Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 23:46:06 -0600
In article <3295147D.2766@scruznet.com>, Mike Wright
wrote:
>Joe Bernstein wrote:
[delete my long flame in reply to something that certainly looked like a
flame to me, but apparently wasn't meant as one...]
>> From my experience with Ms. Nemeth in threads like these, she was trying
>> to point out that this is, in fact, a widely available criterion. So if
>> it's horrendously off-base, she'd have liked to know where to find out
>> more about that.
>
>I guess I was fooled by the fact that she made several statements of
>fact and asked no questions.
This thread is unfortunately a spectacular demonstration of cross-posting
doing its worst.
Steve Whittet is indeed unpopular among many denizens of sci.archaeology;
it's no great surprise to me that he's raising linguists' hackles too. I
generally try to avoid his threads, as I saw, when I first showed up in
s.a, that they tended to degenerate into incredibly long
quote-and-response posts from most parties reading more or less like
"did not!"
"did too!"
[repeat ad nauseum, with appropriate numbers of quote characters on the left...]
In point of fact, this tendency has *improved* since the last time I paid
attention, quite a bit, and I'd have to credit a fair chunk of the
improvement to Mr. Whittet; but it still isn't quite what I'd call fun to
deal with.
(And now I'm crowing with delight because earlier in the recent posts in
this thread he actually laid out a whole, nice, neat, map of what he
thinks ancient history was like, and I might actually be able to make
*sense* of the stupid threads in the future... Thanks, Mr. Whittet!)
That said. Stella Nemeth has a higher tolerance for a lot of the problem
folks in sci.archaeology than I have, largely I think because she's driven
by a substantially higher curiosity level. *I* hang around here (when
time permits) basically hoping that *someday* a bona fide South Asia or
urban origins specialist will show up and answer all my questions left
over from research a decade ago, and in the meantime I feebly try to
answer others' questions on these topics when I see them.
Stella Nemeth, on the other hand, strikes me as someone with *much*
broader interests and (at least in self-presentation) much less background
with respect to a lot of them. She usually presents herself as having
learned "X", back when, and if "X" is now believed wrong (as it often is),
asks why is this so, and where can she find out more. This strikes me as
not only an exemplary use of Usenet, but exactly what I'm up to, with the
difference that I'm all Usenet apparently has to offer on Iron Age South
Asia these days, so I do a fair chunk of pontificating that she doesn't
(in my experience) do. In point of fact, when I do decide to venture into
a big ugly thread, I routinely start by reading a few of her posts since
they tend to be concise, to have some sort of connection with the main
points of the thread, and actually to be cheerful. (I think I've seen her
flame once or twice, total.)
The reason that I describe this thread as an extreme example of the evils
of cross-posting is something like this. Sci.lang readers are here
arguing away with Mr. Whittet and getting increasingly frustrated. Then
this other unknown person crops up saying some of the same things, so it's
natural to take some of it out on her - which is indeed what I read you as
doing. But on the sci.archaeology side of the fence, it's pretty easy to
tell that that's not at all her schtick. So I said so, and angrily
because - unlike you, apparently - I found her meaning pretty clear. So I
assumed you were deliberately refusing her what she was asking, and in the
process misreading her, and I got mad.
My apologies, then.
That said, there are apparently a *lot* of people in sci.lang who think we
in sci.archaeology saw a legendary post or three about why lexicon size,
word count, whatever is a lame measure of a language's sophistication. I
did see a few fairly convincing examples early on here, but the threads
actually referred to don't seem to have been cross-posted. It might be
constructive if someone could just resurrect one of those legendary posts,
post it in reply somewhere along here (you might not even need to
cross-post to sci.lang, if you can't stand to see the thing again), and
let us catch up.
>(I don't suppose she is a big girl who can speak for herself?)
Far as I can tell she's older than me; most people who are, are bigger
than me. But what the heck, I did think it reasonable to stick up for a
lady. And she is one.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: So is this the whole thing then? (was Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks])
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 00:08:51 -0600
In article <56sfdo$hma@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote what's got to be the clearest outline of his basic take on
the order of protohistoric events that I've ever seen. I'm just going to
quote that chunk of the post in full, along with one quick reply to one
thing that's gotta be a misstatement, and leave the rest for inspection
etc. or maybe just dunce-capping me for noticing so tardily...:
Snipping a quite impressive cascade, we get to the obvious misstatement
first, then the clear outline.
>Some have suggested that at the point where the first
>historical evidence of language emerges, there is evidence
>of some very simple one or two consonant words still in use.
Um, like "hay"? Or "ma"? Surely you don't mean what you sound like you
mean, here; I should hope some early historical language or other would
have words like these! At least Chinese?
>The discussion of proto languages then gets into who
>would have been properly positioned to influence the
>spread of language to explain how languages from India to
>Europe still have traces of words they may have
>shared in a common ancestor, PIE, or Proto Tyrrhenian,
>or Proto World or Nostratic.
>
>It has been assumed that the domestication of the horse and
>the spread of language across Central Asia in the 3rd millenium BC
>is sufficient to explain this.
and then the clear outline:
>I have proposed that the increased use of boats for trade
>along coasts, across seas and up rivers in the 3rd millenium BC
>is another mechanism worth taking a look at.
>
>I then looked at the fact that in the Neolithic, when farming
>was being invented, the Persian Gulf had not yet finished flooding
>and the extended Tigris and Euphrates river valley connected a
>savanna like Arabia with the Zagros Mountains.
>
>As climate changed and the interior of Arabia dried up along
>with the Kuwait river, the river valley flooded and people
>were concentrated along its coasts.
>
>Bahrain/Dilmun was the point at which the river entered the
>Persian Gulf when the civilization of southern Mesopotamia
>first arose. It was still in contact with Makaan (Oman) and
>the Indus Valley.
