<!--QuoteBegin-Husky+Mar 21 2007, 08:02 PM-->QUOTE(Husky @ Mar 21 2007, 08:02 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->numerous scholars in IE Studies themselves have variously questioned:
(b) <i>PIE:</i> do the IE languages need to have descended from a common ancestor in order for them to show the similarities they have? Or are there other ways in which this could have been accomplished?
(c ) <i>The Indo-Europeans/Aryans:</i> is it necessary for there to have ever been a single ethnic group of people even if there had been a PIE? That is, single common language need not imply a single people who spoke it[right][snapback]65940[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I've labelled the above (b) and (c ) to paste examples for each from elsewhere at IF.
(b) Example of doubting PIE:
In the following, Bruce Lincoln in <i>Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship</i> talks about the theory of the PIE-family-tree for explaining the similarities between 'IE' languages <i>versus</i> different means of how they could be related. (That is, there's no need to suppose there ever was an ancestral PIE from which IE languages descended. Rather, other equally-likely explanations exist to account for similarities of languages classed as IE.)
'Stammbaum theory' mentioned below is the theory of the family tree rooted in PIE:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Conceivably, the Stammbaum theory is correct, although its logic involves leaps that are open to question. First, it explains the relation among the Indo-European languages as the result of divergence from a hypothetical protolanguage, or Ursprache. In theory, however, one can also explain this as resulting from processes of convergence, rather than divergence, as N. S. Trubetzkoy argued in a famous article published on the eve of the Second World War. Pace the Stammbaum, Trubetzkoy offered a wave model, in which each group in a string of peoples had its own language and interacted socially and linguistically with its neighbors. [p. 212]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(c ) Example of doubting Indo-European people, even if scholars accepted PIE <i>or</i> at least accepted some connection between various languages classed as IE today:
(Also from Bruce Lincoln's writing - see Rajesh_G's post 87 of Unmasking AIT thread)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Other authors have challenged the Stammbaum model on other grounds, observing that even if the historically attested Indo-European languages did descend from a single proto-language, the existence of this ancestral language by no means implies the existence of a single, ethnically homogeneous people who spoke it. Thus Franco Crevatin suggested that Swahiliâan artificial lingua franca, spoken across vast portions of Africa as an instrument to facilitate long distance tradeâmay be a better analogue than Latin for theorizing Proto-Indo-European. His desire, like Trubetzkoy's, seems to be to imagine a more irenic, more diverse past as a means to guard against scholarly narratives that encode racism and bellicosity. In Crevatin's view there was a Proto-Indo-European language and there were people who spoke it for certain finite purposes, but no community of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Similar is Stefan Zimmer's position, intended as a rebuke of racist theories, hypothesizing a protolanguage spoken not by an ethnically pristine Urvolk but by a shifting, nomadic colluvies gentium, a "filthy confluence of peoples,". [pp. 212-213]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->That is, both Franco Crevatin and Stefan Zimmer are suggesting that the people who spoke PIE were not necessarily a single ethnic human population (the Oryans), meaning that the Indo-Europeans (the people who spoke PIE) might have been people from <i>many</i> ethnicities who spoke a common language, for example as a means to facilitate trade.
(b) <i>PIE:</i> do the IE languages need to have descended from a common ancestor in order for them to show the similarities they have? Or are there other ways in which this could have been accomplished?
(c ) <i>The Indo-Europeans/Aryans:</i> is it necessary for there to have ever been a single ethnic group of people even if there had been a PIE? That is, single common language need not imply a single people who spoke it[right][snapback]65940[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I've labelled the above (b) and (c ) to paste examples for each from elsewhere at IF.
(b) Example of doubting PIE:
In the following, Bruce Lincoln in <i>Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship</i> talks about the theory of the PIE-family-tree for explaining the similarities between 'IE' languages <i>versus</i> different means of how they could be related. (That is, there's no need to suppose there ever was an ancestral PIE from which IE languages descended. Rather, other equally-likely explanations exist to account for similarities of languages classed as IE.)
'Stammbaum theory' mentioned below is the theory of the family tree rooted in PIE:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Conceivably, the Stammbaum theory is correct, although its logic involves leaps that are open to question. First, it explains the relation among the Indo-European languages as the result of divergence from a hypothetical protolanguage, or Ursprache. In theory, however, one can also explain this as resulting from processes of convergence, rather than divergence, as N. S. Trubetzkoy argued in a famous article published on the eve of the Second World War. Pace the Stammbaum, Trubetzkoy offered a wave model, in which each group in a string of peoples had its own language and interacted socially and linguistically with its neighbors. [p. 212]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(c ) Example of doubting Indo-European people, even if scholars accepted PIE <i>or</i> at least accepted some connection between various languages classed as IE today:
(Also from Bruce Lincoln's writing - see Rajesh_G's post 87 of Unmasking AIT thread)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Other authors have challenged the Stammbaum model on other grounds, observing that even if the historically attested Indo-European languages did descend from a single proto-language, the existence of this ancestral language by no means implies the existence of a single, ethnically homogeneous people who spoke it. Thus Franco Crevatin suggested that Swahiliâan artificial lingua franca, spoken across vast portions of Africa as an instrument to facilitate long distance tradeâmay be a better analogue than Latin for theorizing Proto-Indo-European. His desire, like Trubetzkoy's, seems to be to imagine a more irenic, more diverse past as a means to guard against scholarly narratives that encode racism and bellicosity. In Crevatin's view there was a Proto-Indo-European language and there were people who spoke it for certain finite purposes, but no community of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Similar is Stefan Zimmer's position, intended as a rebuke of racist theories, hypothesizing a protolanguage spoken not by an ethnically pristine Urvolk but by a shifting, nomadic colluvies gentium, a "filthy confluence of peoples,". [pp. 212-213]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->That is, both Franco Crevatin and Stefan Zimmer are suggesting that the people who spoke PIE were not necessarily a single ethnic human population (the Oryans), meaning that the Indo-Europeans (the people who spoke PIE) might have been people from <i>many</i> ethnicities who spoke a common language, for example as a means to facilitate trade.