Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies (German: Indogermanistik) is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct.[1] The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and its speakers, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, including their society and Proto-Indo-European mythology. The studies cover where the language originated and how it spread. This article also lists Indo-European scholars, centres, journals and book series.
The term Indo-European itself now current in English literature, was coined in 1813 by the British scholar Sir Thomas Young, although at that time, there was no consensus as to the naming of the recently discovered language family. However, he seems to have used it as a geographical term, to indicate the newly proposed language family in Eurasia spanning from the Indian subcontinent till the European continent. Among the other names suggested were:
Rask's japetisk or "Japhetic languages", after the old notion of "Japhetites" and ultimately Japheth, son of the Biblical Noah, parallels the term Semitic, from Noah's son Shem, and Hamitic, from Noah's son Ham. Japhetic and Hamitic are both obsolete, apart from occasional dated use of term "Hamito-Semitic" for the Afro-Asiatic languages.
In English, Indo-German was used by J. C. Prichard in 1826 although he preferred Indo-European. In French, use of indo-européen was established by A. Pictet (1836). In German literature, Indoeuropäisch was used by Franz Bopp since 1835, while the term Indogermanisch had already been introduced by Julius von Klapproth in 1823, intending to include the northernmost and the southernmost of the family's branches, as it were as an abbreviation of the full listing of involved languages that had been common in earlier literature. Indo-Germanisch became established by the works of August Friedrich Pott, who understood it to include the easternmost and the westernmost branches, opening the doors to ensuing fruitless discussions whether it should not be Indo-Celtic, or even Tocharo-Celtic.
Today, Indo-European, indo-européen is well established in English and French literature, while Indogermanisch remains current in German literature, but alongside a growing number of uses of Indoeuropäisch. Similarly, Indo-Europees has now largely replaced the still occasionally encountered Indogermaans in Dutch scientific literature.
Indo-Hittite is sometimes used for the wider family including Anatolian by those who consider that IE and Anatolian are comparable separate branches.
Study methods[edit]
The comparative method was formally developed in the 19th century and applied first to Indo-European languages. The existence of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had been inferred by comparative linguistics as early as 1640, while attempts at an Indo-European proto-language reconstruction date back as far as 1713. However, by the 19th century, still no consensus had been reached about the internal groups of the IE family.
The method of internal reconstruction is used to compare patterns within one dialect, without comparison with other dialects and languages, to try to arrive at an understanding of regularities operating at an earlier stage in that dialect. It has also been used to infer information about earlier stages of PIE than can be reached by the comparative method.
The IE languages are sometimes hypothesized to be part of super-families such as Nostratic or Eurasiatic.
History[edit]
Preliminary work[edit]
The ancient Greeks were aware that their language had changed since the time of Homer (about 730 BC). Aristotle (about 330 BC) identified four types of linguistic change: insertion, deletion, transposition and substitution. In the 1st century BC, the Romans were aware of the similarities between Greek and Latin.
In the post-classical West, with the influence of Christianity, language studies were undermined by the attempt to derive all languages from Hebrew since the time of Saint Augustine. Prior studies classified the European languages as Japhetic. One of the first scholars to challenge the idea of a Hebrew root to the languages of Europe was Joseph Scaliger (1540 – 1609). He identified Greek, Germanic, Romance and Slavic language groups by comparing the word for "God" in various European languages. In 1710, Leibniz applied ideas of gradualism and uniformitarianism to linguistics in a short essay.[2] Like Scaliger, he rejected a Hebrew root, but also rejected the idea of unrelated language groups and considered them all to have a common source.[3]
Around the 12th century, similarities between European languages became recognised. In Iceland, scholars noted the resemblances between Icelandic and English. Gerald of Wales claimed that Welsh, Cornish, and Breton were descendants of a common source. A study of the Insular Celtic languages was carried out by George Buchanan in the 16th century and the first field study was by Edward Llwyd around 1700. He published his work in 1707,[4] shortly after translating a study by Paul-Yves Pezron[5] on Breton.[6]
Grammars of European languages other than Latin and Classical Greek began to be published at the end of the 15th century. This led to comparison between the various languages.
In the 16th century, visitors to India became aware of similarities between Indian and European languages. For example, Filippo Sassetti reported striking resemblances between Sanskrit and Italian.[7]
Criticism[edit]
Marxists such as Bruce Lincoln (himself an Indo-Europeanist) have criticized aspects of Indo-European studies believed to be overly reactionary.[24]
In the 1980s, Georges Dumézil and Indo-European studies in general came under fire from historian Arnaldo Momigliano, who accused Indo-European studies of being created by fascists bent on combating "Judeo-Christian" society.[25] Momigliano was himself a veteran member of the National Fascist Party, but was not open about this. Edgar C. Polomé, an Indo-Europeanist and co-editor of Mankind Quarterly,[26] described Momigliano and Lincoln's criticism as "unfair and vicious", and connected criticism of Indo-European studies with Marxism and political correctness.[27][28]
More recently, the Swedish Marxist historian Stefan Arvidsson has followed up on Momigliano's criticism of Indo-European studies. Arvidsson considers Indo-European studies to be a pseudoscientific field, and has described Indo-European mythology as "the most sinister mythology of modern times".[29] In his works, Arvidsson has sought to expose what he considers to be fascist political sympathies of Indo-Europeanists, and suggested that such an exposure may result in the abolition ("Ragnarök") of the concept of Indo-European mythology.[30]