>
>The Traffic up the Euphrates and Tigris reached Anatolia
>and the Black Sea. From the Black Sea rivers like the Danube,
>Dneister, Dneiper and Don ranged far inland. Most settlement
>was along these rivers and so they provided a good mechanism
>for trade.
>
>The water born trade connected India with Europe far better
>than the horses of the steppes. When necessary to head up
>into the mountains people carried horses in their boats
>and thus could use both means of transportation together.
>
>This model runs language through the burgeoning urbanized
>cities along the Euphrates, rather than around their periphery.
>It does require language to change rapidly in historic times.
>
>It then makes sense to look at the connections between the
>people inhabiting the Euphrates, The Hurrians, Mittani and
>Kassites in particular, and their association with horses,
>rivers, India and IE. To top it off you can look at the
>distribution of modern day ethnic groups along rivers,
>and in particular the distribution of the Kurds.
[snip a whole lot more]
Well, thanks. This is all well before my areas of particular concern, so
I'm just going to leave it here. But it provides necessary context for
tackling your post about South Asia later in the Etruscans thread.
Corrections, comments, whatever, well that's why I'm posting this, right?
Oh, one quick note, though. Where do you show horses in South Asia,
when? Sure sounds like you mean the 3rd millennium BC, and although I
know they've found the occasional Harappan remains of a horse,
controversially, that strikes me as basically way too early for any
serious assertions about horses in the Indus valley let alone the Ganga.
This looks to me like it would tend to strengthen your argument, but there
it is.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: Re: Indo-European Homeland -- India???
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 01:08:44 -0600
Here goes again...
In article <5777p1$oop@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote:
>In article , petrich@netcom.com says...
>>
>>In article <575k9a$1c1@reaper.uunet.ca>,
>>Sanjeev Shankar wrote:
>>>Loren Petrich wrote:
>>
>>>> Its speakers were pastoralist nomads that carried their language
>>>> from the Russian/Central-Asian steppes across the mountains to India.
>>
>>>This is highly speculative conjecture. Is there any archealogical
>>>proof for this movement?? Has any Sanskrit-like language
>>>been found in Russia/Central-Asia??
>>
>> Mallory's book _In Search of the Indo-Europeans_ discusses this
>>sort of question in detail. And it's a heck of a lot less speculative
>>than the much *longer* journey from India that would be needed by the
>>hypothesis that the IE languages originated in India.
[context; but here I start snipping]
>As a result he dates his proposed Pontic Caspian IE homeland
>c 2500 BC in order to allow some time for the transmission of
>language to take place. Unfortunately this is too early to put
>people in place to connect to India.
Doesn't that sort of depend on how long you imagine migrations as
requiring? *And* when you date the Rgveda to? Please note that 1500 BC
is *nothing* but Max Muller's raw guess. It is *not* backed up by
anything an archaeologist would call evidence, and I don't believe it's
backed up by much that's serious linguistically either. The folks who
argue for "out of India" and link this to a Sanskrit-speaking Indus Valley
civilisation don't make any sense to me, but they're not on Neptune or
something; for all we know, the Rgveda really *could* be that early
(though I have my reasons for not buying it). Or, as other revisionists
have been arguing lately, it could just as easily be post-1000 BC.
>If you center your IE homeland on the headwaters of the Euphrates
>c 1500 - 1200 BC you are an easy portage away from the Black Sea
>and the Mediterranean. You can go down to the lower sea, the
>Persian Gulf and connect to India.
Fast migration, which is certainly necessary if we're to get Sanskrit or
other Indo-Aryan languages in place in time for what I'd require, which is
basically the Punjab by around 800 BC, since I have no real doubts that
the Later Vedic texts reflect the PGW culture of that time.
Now, I find the idea of an Indo-European homeland on the headwaters of the
Euphrates at that time perfectly unbelievable, but I must admit I like the
idea of a sea migration. This would certainly help me account for the
relatively inconsequential effects the "arrival of the Aryans" would
appear to have had on material culture in general.
I strongly suspect though that this would be *much* easier to disappoint
me about than previous invasion-mitigating ideas I've had were.
[long snip]
>>>The ancient Indian scriptures also do not record any knowledge of any
>>>homeland other than Indian plains.
>>
>>Sure, sure (sarcasm). Why not consult rival scriptures some
>>time? :-)
>
>He is just mentioning the fact that India has written evidence
>of Sanskrit in place prior to c 1500 BC. You need to show some
>written evidence of Sanskrit outside India at an earlier date
>to make your theory work.
Um, let's see here.
1) Mr. Petrich, this was unfair of you. The "no other homeland" argument
is genuinely odd in the Indo-European context. Migration myths certainly
are basic to most of the other Indo-European histories I know of, anyway -
Persian, Greek, Latin (not sure about Hittite offhand), not to mention
parvenus like Celtic or Germanic. It's not just a goofy argument: South
Asia is weird this way.
2) Also, rival scriptures do back him up, if you're assuming that Mr.
Shankar is proceeding from a specifically Hindu nationalism. The Jaina
and Buddhist scriptures, which are in Indo-Aryan languages and (the older
parts) date to something like the time of Christ, or older back to about
500 BC according to taste, also show no signs of a migration myth so far
as I recall. (By the way, it's my personal opinion that Jainism at least
started as a strictly native pre-Aryan product, and probably the whole
samana "movement" that, on the encounter with Vedic beliefs, also gave
birth to Buddhism.)
3) Furthermore, for those of us without an undying interest specifically
in India, as India, the ancient Indian scriptures are a *lot* of the point
in studying the region. It may come as a surprise to non-South Asianists,
but it's commonplace in Indian archaeology (at least) to treat Gangetic
civilisation as having arisen independently of other civilisations, as
it's commonplace among the people I've read to assume about (say) China,
Peru, or Mesopotamia. Given the existence of Harappa, this no doubt will
strike you at first glance as utter piffle; but no convincing link between
Harappan and Gangetic civilisations has in fact been found (not that the
evidence has been sought all that hard), or at least not up to about 1985.
