Talk:Indo-European languages: Difference between revisions

• Talk:Indo-European languages/Archive 1 (December 2001 to August 2005)

Chart

Could someone find a chart of all the Indo-European languages? I'm talking about the kind that's in the back of my American Heritage dictionary. Anyone know what I'm talking about? It looks a bit like a family tree, and shows which languages came from another. For example, one of the branches coming from Indo-European is Germanic, which splits into several things, one of which is Old English, which points to Middle English which points to Modern English. I found it interesting and helpful. Could someone find one that can be put on this page?Twilight Realm 22:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Does the List of Indo-European languages come close to what you're looking for? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 07:41, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm talking about, though it's much more comprehensible in a graphic format. For example, look here: http://www.intersolinc.com/newsletters/Language_Tree.htm . The problem is that it's copyrighted. So, if we can agree that this would be a good addition to the article, we should ask them for permission.

Ick, you find that more comprehensible? I don't. I get a headache just looking at it! --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 06:23, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I find it easier. If you just glance at it, it looks confusing, but it's easier because it clumps all the languages that evolved from a common ancestor together. The list is more like an outline, and while easier in some ways, it's harder in others. In an outline, all the main points are separated by details, because the main ideas aren't related. But with languages, as well as species and members of a family, they are. Take this "family tree" in outline format as an example:

Grandparents

Child 1

Grandchild 1

Grandchild 2

Grandchild 3

Child 2

Grandchild 4

Great-grandchild

Grandchild 5

Child 3

Child 4

Grandchild 6

I don't know about you, but I find a true family tree easier. It's not a big leap to the language tree.

We need more opinions. Does anyone else have one? Twilight Realm 23:25, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Twilight Realm, I think the listing is hard to read and I didn't even look at it when I first read the page. And while I appreciate that it is in order by attestation, I don't think that's relevant to this article. I think the 'family tree' chart or something showing the gouping would be a much better way to present the information to a lay person. Additionally, I find the section on satem and centum laguages difficult to understand, and I am famliar with the topic. (I was, however, equally disappointed with the Satem site)Kaibab 06:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Baltic and slavic. Again

Could we leave our national feelings aside and have normal discussion ? I knew about this theory before I readed about it here, but it seemed to me that there are many opinions and that there is still argument why there are so many similarities between those languages, but still - latest hypothesis is that slavs were divided form balts so classification should be:

• baltic
  • baltic
  • slavic

But acctualy truth seems to be that there isn`t enough sources to prove if there was or wasn`t balto-slavic or if slavs were balts - maybe those similarities are just because that they lived next to each other, maybe because they spoken one language, maybe they spoke similar dialects of PIE, maybe they spoke PIE longer than others... there are lots of posibilities so we can`t say that there were balto-slavic for sure. Maybe it`s just my opinion but I don`t think any encyclopedia should have such classification in it that is based more on theories than facts Xil 15:37, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with encyclopedias basing their information on theories (for example, Evolution) so long as it's made clear that it's a theory, not proven fact. In the realm of historical linguistics, everything is theory, and proof can only be "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" rather than mathematical proof. The only difference between the classification on the article page and the one you suggest above is terminology: you want to group Baltic and Slavic under a heading "Baltic"; on the main page they're grouped together under a heading "Balto-Slavic". The latter is the standard terminology among people who believe the the modern Baltic and Slavic languages have a common ancestor language more recent than Proto-Indo-European. It also has the advantage of not being ambiguous. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 16:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but if balts and slavs are put in same branch then then maybe all classification should be divided in branches to describe hypotetical evolution of indo-europian languages. I just want to say that this classification should show present state and such balto-slavic does not exist today and there is no prove that could tell us what exactly balto-slavic was. As for being ambiguos - it is as ambiguos as it is now only that it is hurtful for balts not slavs because balts are often thought to be russians outside of baltic states (BTW it seems specialy characteristic to USA and UK) - I could bet that most baltic people read only slavic not balto-slavic Xil 22:01, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

