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The precursors of Proto-Indo-European : the Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses
\"In The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European some of the world's leading experts in historical linguistics shed new light on two hypotheses about the prehistory of the Indo-European language family, the so-called Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses. The Indo-Anatolian hypothesis states that the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family should be viewed as a sister language of 'classical' Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all the other, non-Anatolian branches. The common ancestor of all Indo-European languages, including Anatolian, can then be called Proto-Indo-Anatolian. The Indo-Uralic hypothesis states that the closest genetic relative of Indo-European is the Uralic language family, and that both derive from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-Uralic. The book unravels the history of these hypotheses and scrutinizes the evidence for and against them. Contributors are Stefan H. Bauhaus, Rasmus G. Bj²rn, Dag Haug, Petri Kallio, Simona Klemenéciéc, Alwin Kloekhorst, Frederik Kortlandt, Guus Kroonen, Martin J. Kèummel, Milan Lopuhaèa-Zwakenberg, Alexander Lubotsky, Rosemarie Lèuhr, Michaèel Peyrot, Tijmen Pronk, Andrei Sideltsev, Michiel de Vaan, Mikhail Zhivlov\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Iconic origins of language? An essay review of Steven Mithen’s The Language Puzzle (2024)
This essay review explores Steven Mithen’s interdisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of language in The Language Puzzle (2024). It focuses mainly on what I call his iconic vocal origins hypothesis. Mithen challenges the prevalent gestural origins hypothesis, suggesting instead that early prehistoric languages were predominantly vocal and iconic, with conventionalization – as characteristic of symbol use – emerging later. The Language Puzzle draws on research from archaeology, philosophy, computer science, developmental psychology, and many other fields, thus assembling a wealth of insights from various disciplines. While intriguing, Mithen’s suggestion that prehistoric languages may have relied on iconicity instead of conventionalization faces substantial problems, which are discussed in this review essay. In the final section, I also briefly review the important conclusion chapter of Mithen’s book, which contains an imaginative outline of how language evolved from the last common ancestor up until modern H. sapiens. My criticisms of the iconic vocal origins hypothesis notwithstanding, The Language Puzzle is a valuable resource for anyone interested in language evolution, and once again showcases Mithen’s wide-ranging expertise and masterful writing.
Journal Article
Reflexes of Proto-Ryukyuan i and u in Miyakoan as a chain shift
The paper examines conditioned changes that occurred in Miyakoan (mostly Proto-Miyakoan) reflexes of Proto-Ryukyuan close vowels *i and *u after the unconditioned raising of Proto-Ryukyuan *e and *o had taken place. These changes in close vowels are interpreted here as chain shifts. The core assumption is that changes in *i and *u occurred in response to the raising of *e and *o in order to avoid or compensate for the functionally damaging merger of *i/*e and *u/*o.
The paper shows that there is a rather wide range of conditions under which *i and *u produced distinct reflexes in Miyakoan. Consequently, these vowels acted differently after stops, after sibilants, after nasals, in an onsetless/standalone position, after the flap, before the flap, and before nasals and other sonorants word-initially. At the same time, reflexes of both proto-vowels have been observed to maintain certain symmetry, meaning that in a similar environment, *i and *u generally underwent similar or analogical changes.
Thus, the conditions for identifying Miyakoan reflexes or *i and *u are listed and specified in this paper. Conversely, it is argued that unless one of these conditions has been met, one should reconstruct a Proto-Ryukyuan mid-vowel rather than a close vowel. Such specification may influence the comparative study of Ryukyuan languages to a significant degree, challenging a number of the so far established reconstructions (most notably Thorpe 1983).
Journal Article
Etymological dictionary of Latin and the other Italic languages
This etymological dictionary covers the entire Latin lexicon of Indo-European origin. It consists of nearly 1900 entries, which altogether discuss about 8000 Latin lemmata. All words attested before Cicero are included, together with their first date of attestation in Latin.
Book
Temporal Structure in Haptic Signaling Under a Cooperative Task
Haptic communication between humans plays an important role in society. Although this form of communication is ubiquitous at all levels of society and of human development, little is known about how synchronized coordination of motion between two persons leads to higher-order cognitive functions used in communication. In this study, we developed a novel experimental paradigm of a coin-collecting task in which participants used their hands to control a rod to jointly collect the coins on the screen. We characterized the haptic interactions between paired participants while they were taking part in a cooperative task. The individual participants first completed this task on their own and then with a randomly assigned partner for the cooperative task. Single participant experiments were used as a baseline to compare results of the paired participants. Forces applied to the rod were translated to four possible haptic states which encode the combination of the haptic interactions. As a next step, pairs of consecutive haptic states were then combined into 16 possible haptic signals which were classified in terms of their temporal patterns using a Tsallis q-exponential function. For paired participants, 80% of the haptic signals could be fit by the Tsallis q-exponential. On the other hand, only 30% of the signals found in the single-participant trials could be fit by the Tsallis q-exponential. This shows a clear difference in the temporal structures of haptic signals when participants are interacting with each other and when they are not. We also found a large difference in the number of haptic signals used by paired participants and singles. Single participants only used 1/4 of the possible haptic signals. Paired participants, on the other hand, used more than half of the possible signals. These results suggest that temporal structures present in haptic communication could be linked to the emergence of language at an evolutionary level.
Journal Article
Proto-Slavic inflectional morphology : a comparative handbook
In this volume, Thomas Olander offers a historical analysis of the inflectional endings of Proto-Slavic, comparing them with the corresponding endings in related languages and reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European point of departure.
eBook
K jedné kapitole z dějin jazykovědy. Příspěvek k 150. výročí úmrtí srovnávacího jazykovědce Augusta Schleichera | One chapter in the history of linguistics. A note on the 150th anniversary of the death of comparative linguist August Schleicher
The article concerns the history of linguistics in the 19th century, in particular August Schleicher’s place in the history of linguistics and his scholarly heritage for linguistics in the 20th century, recalling that he was the founder of a method still characteristic of comparative linguistics today. The report describes the theory and methodology of this German representative of comparative linguistics, presenting Schleicher’s research, which was influenced by Darwin’s Origin of Species and by Hegel’s philosophy. In Prague (1850–1857) Schleicher worked intensively on the synchronic and historical grammar of Old Church Slavonic (1852) and of Lithuanian (1856–1857). In Jena (1857–1868) he wrote one of the major syntheses of comparative and historical grammar of the Indo-European languages — his Compendium der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft der indogermanischen Sprachen (Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, 1861–1862) in which he postulated the first historical and comparative phonology of the Indo-European languages, which depends on the regularity, or “universal validity”, of the rules of sound change, or “sound laws”, and consolidated the large number of phonological and morphological descriptions of individual Indo-European languages into the unified system of a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language; Schleicher then represented the inter-relationships of the Indo-European languages in the form of a genealogical tree diagram (Stammbaum).
Journal Article
The precursors of Proto-Indo-European : the Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses
The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European contains sixteen contributions that offer the newest insights into the prehistory of Proto-Indo-European, taking the Indo-Anatolian and the Indo-Uralic hypotheses as their point of departure.
eBook