In any event, consider it as possibly true for a moment.
Then what we have in the Rgveda and later, yes, *scriptures* of various
faiths in ancient South Asia, *could* be contemporary textual evidence of
the rise of a civilisation, seen from the inside, from before it really
starts.
As it happens, I don't believe this is the case. There are all kinds
of dangerous oversimplifications in that last sentence above, and
ultimately I think we're just as much in the dark about early Kausambi as
about early Ur. Nevertheless, the point bears examination: if true, it
would be revolutionary.
Meanwhile, if you'd care to see what looking at those "sacred
scriptures" can produce in the hands of a good historian and
comparativist, try looking at Romila Thapar, ,
1984, Oxford I think. Perhaps this will be more persuasive as to the
value of this pursuit than anything either I or Mr. Shankar can offer.
4) Mr. Whittet, it was good of you to stick up for Mr. Shankar. But no,
that's not "written evidence", it's just a postulated date for something
which we don't have in writing until much, much, much later, and which
could be either earlier (though I doubt that) or later. And Mr. Shankar
was referring (I do believe) to a complicated set of things considerably
more complicated than what you posited.
>The fact is that the preponderence of evidence weighs heavily
>for Sanskrit as having originated in India and diffused to
>Armenia with the Mittani, up the Persian Gulf c 1500 BC.
Oh, good Lord. I don't even know where to *start* with this.
"preponderence of evidence"?
I'm not going to put on a pseudo-linguist hat to argue with you about the
meaning of the word "Sanskrit" or whatever it would take with this, when
there are real linguists around doing so. All I can say is, I certainly
haven't seen anything like this "preponderence of evidence" in the
archaeology. If you have, where is it in which aspects of the material
culture found at what sites?
I might add that I would have liked to see such evidence, when I first did
my research. Believing in Aryan migrations was an unwelcome conclusion
for me, rather fiercely resisted, and I'm still fighting against the idea
of "invasions".
But not on these terms.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: Re: Sanskrit: was: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: joe@sfbooks.com (Joe Bernstein)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 01:48:40 -0600
Posted and e-mailed, just in case my first message to Mr. Ansari went astray...
In article <574sbv$eeu@fridge-nf0.shore.net>, whittet@shore.net (Steve
Whittet) wrote that archaeology:
>is in the process of establishing links between the Harrapans
>and the painted Grey ware of the Ganges, and following the Amarna
>into Sotheast Asia and the Dong Son as the ultimate source of tin
>from China to Malaya or Meluhha.
Whoa!
1) Painted grey ware is pottery, not people. Kindly at least stick the
word "culture" or "people" or some such in there. Personally, I'd rather
see the abbreviation "PGW", or some such, as a way of separating the
culture from the pottery which (at some sites) is the most spectacular
remain it left.
2) WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN ***WHAT*** LINKS BETWEEN HARAPPANS AND PGW
PEOPLE YOU HAVE EVIDENCE OF? Oh, and WHICH Harappans you mean, given that
PGW is much, much later than the survivals of the mature Indus Valley
Civilisation - oh, how can I possibly make this unmistakably clear - I
mean the folks who built monumental architecture that people like John
Marshall dug up, built around the end of the 3rd millennium BC and dug up
since sometime in the late 19th century -
what *many* people call Harappan civilisation, I mean, though since you
apparently do have a broader view of the term kindly allow me to call
those folks people X -
well then. This people X leaves next to no remains in the Punjab - the
relevant region for contact with PGW people - late enough for contact with
the PGW people. Try checking the Allchins' book (I mean the 1982 one
here) for a detailed discussion of this.
Now here's the tricky part. You are perfectly free to say you really mean
some post-urban occupation at Harappa. Or you're perfectly free to refer
to later cultures at Rupar, or for that matter to the much more genuine
survivals at Lothal. But if you refer to some other culture, or some site
like Lothal that's *way* too far away from PGW homelands and doesn't show
significant material culture commonalties with them (unlike, say, the
vehemently non-Harappan commonalties to be found at Pirak Damb in Sindh
such as the use of grey ware or the abundant ash pits),
why then you simply won't have defended these alleged links
Harappan-Gangetic links, I don't think, in the sense in which "Harappan"
is commonly understood, which is some much stricter extension of people X.
Just saying, "Lothal had a port, and PGW settlements were on rivers", is
not enough.
Show me the evidence that Harappan traits moved between them.
Just saying, "Rupar had a Harappan settlement, and later had a PGW one",
is not enough. Unless I'm badly mistaken Taxila fits this description
too. Not enough.
Show me the connection between those periods.
Do what you're chastising these linguists for not doing:
Show some evidence for your postulated contacts.
>This is something of an understatement. Take a look at the
>settlement patterns of the Indus valley. Again we have people
>settled on rivers. At the time the Yamnaya occupy their 50 mile
>stretch of the Dneiper, Mohenjo-Daro occupies its 50 mile stretch
>of the lower Indus.
>
>Their trade goes across to Oman and up the Persian Gulf.
>The Harrapans occupying their 50 mile stretch on the upper
>Indus are really more closely associated with trade on the
>Ganges and after about 1000 BC they are tied into the painted
>greyware culture.
Oh, and by the way, when are you planning to back up this assertion of a
regional division between Mohenjo-daro and Harappa? On what basis?
And when you talk about their trade links, where are your cites? Lots of
work has been done on Indus Valley trade; I assume you've looked at
Kenoyer's papers? My recollection of those is quite hazy, but I seem to
recall something about a very complicated situation, involving trade
throughout the valley but at the same time very localised agencies. I do
remember his telling me about shell artifacts using shell from the Sindhi
coast being found in Afghanistan.
So your evidence?
And for the continuity in the north between mature Harappan (up to c 2000
BC) and PGW (post 1200 BC) culture, your evidence?