To say "Balto-Slavic does not exist today" is the same as saying "Indo-European does not exist today"; it's true the proto-languages don't exist today, but languages descended from them do. The point of the groupings is not to show the state of the languages today, it's to show how the languages evolved. The dominant theory is that the Baltic and Slavic languages shared a common history that was separate from the other Indo-European languages; the most convenient name for the period when they shard a common history is "Balto-Slavic". If there are linguistic reasons to disbelieve that theory, that's fine; and it is mentioned on this page that some linguists don't believe it. But to say the term "Balto-Slavic" is "hurtful for Balts" only makes sense from a sociological/political point of view, not a linguistic one. If Balts are often confused with Slavs outside of the Baltic countries, that's a problem that needs to be solved by education, but it has no effect at all on the historical evidence that Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic descended from a common ancestor later than Proto-Indo-European. The pitch accent system of the two branches, and the way it developed from the interaction between vowels and laryngeals, must (in the opinion of most Indo-Europeanists) have evolved in a single branch before Baltic and Slavic separated from each other. Most Indo-Europeanists feel it to be implausible that the pitch accent system could have developed independently in the two branches, and there's simply no evidence for the kind of "wave" effect one would expect from language contact. So if virtually everyone agrees that Proto-Indo-European evolved into a language X, and this particular pitch accent system was a characteristic of language X, and language X then split into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic, the only remaining question is a simple terminological one: what do we call language X? The well-established answer to that question is "Proto-Balto-Slavic". If that pushes the wrong emotional buttons of Balts, I'm sorry; in principle we could call language X anything (we could call it Fred for all I care), but the fact of the matter is Balto-Slavic is the established name, and has been for well over a century, and so that's the name we're going to use here. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 23:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

It`s not political for me, I just wanted to explain - I think I saw someone asking what is wrong with balts, that they are so mad about this. However my point is that if you want to show how languages evolved than there should be more groups showing for exemple which languages are satem. As for saying indo-europian does not exist - doesn`t indo-europian has much larger differences with non-indoeuropian languages than there could be between two indo-europian languages ?

Hmmmm, I think so, but there are, for different reasons, large differences between, for instance, Icelandic, Hindi and Armenian, so I'm not sure about if it is entirely true.

I don`t think I got idea about that pitch accent system do you mean the way language is spoken or the way sounds folow each other in word or something ? (acctualy I thought that this theory is based on gramar and similarity of words) If it is the way it`s spoken than it would be normal since slavs and balts live next to each other and it is possible that balts spoke slavic as second language

The difference between Balto-Slavic and Satem is that while most IEists believe in Proto-Balto-Slavic, most do not believe in a "Proto-Satem". Satemization is generally believed to have been spread wavelike from one dialect to an adjacent one without the two necessarily having had a common ancestor later than PIE. To your second question, if we only look at modern Indo-European languages, I think there is as much variation within the group of IE languages as there is between IE and non-IE languages in general. The modern Indo-Iranian languages are certainly as different from the IE languages of Europe as many non-IE languages of Asia are. Pitch accent is the way the stressed syllable of a word receives intonation (high tone, low tone, falling tone, rising tone, etc.). Both Baltic languages like Lithuanian and Slavic languages like Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian use pitch accent, and the historical evidence suggests that these characteristic developed after Proto-Indo-European but before Baltic and Slavic separated from each other. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 00:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Pitch accent was a feature of Proto-Indo-European and the Baltic and Slavonic systems can be shown to be related to the Greek and Sanskrit systems through the process of De Saussure's Law et al. CRCulver 02:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I decided to do some searching and now I`ve camed to this question: Is this "pitch accent system", that you are talking about, something related with "mobile accent" ? If I understand everything corectly then answer is "Yes" if it is "No" than there is no sence to keep searching in that direction or to talk about it here since I don`t understand idea. So please answer Xil 14:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, they are related. Crculver is right that Balto-Slavic pitch accent is related to the Indo-European pitch accent, but it is true that the accent system underwent many changes in Baltic and Slavic and not in any other languages, implying that they are descended from a single proto-language. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 15:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Aryan Language

A new page with this title has just been created by User:172.203.147.132 . I'm not sure whether its separate existence is valuable. Contributers here may have their own thoughts. Aryan language (small L) already redirects to this page. Perhaps that should become a disambiguation page. Paul B 09:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a copyvio from http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Languages/aryan/aryan_language.htm, and I've marked it for speedy deletion as such. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 10:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)