Pre-Greek languages

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Crist <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 06, 1999 9:44 PM

>On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> I like the comparison (BTW, is Kirisuto such a transcription of Crist?).

>My login is kurisuto, which is the katakana-ized version of my family
>name Crist.  "Kirisuto" is the katakana-ization of "Christ".

[Ed Selleslagh]

Sorry for the typo.  One side remark: the katakana-ization of Christ seems to
indicate that the name was not taken from English speaking peoples/wouldbe
colonizers.  From the Portuguese or the Dutch maybe?

>If I understand your post correctly, you're speculating (and I appreciate
>the cautious terms in which you do so!) that there could be a connection
>between Iberian and Linear A.  I can't rule this out, but of course such a
>connection hasn't been shown, as you acknowledge.

[Ed]

Exactly.  When dealing with such difficult cases, I think no possibility should
be ruled out unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Especially on the
coasts of the Mediterranean Basin (as you noted further on), where a lot of
exchanges took place at very early dates, cf. the export of obsidian from
around Sicily. We know about a few East to West migrations (not necessarily
conquests!), and may safely presume there have been many more: the spread of
various technologies and genes point into that direction.

>I think this is probably a good place to make the following observation.
>It is probably the case that during most of the long period of human
>existence, the norm has been extreme linguistic diversity.  The phenomenon
>of a language being spoken over a wide area is probably a fairly recent
>one; I don't know that it ever happens except as the product of
>empire-building.  When we go into places where there hasn't been a long
>history of empires (e.g. New Guinea), what we find is that every little
>village has its own language.  It wouldn't be surprising if every local
>clan in prehistoric Europe similarly had its own language.

[Ed]

That may be carrying it a bit too far: it depends on things like geography,
which enhance or inhibit frequent contacts. In e.g. flat open agricultural
regions, you will find differing dialects from village to village (in Flanders
(less than 15 000 km2) this was still the case until 30 or 40 years ago, but
after that it began to break down pretty fast), but still belonging to the same
'language' (interpreted as a fuzzy set of pretty related dialects). Another
case is the Amerindian languages in vast N. American regions.

In rough mountainous regions like the Caucasus, with a - at least previously -
very sedentary population, much greater differences can develop and become
stabilized for long periods.

So, I would rather guess that more or less separated subregions had their own
languages, each divided into a large number of very local dialects, until major
migratory movements/infiltrations changed the picture.  This would then settle
down and diversify internally till the next movement.

>When the Indo-Europeans, Semites, etc. spread over a wide area, they
>probably erased an enormous number of local languages in the process.  At
>the beginning of the historical period, we can still catch glimpses of the
>earlier diversity: Hattic, Hurrian, Etruscan, etc. don't appear to be
>related to each other or to any other language we know.  Basque probably
>represents the sole outcropping remaining from the earlier old European
>diversity.

[Ed]

We can reasonably accept that Etruscan has the same grandmother as PIE, and is
a first cousin of Anatolian and PIE, but closer to Anatolian.  I don't think
anybody doubts the close link between Etruscan and Lemnian nowadays.

The case of Hatti, Hurri and Sumerian is indeed still problematic, but we
shouldn't lose hope: after all, Elamite - which was in the same situation - was
finally recognized as Dravidian [rather strangely late, if you ask me, because
the word Elaam still exists in Tamil, I was told].  And Basque and Iberian seem
to share a number of roots and affixes, even though a genetic relationship
doesn't look probable for now. Some substrate traces (BTW, also found in
Castilian) in Sardinian seem to indicate that a similar language - or one
representative of the same substrate - has been spoken there at an early date.

>When we find these tantalizing bits of older languages just barely peeking
>into the historical record, it's tempting to try to connect them with each
>other. If we can actually establish a connection, that's great (and in the
>Mediterranean basin, such connections might be somewhat more likely, since
>transportation has always been relatively easier).  It's certainly not
>wrong to make the attempt.  We should bear in mind, tho, that we should
>expect to find cases of languages which can't be connected with anything.

[Ed]

I wholeheartedly agree with you, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue
the search.  If monogenesis is vaguely true (at least by major regions of the
world), there must be links, but it is equally possible that the
signal-to-noise ratio is so low that we don't see them any longer. Entropy
knows no pity. Information does get lost over time.

Ed.

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
B-9120 Haasdonk
Belgium