Wishing Moin Ansari were here...
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, free-lance writer and bookstore worker joe@sfbooks.com
speaking for myself and nobody else http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 09:00:54 GMT
In article <577ad3$oop@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet wrote:
>There was not a lot of overland traveling. Prior to the development
>of extensive networks of roads in urban areas most long distance
>travel was by river raft, barge or boat.
Evidence?
>Prior to the domestication of animals people generally went no
>farther from home than they could walk.
And if you continually walk in one direction, you will end up
going very far...
>Languages prior to the developing pressures of a sedentary urban
>lifestyle appear to have had relatively small vocabularies. perhaps
>on the order of one or two thousand words.
Evidence?
>Cattle and horses seem to come into India along with painted greyware.
>This may be coincidental. ...
I disagree. These beasts are more easily transported by land
(where they transport themselves :-) than by water. Imagine trying to
carry a whole herd of cows or horses in some boats some times (1000 lb /
500 kg each).
However, this would seem to be consistent with Painted Grey Ware
== Indo-Aryan keepers of cattle and horses.
>Are the Aryans and their hordes of horsemen a myth?
Try putting a horse into a boat some time :-)
>>> This family has several derived features relative to Indo-European;
>>> one of them is the vowels. Three of the original IE vowels, *e, *a,
>>> and *o, correspond well in the other IE langs, such as Latin and Greek;
>Why not Latin and Greek, which come much later, as derivatives of
>Sanskrit?
Mr. Whittet, don't be a doodoohead. It _used_ to be thought that
ancestral IE was very Sanskrit-like, but that notion was discredited in
the 1870's or so. The idea here is that vowels corresponding to *e, *a,
and *o correspond *very* well in most of the IE langs, but get reduced to
a in Indo-Iranian.
>>> Germanic obscures the distinction between *a and
>>> *o -- but Indo-Iranian turns all three into a. However, there is a trace
>>> of this feature in some of the ka/cha and ga/ja alternations -- the first
>>> of the pair had a or o as the original vowel and the second one an e as
>>> the original vowel.
>There are no Germans prior to c 200 BC. Latin and Greek are a strong
>influence on the Germanic languages, thus again, c 800 BC is your
>starting point.
It doesn't matter what they called themselves. Latin and Greek
were across some big mountains back then, and Germanic has some clear
differences from L and G, notably Grimm's Law of the stop consonants;
I'll compare English, Latin, and Greek, adding dashes to indicate more
clearly how the word divides up:
English Latin Greek
that is-tud to
two duo duo
three tre:s treis
hund-red centum he-katon
who quis tis
be fu- phu-
brother frater phrate:r
father pater pate:r
hound canis kuo:n
cow bo:s bous
Mr. Whittet seems to be claiming that Germanic got its
distinctions of vowels from Latin and Greek, but it must have got it in a
way that did not affect the stop consonants, which look more alike in
Latin and Greek than in Germanic (L,G t ~ E th, L,G p ~ E f, L,G k ~ E h,
etc.).
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
Mirrored at: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/pe/petrich/home.html
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: Mike Wright
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 18:15:27 -0700
Stella Nemeth wrote:
>
> Mike Wright wrote:
>
> >Stella Nemeth wrote:
> >>
> >> Mike Wright wrote:
> >>
[...]
[Stella]
> >> Think about it for a minute. If the size of your personal vocabulary
> >> didn't mean something, why did they test you on vocabulary and word
> >> usage before they let you go to college, or for that matter in some
> >> states before they let you go to high school.
>
> >The question is not whether my personal vocabulary "means something",
> >but whether or not it is a valid measure of something called the
> >"sophistication" of my language. School entrance exams test for
> >vocabulary that will be useful in the context of receiving training at
> >that particular school.
>
> You have an American e-mail address. You have to be the only American
> that didn't take the SAT test during the last 40 years.
Actually, it was only about 37 years ago that I took my college entrance
exam. They didn't require the SATs because they had their own test,
which, I presume, was designed to measure what they felt their students
should know in order to do well in their particular school. Since the
SATs are "standard", they must be designed to cover the requirements of
all the schools that want to use the SATs as entrance exams. Of course,
most modern Liberal Arts universities probably have pretty much the same
expectations, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. (I have my
opinions about the effectiveness of such testing, but I won't waste your
time with it here.)
> >> The idea that languages with large vocabularies are more sophisticated
> >> than languages with small vocabularies isn't a new one.
> >>
> >> And yes, you count the 40 words for snow or the 50 camel handling
> >> jargon words in the word count. The people who have 40 words for snow
> >> probably don't have as many scientific terms as 18th Century English
> >> had. And certainly 20th Century English has move scientific terms
> >> than the language of two centuries ago.
>
> >So, are you saying having many words for different kinds of snow (BTW,
> >this is apparently an unsubstantiated legend) or camel handling is less
> >"sophisticated" than having many words related to science and
> >technology?
>
> No. Try reading what I actually said, and refer to what has already
> been said on the thread.
Well, I read it, and I didn't understand your intent in terms of the
thread, which is why I asked for clarification.
> Someone earlier on the thread asked if one
> included scientific terms and professional jargon in counting up the
> vocabularies of various languages. Someone else pointed out that some
> peoples have large numbers of words for various kinds of snow and that
> Arabic has a large number of words belonging to the profession of
> camel handling that modern people speaking Arabic probably don't know.
> (I very much doubt if my father knew those words prior to WW I either.
> But then, he didn't handle camels as far as I know.)
The camel terminology example was mine. I guess I missed the post about
snow.
> My point was
> that one does indeed include scientific terms and professional jargon
> and atmospheric descriptive words because those words do belong to the
> languages in question. Obviously a language that has 40 words for
> snow is extremely sophisticated on the subject of snow. Just as
> obviously a language that has no words for snow probably originated in
> a place where snow doesn't fall.
