Fwd: [Ind-Arch] Reconstructed Proto Indo-European is a deformity not a beauty.

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[ind-Arch] Reconstructed Proto Indo-European is a deformity not a beauty.IndiaArchaeology

 

 

 

 

Reconstructed Proto Indo-European is a deformity not a beauty.

Schleicher's (1863) tree of Indo-European languages is based on a

mistaken application of Darwin's theory of biological evolution.

Languages do not just keep splitting for ever into neat little trees.

 

See below:

 

" Though he had available no strong understanding of the mechanisms of

genetic transmission, Darwin recognized that reproduction was a key

point of interaction between species and environments; through

reproductions the organism propose, and through selection the

environment disposes. Selection, then, is the name for outcomes of

interaction between environments and genetically determined

characteristics of organisms (Lewontin 2000). No directional dynamic

is needed or implied in this mechanism.

 

Schleicher's parthogenetic image of linguistic " reproduction " , as I

(Errington) showed in chapter 3, made it possible for his

Indo-European " tree " to blur this basic conceptual difference, and so

also differences between Darwinian (variational) and romanticist

(transformational) views of history. Once philology had literalized

metaphors of descent, language and linguistic change could made to

stand, part for whole, for communities of humans and their histories,

but for natural history as well. By helping to make social Darwinism

a natural fact, comparative philology demonstrated underlying dynamics

of civilizational progress, from industrialization to imperialism, in

the world at large (Errington 2008, p. 83). "

 

" With vague aesthetic considerations set aside, Jespersen turned the

question of linguistic development on its head: [t]he so-called full

and rich form of the ancient languages are not a beauty but a

deformity " (Jespersen 1894: 14). This becomes clear in the linguistic

present and " analytic structures " of modern European languages, which

mark their " unimpeachable superiority over the earlier stages of the

same language (Errington 2008, p. 131). "

 

Errington, J. (2008). Linguistics in a colonial world: a story of

language, meaning, and power. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN

978-1-4051-0570-5

 

 

 

 

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