit were similar, but that was not surprising because we did not have as ancient languages in either Baltic or Slavic. Moreover It is funny to speak of Indo-Aryan for Indic, when one avoids the usage of Aryan (proper) for Iranian --Babakexorramdin (talk) 14:04, 11 February 2008 (UTC)--Babakexorramdin (talk) 22:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

While the affiliation between Iranian and Indic is not 100% rock solid, it's not the duty of Wikipedia to conduct original research. It's the duty of WP to represent reliable sources, and there's an abundance of reliable sources indicating a stronger affiliation between Iranian and Indic, than between either of these and other IE families. Having said that, if you have reliable sources that shed light on the looseness of the affiliation between Iranian and Indic, then feel free to add such content to this article, always citing your reliable sources. –jonsafari (talk) 04:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
The common origin of Avestan and Sanskrit is undeniable. Post-Anquetil linguists consistently used and continue to use both Sanskrit and later Persian dialects to decipher Avestan texts (the few that exist). 76.181.237.245 (talk) 13:25, 24 May 2008 (UTC)