LL-L "History" 2002.09.26 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
 L O W L A N D S - L * 26.SEP.2002 (08) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
 Web Site: <http://www.lowlands-l.net>  Email: admin at lowlands-l.net
 Rules & Guidelines: <http://www.lowlands-l.net/rules.htm>
 Posting Address: <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>
 Server Manual: <http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html>
 Archive: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html>
=======================================================================
 You have received this because have been subscribed upon request. To
 unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
 text from the same account to <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or
 sign off at <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
=======================================================================
 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
 L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic
               V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

From: Ole Stig Andersen <osa at olestig.dk>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2002.09.26 (06) [E]

R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com> wrote

> One of the hypotheses (?) I have come across most often is that the pre-IE
> population of Northern Europe (at least) consisted predominantly of
> agriculturalists when it encountered the immigrating (invading?)
> horse-breeding Indo-Europeans.

A quite opposite hypothesis was set forth by the British archaeologist Colin
Renfrew in 1987 in his brilliant book "Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle
of Indo-European Origins". He suggests that agriculture was invented in
Anatolia by peoples who were by chance IE-speaking, and that the I-E
language(s) spread together with ("because of") this superior technology,
not (just) by conquest, innvasion, elimination or by diffusion, but also,
and probably more so, by simply being able to sustain a larger population.

I think we have a couple of more recent facts of World Lingusistics that
show a similar picture.

The world religions did not spread because of their articles of faith being
superior to what the converts believed before, but because of their superior
technology for managing the affairs of state: Writing. And there is of
course no correlation between writing system and language. Chinese can be
written with Latin characters and English with Chinese.

I live in Noerrebro in central Copenhagen, where about 30% of the population
is Arab, Pakistani, Somali, assorted Africans etc. But they speak Danish,
and their children speak it faultlessly. Not because of schooling and the
like, but because Danish language is a superior technology to get about in a
monolingusitic state like Denmark.

In 1991 in "History and Geography of Human Genes" Cavalli-Sforza, Piazza &
Menozzi demonstrated some very interesting correlations between language
families and gene-distribution (i.e. "race"). But there is no clear-cut
picture. His correlations don't seem to work well for the large expanses of
Eurasia. E.g. it seems that the population of Sardinia is the genetically
most divergent of European populations, more so than Basque or Sami. Still,
the Sardinians speak a Roman language, although the vocabulary shows obvious
pre I-E elements, among which my favourite is tilipirke, grasshopper!

The Discovery Channel (or was it National Geographic Channel?) once showed
an interesting investigation into this problem. Somewhere in Britain a many
thousands years old (presumably from before I-E) skeleton's genes was
compared to the present population in the area, showing that some of them
were indeed descendants, the schoolteacher who initiated the investigation
most closely of them all! They spoke with amazement about this. In a I-E
language nearby!

90% of the World's around 6.000 languages are moribund and will disappear
within this century, according to the estimates of Michael Krauss. I'm
afraid a number of Lowlands languages are among them. The decendants of the
speakers of these languages will carry on the genes of their foremothers,
but not their languages.

I think the idea of a given "race/tribe/people" speaking a certain language,
present, past and future, should be handled with the utmost caution.

Ole Stig Andersen
http://www.olestig.dk

==================================END===================================
 * Please submit postings to <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
 * Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
 * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
 * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
   to be sent to <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or at
   <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
 * Please use only Plain Text format, not Rich Text (HTML) or any other
   type of format, in your submissions
 =======================================================================