Pre-Indo-European languages
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The pre-Indo-European languages are any of several ancient languages, not necessarily related to one another, that existed in
A handful of the pre-Indo-European languages are still extant: in Europe,
Terminology
Before
The term pre-Indo-European is not universally accepted, as some linguists maintain the idea of the relatively late arrival of the speakers of the unclassified languages to Europe, possibly even after the Indo-European languages, and so prefer to speak about non-Indo-European languages. The newer term Paleo-European languages is proposed as a preferable description, but is not applicable to the languages that predated or coexisted with Indo-European outside Europe.
Surviving languages
These pre-Indo-European languages have survived to modern times:[5]
- in the .
- in the Caucasus, the Kartvelian, Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian which together include Georgian, Abkhazian, Circassian, Chechen, Ingushetian, Dagestani etc.
- in the Iberian Peninsula and France, Basque.
- in Paleosiberian languages.
Languages that contributed substrates to Indo-European languages
Examples of suggested or known substrate influences on specific Indo-European languages include the following:[citation needed]
- Pre-Anatolian:
- Hattic language
- Colchian
- Babylonian)
- Pre-Armenian:
- Hurro-Urartian languages
- Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Syriac)
- Substrate in Vedic Sanskrit, proposed sources for which include:
- Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (possible source of Sanskrit vocabulary, language not attested)
- Harappan language (not attested in readable script; see Indus script)
- Lullubi language
- Vedda language
- Burushaski language
- Dravidian languages
- Munda languages
- Nihali language
- Tibeto-Burman languages
- Substrates to early undifferentiated or partly-differentiated Indo-European in Western Europe:
- Old European hydronymy (possibly Indo-European, as originally thought by Krahe)
- Vasconic substrate hypothesis
- Tyrsenian languages
- Pre-Greek substrate languages, which may have included:
- Minoan language (see also Linear A, Cretan hieroglyphs)
- Eteocretan language (may have been a descendant of Minoan)
- Cypro-Minoan script)
- Lemnian language[citation needed] (probably related to Etruscan)
- Pre-Germanic:
- Pre-Celticlanguages:
- Insular Celtic:
- Goidelic substrate hypothesis
- For the British Isles, see Celtic settlement of Great Britain and Ireland
- Continental Celtic:
- Paleohispanic languages
- Vasconic languages
- Proto-Basque
- Aquitanian language (often thought to be the direct ancestor of Basque)
- Iberian language
- Tartessian language (classification as Celtic has been proposed)
- Vasconic languages
- Paleohispanic languages
- Insular Celtic:
- Pre-Italic languages:
- Tyrsenian languages
- Etruscan language
- Raetic language(probably related to Etruscan)
- Camunic language (probably Raetic)
- Elymian language (perhaps Indo-European)
- North Picene language
- Paleo-Sardinian language (also called Paleosardinian, Protosardic, Nuraghic language)
- Sicanian language
- Ligurian language(perhaps Indo-European)
- Tyrsenian languages
Other propositions are generally rejected by modern linguists:
Attested languages
Languages attested in inscriptions include the following:[citation needed]
- Tartessian
- Iberian
- Aquitanian
- Etruscan
- Rhaetian
- Camunic
- Lemnian
- North Picene
- Sicanian
- Minoan
- Eteocretan
- Eteocypriot
- Hattic
- Urartian
- Elamite
- Kaskian
- Gutian
Unattested but hypothesised languages
These languages are hypothesised to be related to pre-Indo-European:
Later Indo-European expansion
Further, there have been replacements of Indo-European languages by others, most prominently of most of the Celtic languages by Germanic or Romance varieties because of Roman rule and the invasions of Germanic tribes.
Also, however, languages replaced or engulfed by Indo-European in ancient times must be distinguished from languages replaced or engulfed by Indo-European languages in more recent times. In particular, the vast majority of the major languages spread by
See also
- Paleo-European languages
- Paleo-Balkan languages
- Languages of Neolithic Europe
- Pre-Indo-European (disambiguation)
- Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sámi languages
- Proto-Euphratean language
References
- ^ David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Oxford, 2010)
- ^ Haarmann, Harald. Pre-Indo-European Writing in Old Europe as a Challenge to the Indo-European Intruders Indogermanische Forschungen; Strassburg Vol. 96, (Jan 1, 1991): 1
- ^ Roger Blench, Matthew Spriggs (eds.) Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts, Languages and Texts, (2012, Routledge)
- ^ Craddock, Jerry Russell (1967). The unstressed suffixes in the western Mediterranean with special regard to Hispano-Romance (Thesis). University of California, Berkeley. p. 40.
- ^ Peter R. Kitson, "Reconstruction, typology and the original home of the Indo-Europeans", in (ed.) Jacek Fisiak, Linguistic Reconstruction and Typology, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1997, p. 191.
Bibliography
Archaeology and culture
- Anthony, David with Jennifer Y. Chi (eds., 2009). The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000–3500 BC.
- Bogucki, Peter I. and Pam J. Crabtree (eds. 2004). Ancient Europe 8000 BC—1000 AD: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Gimbutas, Marija (1973). Old Europe c. 7000–3500 B.C.: the earliest European cultures before the infiltration of the Indo-European peoples. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 1/1-2. 1-20.
- Tilley, Christopher (1996). An Ethnography of the Neolithic. Early Prehistoric Societies in Southern Scandinavia. Cambridge University Press.
Linguistic reconstructions
- Bammesberger, Alfred & Theo Vennemann, eds. Languages in Prehistoric Europe. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2003.
- Blench, Roger, & Matthew Spriggs, eds. Archaeology and Language. Vol. 1, Theoretical and Methodological Orientations. London/NY: Routeledge, 1997.
- Dolukhanov, Pavel M. “Archaeology and Languages in Prehistoric Northern Eurasia”, Japan Review 15 (2003): 175–186. https://web.archive.org/web/20110721072713/http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/IJ1507.pdf
- Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.
- Greppin, John and T.L.Markey, eds. When Worlds Collide: The Indo-Europeans and the Pre-Indo-Europeans. Ann Arbor: 1990.
- Haarmann, H. “Ethnicity and language in the ancient Mediterranean”, in A companion to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean. Edited by J. McInerney. Wiley Blackwell, 2014, pp. 17–33.
- ISBN 0-941694-82-8.
- Mailhammer, Robert. “Diversity vs. Uniformity. Europe before the Arrival of Indo-European Languages”[permanent dead link], in The Linguistic Roots of Europe: Origin and Development of European Languages. Edited by Robert Mailhammer & Theo Vennemann. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2016.
- “Pre-Indo-European”, in Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. Edited by Glanville Price. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. ISBN 978-0-631-22039-8.
- Ringe, Don (January 6, 2009). "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe". Language Log. Mark Liberman. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
- Vennemann, Theo. Languages in Prehistoric Europe north of the Alps. https://www.scribd.com/doc/8670/Languages-in-prehistoric-Europe-north-of-the-Alps
- Vennemann, Theo (2008). Linguistic reconstruction in the context of European prehistory. Transactions of the Philological Society. Volume 92, Issue 2, pages 215–284, November 1994
- Woodard, Roger D. (ed., 2008) Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press.
- Woodard, Roger D. (2008) Ancient Languages of Europe. Cambridge University Press.