>
> My point was that one does not select out those areas where a language
> demonstrates sophistication when one is trying to decide if the
> speakers of that language have the ability to discuss sophisticated
> concepts.
Then what does one select? I am still waiting for someone to explain why
(and in what way) "sophistication" is a valid categorization of language
(as opposed to a cultural value judgement). Sorry if I am being obtuse,
but the solution for that is for others to be more explicit.
> >Let's carry it a bit farther, then. Suppose your vocabulary and mine
> >happen to contain exactly the same number of "words", but my vocabulary
> >has more words related to farm animals and crops, and yours has more
> >words related to linguistics. Whose language is more sophisticated? What
> >if the topics are music and physics? How about chemistry vs.
> >electronics? Or, kinship terms vs. nautical terms?
>
> Exactly my point. If the two sets of vocabulary are exactly the same
> in size, but are different in the areas of sophistication, then the
> two sets of vocabulary are roughly equal as far as it is possible to
> categorize them.
Sorry I didn't detect your point when I read the original - which is why
I asked the question. So, if my point is your point, then we must agree
on this particular point, no?
> But how likely is that?
Only actual studies can tell us what is the case for any particular
comparison. The unrealistic example is just an attempt to separate the
question of word count from the question of content.
> What is more likely is that one set of
> vocabulary is bigger than the other. One set would then have the
> words for chemistry and electronics and kinship terms, while the
> other, if they were both in the same language might have nautical
> terms and kinship terms. Which speaker is more likely to be
> discussing sophisticated concepts then?
I don't know. Are chemistry and electronics necessarily either more or
less sophisticated than ocean navigation? To me, this is the crux of the
problem, whether discussing speakers of the same language or of
different languages. We have to go beyond simply counting vocabulary
items.
> >What if your vocabulary is twice as large as mine, but contains no words
> >relating to modern science?
>
> Then perhaps I am more sophisticated than you are, but in a different
> area of expertise than yours. Frankly, your example is funny because
> it is a quite likely situation to turn up. Non-scientists frequently
> have huge vocabularies with very few scientific terms in them, and
> some of them are substantially more sophisticated, by any reasonable
> yardstick, than grad student in chemestry at the local University.
I agree. This also undercuts the assumption that language becomes more
and more sophisticated as time goes on. I'd certainly put Chaucer or
Shakespeare up against the (mythical) average computer programmer in
terms of their ability to express sophisticated ideas about human
relationships. And I'd put the writers of the early Buddhist sutras up
against the average rocket scientist when it comes to analyzing the
human condition.
I think this whole discussion demonstrates that a simple quantitative
analysis of vocabulary is of little, if any, practical value in
comparing languages. Qualitative analysis is required - and it is
extremely difficult to perform such analysis in a meaningful way. It
requires that we go beyond armchair philosophy and "common sense", and
that we actually study actual languages in as much detail as we can
manage. I assume that that is what the "sci" in sci.lang is all about.
--
Mike Wright
____________________________________
email: darwin@scruznet.com
WWW: http://www.scruz.net/~darwin/language.html
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet)
Date: 24 Nov 1996 17:52:58 GMT
In article <577p1v$lp3@halley.pi.net>, mcv@pi.net� says...
>
>whittet@shore.net (Steve Whittet) wrote:
>
>>>>Lets start with a population of 1000 people and a vocabulary of
>>>>1000 words.
>>>
>>>Why?
>
>>Because that seems about right for a neolithic village. A bit
>>on the high side perhaps, but also trending upward to reach
>>perhaps 25,000 people with 2,000 words of vocabulary in the
>>Ubaid cities of southern Mesopotamia c 3,500 BC
>
>Archaeological evidence for that?
I thought I would just check a few of my sources and find out.
"The Pre and Proto History of the Arabian Penninsula", Nayeem
Neolithic defined broadly as 8000-2000 BC with several further
divisions. 250 some odd site reports ranging from 10 to 50
structures typify the early neolithic with "intensively settled
after 2000 BC typifying the late neolithic/early bronze age"
"Bahrain through the Ages", Michael Rice
"The Human biological history of the early Bronze age" B Frohlich
Population estimates from burials range from 7,823 figuring a
life span of 35 years and a 1000 year period of settlement to
44,700 figuring a 40 year life span and a 200 year period of settlement.
The villiage of Qa'lat al Bahrain was estimated to have a population
of 6,700 and the island of Bahrain a population of 67,000 in the
period 2800 - 1800 BC
"The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia" Michael Roaf
"During the late Ubaid period the sites were small,
less than 10 hectares , and fairly evenly distributed."
So how many people will ten hectares support? Well
in "Fanshan" (a book about Chineese peasants) an acre
of land was mentioned as necessary to support a family.
A hectare is 2.471 acres so allowing for the neolithic
farmers being a little less efficient than the Chineese
c 1940, lets say ten hectares would support 80 people
and there were 150 such sites in the area of southern
Mesopotamia with the largest three greater than 40 hectares
so say 12,000 people c 4300-3450 BC in that area.
Later some cities covered 16 sq km.
Figuring 640 acres to a square mile and
.621370 km to sq mi gives 25,451 people in UR
"Archaeology" Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn
describes similar methodologies for population estimates.
Measures of floor area, hearth counts, storage pits...
It gives 25 people in a hunter gatherer group and about
500 people in a tribe. The founder population for homo sapiens
is given as 1000 people, p 435.
In particular on pages 433-435. Page 434 it gives a graph
which essentially fits the model I have been discussing.
"The Times Atlas of Archaeology"
"The Times Atlas of World History"
>
>>>>The tribes language has 1000 words.
>>>
>>>You will find no such language anywhere.
>
>>Unless your position is that language is invented from scratch with
>>vocabularies exceeding 1000 words, it will at some point reach that
>>position.
>
>My position is that while we're talking about the last 50,000 years or
>so (probably more), "language invention" doesn't enter into it at all.
