The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The Neolithic Hypothesis]

[Ray Hendon]

[ moderator changed the Subject: header ]

Dear Mr.  or Ms Moderator

I am currently engaged in a study of political and judicial developments in
England after the Saxon's assult began In the fifth century. Linguistics is
not my primary interest, and my skills in languages are even more limited
than my interest.

But I do have a question about Indo-European as the proto-language for most
of Europe. It seems to me the IE is an hypothesis that posits the existence
of an Indo-European language that was actually spoken by some ancient
population. The hypothesis further asserts that this language is this mother
language of many Asian and European languages and subsequently spawned
child-languages over Asia and Europe. Celtic, Germanic and Italic languages,
to name a few, are, then, child languages of IE.

My question is this: is there disagreement among linguists about IE as an
hypothesis? Are their linguists who dispute the IE model and posit some
alternative model of language development? If so, are the alternative
hypotheses credible? Or, is the IE model universally accepted as the only
possible explanation for how IE languages developed?

If you can answer my question in a manner that would not require much
effort, or at least forward it to someonw who could, I would appreciate it
greatly. IE figures so large in European historical development that it must
be incorporated in any reasonably thorough account of Europena history. But
I am uncomfortable that there may be other explanations for the process of
how European languages developed. Can you help me?

Thanks for considering my request.

Sincerely
Ray Hendon
San Antonio, TX

[ Moderator's response:
  First, I've forwarded this to the list at large because there are others who
  will disagree with me.

  There is little disagreement among linguists with training in the methods of
  historical linguistics and familiarity with the data from the descendant
  languages that the Indo-European hypothesis is correct.  The disagreements
  here are rather with details of the reconstruction.

  There have been some well-trained linguists in the past who, for one reason
  or another, have denied the existence in history of a unified Indo-European
  language.  N. Trubetzkoi, for example, spoke of a group of languages which
  influenced each other to so great an extent that the result appears to have
  been a single ancestral language; I believe that F. Boas held a similar idea.
  It is unclear to me what advantage is to be found in such a formulation.
  However, once the development into the descendant languages began, everyone
  agrees that they developed in the manner postulated by the IE hypothesis.

  There are scholars in other sciences who do not accept that linguists have
  any idea what they are talking about, who believe in a different mechanism
  of linguistic change, and who speak of changing the way linguistics is done
  to prove that linguists have been wrong all along.  You may encounter them
  on other mailing lists.

								Rich Alderson ]