IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Stefan Georg]

>So the initial discovery of Indo-European was produced by straightforward
>comparison of lexical items.  That made it obvious, in a straightforward
>common-sense way, that the languages were related.  Grammatical analysis
>followed.

All this is true, and a few names could be added to this (Sassetti
comparing Sanskrit and Italian words in a remarkably "correct" way back in
(was it) the 16th century and some others). There is Strahlenberg comparing
words and only words in several Eurasian languages back in 1720 arriving at
some quite viable groupings of languages (IE not among them) aso. Back in
Leibniz' times it was quite fashionable in the German writing world (I
don't blame this on Leibniz' personally) to talk of a common origin of
German and Persian due to some common words (some comparisons of which have
stood the test of time) aso. It is legitimate and interesting to look for
the "first" people to suspect that something is going on between the
languages of the Old World, and it is quite natural that every name me may
be able to pin down in the prehistory of IE (and general) complx. was
mainly concerned with words. But any name on such a pre-1816 list of
"pre-IEists" will be the name of an isolated genius, guessing the right
thing, or having had the right idea of (parts of) the IE family avant la
parole.

However, all these bright people have not been able to demonstrate the
genetic affinity of IE in a way which convinced their contemporaries to the
effect that the need for a new academic discipline was felt. To show that
not only "something fishy is going on with some languages of the Old World"
(this need not have interested anybody in the first place in
pre-enlightenment times, for the dogma of the dispersal of an original
tongue due to the events which led to the Babylonians abandon their
ambitious tower project was known to every single person in Europe,
literate or illiterate), but that something which was going on there,
something *specific*, and altogether *unexpected*, could be *explored* with
scientific methods (methods yet to develop, of course) to the end of better
understanding why the languages we find are the way they are marks the
beginning of IE (and general) complx as a scientific discipline. And this
beginning dates from Bopp's "Conjugationssystem", not from Jones'
brilliantly formulated observation, and not from any one of his
predecessors.

Trying to think up an analogy I might mention electricity, which was
basically known (very basically) to the Ancient Greeks, and every history
of science will have to mention this fact, but it will also have to mention
that systematic investigation of the phenomenon and everything which goes
with it started considerably later (say, with Franklin, but please call me
whatever name you think appropriate for someone who knows so little on the
history of physics as I do ...).

So, if you agree that there is a qualitative difference between "first
guesses" and the foundation of a new science, which soon developed into an
academic discipline, because the kind of evidence brought forward convinced
enough people in the learned world that it can and should exist, and which
existed and was practised for almost two centuries up to the present day,
you should, imho, also accept that the observation of remarkably parallel
morphological paradigms in geographically widely apart languages is the
point in time we are looking for when we want to determine "when it all
began" (i.e. IE lx. "as we know it"). So, Parson was certainly, in a way,
on the right track (and so was Sassetti before him, and others have been,
too), but neither he nor anyone else before Bopp was able to put IE complx
on the agenda of urgent and solvable tasks. Word comparisons simply
couldn't do the job, since they have been around for centuries (mainly as
shots in the dark, which nevertheless sometimes may have hit the bull's
eye) without impressing too many people, let alone set a whole new science
into motion. The Conjugationssystem did, and from there on the new thing
kept moving until today.

St.G.

Dr. Stefan Georg
home:
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+49-228-691332+
Georg at home.ivm.de

work:
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/vtw/Georg/Georg.html