>You will not find any language anywhere in the world with a vocabulary
>as small as a 1,000 words. Period.
All right, I will give my data points and you tell me where you want
you want me to modify them.
Date Number of Homo Sapiens+ words in vocabulary
200,000 BC 1000 200 * hunting gathering
150,000 BC 10,000 400
50,000 BC 100,000 600
40,000 BC 200,000 800
30,000 BC 300,000 1000
20,000 BC 400,000 1200
10,000 BC 500,000 1400 * pottery
9,000 BC 600,000 1600 * farming
8,000 BC 700,000 1800 * pastoral nomadism
7,000 BC 800,000 2400 * domestic animals
4,000 BC 1,600,000 3,000 * metals
3,000 BC 3,200,000 4,000 * boats
Halloran has a couple of thousand Sumerian Akkadian words
from c 3500-2400 BC, so lets allow twice that allow for spoken
language which existed but was not written down.
2,000 BC 6,400,000 6,000 * Urbanization
Faulkner has about 6540 words in his Middle Egyptian, Here it
is less likely that over three some odd millenia a word which
existed would not be written down.
1,500 BC 12,800,000 8,000 * XVIIIth Dynasty
1,000 BC 25,600,000 16,000 * Colonization
500 BC 51,200,000 24,000 * Greek science amd math
- 102,400,000 32,000 * Missionaries
My F&WC; dictionary puts Old English at 40,000 words c 450 AD
1,000 AD 204,800,000 44,000 * Crusades
My encyclopedia claims the Chineese had 48,000 Separate ideograms c 1600 AD
1,700 AD 409,600,000 * 54,000 * Renaissance
1,800 AD 819,200,000 70,000 * Industrial Revolution
1,900 AD 1,100,000,000 90,000 * Global connectivity
1,950 AD 1,400,000,000 110,000 * Televison
1,960 AD 1,636,400,000 * 130,000 * College educations
1,980 AD 3,276,800,000 150,000 * PC's
1,990 AD 6,553,600,000 * 170,000 * Cell Phones
1,995 AD 13,107,200,000 * 190,000 * Internet access
2,000 AD 26,214,400,000 * 210,000
The worlds population figures are available from census
data after about 1600 BC and some populations were censused
even earlier. The vocabulary data are available from most
dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Starting c 200,000 BC Homo Sapiens populations begin to increase
though homo Erectus is still present. Homo Sapiens Sapiens,
Cro Magon, Neanderthal etc, are not distinguished, though it
is presumed Homo Sapiens + uses language and Homo Erectus does not.
The data makes some allowance for the Dark Ages and Renaissance
allowing an increase of only 8000 words over the entire medieval
period between 450 and 1600 AD but allows another 6000 words during
the Renaissance alone and a fairly steady rise since the industrial
revolution.
I also assume that generally there is no period prior to the
Neolithic in which people have more words than in the neolithic
and that nomadic pastoral people in the neolithic have more words
than the hunter gatherers who precede them, that there is generally
a trend toward more words rather than less as people learn to
domesticate animals, raise crops, build pyramids and boats etc.
>>>>Now to those variables add that after about 3500 BC people
>>>>start writing words down so they don't forget them as often.
>>>
>>>Writing did not reach Australia and other parts of the world
>>>until 5,000 years later.
>
>>Actually, the use of symbols which may communicate information,
>>although we have yet to decipher the meaning, have now been
>>found in Australia going back 175,000 years BP
>
>So what happened to the 3500 BC date?
Writing may have been inherent in things like petroglyphs and
tattoos which served to communicate a sense of identity at
the very least, ie; my self, my place, my property. I exist.
It is a couple of steps farther along before a system is worked
out where somebody else recognises the connotation you intended
to denote.
>
>>>Everybody has the vocabulary they need.
>
>>Which is what? The same for everyone or different would you say?
>
>Different for each individual.
>
>> How many words in Summerian or Akkadian?
>
>Nobody knows. A lot more than 1000.
Here is the problem. If you say there are more words in Sumerian
c 3500 BC than in Egyptian, c 1500 BC then you need to explain why.
Likewise if more words in Egyptian than Greek, or more words in
Greek than Old English. Do you agree thus far?
The same thing is true if you claim more words in the
Neolithic than after the rise of Sumer, or more words for
hunter gatherers than people who domesticate animals and
raise crops.
>
>>Don't you think the number of words in the written language of
>>an urban culture might have been greater than the number of words
>>in an orally transmitted culture of pastoral nomads or hunter
>>gatherers?
>
>I was talking about vocabulary size, not "number of words in the written
>langauge".
>
>>List the number of words in any primitive language and lets
>>see what the range is. After you run through numbers, foods,
>>body parts, kinship relations, physical surroundings, and
>>hunter gatherer jargon, what categories do you add on next?
>
>Verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, particles...
>...snip...
>Apart from that, there are several flaws in your reasoning.
>
>1. You are overrating our capacity to even determine the number of words
>in a language. There isn't even consensus over what constitutes a word.
>The exact number of words has not been determined for any language.
>
>2. You are overrating the difference in vocabulary size between
>"advanced" and "primitive" cultures. There may be some difference (but
>because of point 1, that's hard to quantify), but it's certainly not
>1,000 vs. 20,000 or anything like it.
Ok, I have attempted some quantification, I invite you to
adjust the numbers given the constraints of living within
the data I have sourced or providing a better source.
>
>3. You are overrating the significance of vocabulary size itself. Out
>of all the different aspects of language, vocabulary size is one of the
>least important. If you need a new word, you just invent it or you
>borrow it. That's all. Adding on a few application programs as needed
>does not change the OS.
If vocabulary increases at anything like the rate I am showing,
then a PIE language from the Neolithic, consisting of less than
two thousand words, would be totally buried by the wealth of
additions by the time you get to an Old English vocabulary
of 40,000 words.
