The Neolithic Hypothesis (Standardization)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/19/99 2:14:58 AM, you wrote:

<<Part of the "state" effect is optical.  Dialects still exist, but
people write in the official language.  Of course the Roman
Empire had a unifying effect for quite a long time.  Whether the
rate of change of Latin itself was affected (other than
optically) is a different matter.  I doubt it.  So the "state
effect" means we have less variation in space, but probably the
same variation in time.>>

The fact that Latin was or wasn't optical is irrelevant in the context of my
original point.  WHATEVER keeps a language from splintering either
phonetically or grammatically is a standardizing agent - and that must include
writing.  Someone quoted the passage from Caxton about eggs - note that Caxton
spelled the two dialectical forms differently, showing a standard for
pronouncing either form.  In fact the primary reason we can feel confident
about how for example the OE alphabet was pronounced is because of our
confidence about how the borrowed Roman letters were pronounced.

And one only needs to see something like the bilingually glossed text (OE and
Latin) in an 11th Century manuscript (reproduced in D. Crystal - The Cambridge
Encyl. of the Eng. Lang) to understand the spoken nature of Latin 600 years
after the Empire fell. ('We boys ask you, master, to teach us to speak Latin
correctly, because we are ignorant and speak ungrammatically,')  It is quite
clear that Latin remained a spoken language well into second millenium, and it
is difficult to believe there would not have been a rather high degree of
comprehension between a 1st Century bce and a 15th Century ace speaker of the
language.

Again, the notion of a "state" language is inadequate to describe the full
spectrum of language standardizing agents.  The American experience provides a
very good example of how normative standards in word pronounciation,
definition and acceptible vocabulary were created by forces outside both
government and officialdom.  George Philip Krapp's 'The English Language in
America' (1925) is filled with hundreds of cited examples of standardization
(also including Webster's) that came from the likes of Baptist ministers,
Yankee pedlars and Irish politicians.  Lingua francas are not "state"
languages, but their effectiveness rests entirely upon a self-enforced
standardization of pronounciation, syntax and reference - and of course these
languages were not optical.  The three agents that Mallory cites as the
bringer of new languages (the merchant, cleric and soldier) just as logically
continue as agents of standardization after a language is adopted.  And there
are obviously others - not the least of which in modern times are radio, film
and tv.

The Hittite, Sanskrit and Mycenaean texts that are all we know about those
languages are all optical.  The very fact that those languages were written
tells us that standardization was possible before the 1700's when "state"
languages became "official."  A logical question regarding PIE was whether it
was a "standardized" language and how that would affect our analysis.  Would
it suggest PIE was spread through the adoption of agricultural technology?

Conversion to agriculture in itself does not seem to be a standardizing
situation.  In fact, the sedentary and spread out form of neolithic settlement
would suggest the opposite.  It would seem to encourage splintering and
localization.

And finally I have searched in vain for ANY historical instance where the
adoption of agriculture resulted in a change of language in an indigenous
population.  And remember that even under C-S's formula, the ancestors of the
majority of modern northern European were already there when agriculture began
to be adopted.

Regards,
Steve Long