>
>
>==
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
steve
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
From: S.NEMETH@IX.NETCOM.COM (Stella Nemeth)
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 18:48:19 GMT
petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich) wrote:
>In article <577ad3$oop@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
>Steve Whittet wrote:
>>There was not a lot of overland traveling. Prior to the development
>>of extensive networks of roads in urban areas most long distance
>>travel was by river raft, barge or boat.
> Evidence?
There is evidence of boats. There is no evidence of pack animals as
early as there is evidence of boats. The evidence for crude boats and
rafts is very early. There was a recent thread in s.a about boats and
rafts, for which evidence was cited, before the Neolithic. There is
evidence of very elaborate and sophisticated boats at the time when
there were only very crude carts, and when those were limited to very
small areas of the Middle East.
>>Prior to the domestication of animals people generally went no
>>farther from home than they could walk.
> And if you continually walk in one direction, you will end up
>going very far...
Here you have a point. I think that we underestimate the amount of
travel that people engaged in before modern times. I know that I am
always surprised at just how much travel was common for the middle
class or above during the Middle Ages.
>>Languages prior to the developing pressures of a sedentary urban
>>lifestyle appear to have had relatively small vocabularies. perhaps
>>on the order of one or two thousand words.
> Evidence?
Well, this is his theory. There is obviously no evidence for this at
all. That doesn't mean he is wrong. Or right. It means that he has
gotten to this point on other evidence.
>>Cattle and horses seem to come into India along with painted greyware.
>>This may be coincidental. ...
> I disagree. These beasts are more easily transported by land
>(where they transport themselves :-) than by water. Imagine trying to
>carry a whole herd of cows or horses in some boats some times (1000 lb /
>500 kg each).
Here I agree with you. Livestock, in quantity, generally can be moved
over land better and faster than over the sea, unless there are high
mountains, or unless you are going very far distances, or unless your
destination is an island. I keep thinking about descriptions of
people trying to move horses around in boats in the 11th or 12th
Century and just how much trouble it gave them. Also, although
rafting was a primary method of getting to the West of the US before
railroads, I'm not sure how much livestock was transported that way.
It would be a good analogy although it doesn't actually prove anything
either way. Moving livestock over land seems the best method. Long.
Dusty. And probably pretty miserable. But still the best method if
you are moving lots of livestock.
> However, this would seem to be consistent with Painted Grey Ware
>== Indo-Aryan keepers of cattle and horses.
>>Are the Aryans and their hordes of horsemen a myth?
> Try putting a horse into a boat some time :-)
Moving livestock by land is probably the best method, but If you think
moving livestock by water, especially in small numbers, is
impossible, please reconsider. William the Bastard became William the
Conquerer by putting an entire army's horses into boats. The Crusades
wouldn't have happened, couldn't have happened, unless the "Franks"
had been able to put lots of horses into boats successfully. It can
be done, and it has been done in historical times. It just isn't easy
to do. The Norse also seem to have moved quite large quantities of
small livestock (sheep sized animals) in boats on a regular basis. It
was the only way to get them where they were going since where they
were going was generally an island somewhere.
>>>> This family has several derived features relative to Indo-European;
>>>> one of them is the vowels. Three of the original IE vowels, *e, *a,
>>>> and *o, correspond well in the other IE langs, such as Latin and Greek;
>>Why not Latin and Greek, which come much later, as derivatives of
>>Sanskrit?
> Mr. Whittet, don't be a doodoohead. It _used_ to be thought that
>ancestral IE was very Sanskrit-like, but that notion was discredited in
>the 1870's or so. The idea here is that vowels corresponding to *e, *a,
>and *o correspond *very* well in most of the IE langs, but get reduced to
>a in Indo-Iranian.
No comment. I frankly glaze over when all of you start talking about
vowels. However, are you sure that this theory was discredited in
1870? I ask because I doubt if the books on language I was reading in
the 1950s were that far behind the times.
The American history book they gave me in the fifth grade (circa 1950)
had a 1908 copyright date. There had been no WW I, no WWII, no
Depression, no Korea. And who was this Teddy Roosevelt guy? I
thought the president named Roosevelt was named Franklyn? Talk about
confusing! I guess they thought a 10 year old wouldn't notice.
It isn't impossible that some of my other books were even older, but
considering the impression that one made on me, I doubt it. How many
10 year olds do you know that automatically check copyright dates on
every book they read?
>>>> Germanic obscures the distinction between *a and
>>>> *o -- but Indo-Iranian turns all three into a. However, there is a trace
>>>> of this feature in some of the ka/cha and ga/ja alternations -- the first
>>>> of the pair had a or o as the original vowel and the second one an e as
>>>> the original vowel.
>>There are no Germans prior to c 200 BC. Latin and Greek are a strong
>>influence on the Germanic languages, thus again, c 800 BC is your
>>starting point.
> It doesn't matter what they called themselves. Latin and Greek
>were across some big mountains back then, and Germanic has some clear
>differences from L and G, notably Grimm's Law of the stop consonants;
>I'll compare English, Latin, and Greek, adding dashes to indicate more
>clearly how the word divides up:
[snip, snip, snip] Word lists make me glaze over even more than
vowels do.
You haven't answered Steve's question. Or responded to his
statements. Do you agree that there were no Germans prior to 200 BC?
I, by the way, have no clue as to what the answer to that ought to be.
If there were Germans, by whatever name you wish to give them, what
languages were they speaking at that time and what evidence do we have
for either the peoples or the language?
200 BC is well within historical times. Even if the people in
question didn't have writing, the peoples who did have writing might
have described them and/or their languages.
> Mr. Whittet seems to be claiming that Germanic got its
>distinctions of vowels from Latin and Greek, but it must have got it in a
>way that did not affect the stop consonants, which look more alike in
>Latin and Greek than in Germanic (L,G t ~ E th, L,G p ~ E f, L,G k ~ E h,
>etc.).
I don't think Steve is claiming any such thing. I think Steve is
asking you the same questions I just asked you. There are other
languages out there that could be ancestral to the German languages,
with lots of Latin thrown in for good measure. Which ones do you
suggest as said ancestors?
Steve tried to get past Greek and Latin in the Egyptian word threads.
He seems to be trying to get past Greek and Latin in this thread too.
Unless, of course, you are claiming that IE stops dead at Greek and
that there is no evidence for anything before it and/or any other
families beside the Greek one and the Latin one within IE.
I may have what is mainly an Art History background, but even I know
better than that.
Stella Nemeth
s.nemeth@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: Sphinx and heavy rains
From: August Matthusen
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 11:35:57 -0800
Oliver Galloway wrote:
>
> On Thu, 21 Nov 1996 08:57:01 -0800, ME
> wrote:
>
> >I saw this TV show where this scientist thinks that
> >the damage on the Sphinx on its upper areas is from
> >heavy rains and not desert winds. The damage is
> >more extensive than the pyramids. This man thinks
> >that the Sphinx is probably about 10,000 years old.
> >What do you think?
>
> You're probably referring to the recent work of John Anthony West.
> The reason for the controversy is that if this is true (that the
> Sphinx is in fact +- 12 500 years old, ie. built around 10 500 BC),
> our understanding of civilisation would be hugely upset and we would
> also need to consider that development of civilisation is not
> necessarily linear (ie. primitive cave man to smart and squeaky clean
> us).
>
> The archeogeological evidence that West has produced seems to indicate
> that the Sphinx is in fact this old.
What archaeological evidence did West produce that the
sphinx is this old?
> The erosion on the Sphinx is a
> 'text book example' of rainfall eroded limestone (of which the Sphinx
> is made).
The dating suggested by Schoch hinges on weathering morphology
and not upon the the amount or type of erosion.
Could you please advise me of a citation for the "text book
example" which indicates this this type of weathering is
only due to rainfall?
> According to paleontological evidence, the last time that
> the region of the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx received substantial
> amounts of rainfall was about 11 000 to 10 000 BC.
Uhmm, no. Bull (1991; _Geomorphic Responses to
Climatic Change_) has a figure (fig. 3.3, p. 127) which shows the
climate change for the northern Africa area. Northern Sudan, Central
Sahara, and Egypt all became more arid c. 5000 years ago after
experiencing wetter conditions from c. 12000 years to 5000 years ago.
These "wetter" conditions ranged *up* to semi-arid (average approx 10 to
20 inches/year; Bull states: "In northern Africa, areas that now are
extremely arid were wet enough in the early to mid-Holocene for
sustenance of semiarid land snails, plants, ostriches, and hydrolytic
pedogenesis." [note: Bull's citations and references not listed]); the
current arid conditions equate to less than 10 inches/year average.
10 to 20 inches of rainfall per year is more than currently received,
but it is still not very much compared to other areas in the world.
Schoch suggested that the weathering indicated a date of 7000 to 9000
years ago. West, Hancock, Bauval change this toi 12000 years for some
reason. It appears that they think Schoch is wrong as do other
geologists who have studied the Sphinx for years and have documented
extreme weathering by salt crystal exfoliation.
See for example (especially Gauri et al. 1995):
Chowdhury, A.N., A.R. Punuru, and K.L. Gauri, 1990. Weathering of
Limestone Beds at the Great Sphinx; _Environmental Geology and
Water Science_, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 217-225.
Gauri, K.L., A.N. Chowdhury, N.P. Kulshreshtha, and A. R. Punuru,
1990.Geologic Features and Durability of Limestones at the Sphinx;
_Environmental Geology and Water Science_, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp.
57-62.
Gauri, K. L., J.J. Sinai, and J.K. Bandyopadhyay, 1995. Geologic
Weathering and its Implications on the Age of the Sphinx;
_Geoarchaeology_, Vol 10, No. 2, pp. 119-133.
Harrell, J. A., 1994. The Sphinx Controversy: Another Look at the
Geologic Evidence; _KMT_, vol 5., pp. 70-74.
Punuru, A.R., A.N. Chowdhury, N.P. Kulshreshtha, and K.L. Gauri, 1990.
Control of Porosity on Durability of Limestones at the Great
Sphinx,Egypt; _Environmental Geology and Water Science_, Vol. 15,
No. 3, pp. 225-232.
> It was also
> suggested that had the erosion on the Sphinx indeed been wind and sand
> erosion, the Sphinx would probably no longer exist today exept as a
> small mound of wind swept limestone.
Ablation by wind blown particles is a very inefficient process.
To quote from the _Encyclopedia of Geomorphology_ (1968) regarding
wind erosion: "As recently as 1920 many geologists attributed much of
the
broad-scale modeling of desert landscapes to wind erosion. We now know
that this view to be seriously in error. Many features thought clearly
to indicate the abrasive actions of wind blown particles are becoming
increasingly suspect. Bagnold's [1941; _The Physics of Blown Sand and
Desert Dunes_] studies indicating that the relative density of sand
flow falls off sharply above a few centimeters over a sand surface, and
less than 10 cm over a pebble strewn surface, has eliminated many
pedestal rocks with notches from 30-150 cm above the ground as possible
wind blown erosion features. The coincidence of notching with
lithology and, in selected areas, the discovery of clear crystalline
selenite (a variety of gypsum, a mineral easily frosted by wind blast)
as a surface litter near pedastel rocks and the preservation of
Paleolithic rock pictures above the abrasion zone are further evidence
of restricted wind cutting even in desert areas."
> Another reason for the long
> survival of the Sphinx despite its eroded condition is that the Sphinx
> has been buried (up to its neck) in desert sand many times over the
> years.
Peer-reviewed journal reference?
Regards,
August Matthusen
