Paleolinguistics

Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers".

Quotes

• The extent to which one can accept or deny the premises of ‘archaeo-linguistics’ depends on the extent of one’s faith in the premises built up by orthodox ‘compara- tive philologists’ of the nineteenth century. That ‘New Archaeology’ of the 1960s and 1970s, which began by swearing in the name of ‘science’, should reduce itself to linguistic mumbo jumbo of the nineteenth century is possibly an object lesson in how archaeology need not be confused with hard science.
  • Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Review of K. Rajan, Early Writing System: A Journey from Graffiti to Brahmi. DOI: 10.1177/0376983617694685

• All prehistoric reconstruction is of course purely hypothetical, that is, based on conjectural assumptions. Strictly speaking any conjectural assumption is a guess. . . . A prehistorian depends on ... his imagination . . . trained by experience.
  • (Thieme 1964, 585); in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The apparent existence of a common term in the language, which is attained through reconstruction on the basis of the attestations in the daughter languages, does not prove that the item it denotes actually existed in the relevant original society.
  • (Polome 1992, 370). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The linguist J. Fraser (1926),for example, presented a well-known (but faulty) caricature of the whole enterprise by re-constructing a proto-Romance scenario from the paleolinguistic evidence of the historic Romance languages: "By th[is] same method of investigation we shall discover that the Romans had emperors, and a republic; that they had priests, called by a name represented by die French pretre, and bishops; that they drank beer, probably, but certainly coffee, and that they smoked tobacco" (269).
  • Fraser (1926), in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Now the more sophisticated among us could easily object here that it would take a great deal of naivete on the part of linguistic palaeontologists to propound such views, . . . yet such naivete seems to enjoy the status of high acumen, as anyone can see who reads some of the numerous volumes that deal with the "Indo-Eutopeans," their lives and their mo- res. But if the authorship of such works is not astonishing enough, the uncritical and admiring credulity bestowed upon them by a vast number of scholars certainly is.
  • (Pulgram 1958, 147) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The English language has laid under contribution almost every language on the face of the earth. We speak freely of the fauna and flora of other countries, not merely [of] England. . . . Names like 'lion', 'tiger', 'wine', 'cotton' . . . and hundreds of other things which are not indigenous in England but are perfectly familiar to every speaker of the English language all over the world. . . . 1 do not see how scholars placed in the same relation to English as we are to Indo-Germanic could tell that the Englishman knew cotton, wine, and the like only through literature or as articles of commerce, and not because he lived in a region which produced them all. That the palaeontologist of the future . . . should describe the Englishman as tending his vines in the neighborhood of tiger-infested jungles, would not, perhaps, be very astonishing. (272)
  • Fraser (1926), in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The determination of the Indo-Euopean civilization is precisely the point which affords least hope of any satisfactory result. It rests on linguistic evidence pure and simple, and it is open to the gravest doubt whether such evidence is capable of giving the results which are claimed for it by those who seek to determine the Indo-European home. . . . It should suffice to remember that on the basis usually adopted we would have to conclude that the Indo-Europeans knew snow and feet, but were ignorant of rain and hands. The difficulty, of course, is in theory recognized by all who deal with the issue; the trouble is that in practice they tend more or less completely to ignore it, and to create for us a picture of the Indo-Europeans which is probably a mere delusive shadow of the actual civilization of the people. Yet it should be a warning when we find that linguistically we may assert that the Indo-Europeans knew butter but were unacquainted with milk. (189-190)
  • Keith, A. B. 1933. "The Home of the Indo-Europeans." In Oriental Studies in Honour of Cursetji Eracliji Pavry (188-199). Ed. J. D. Pavry. London: Oxford University Press. (189-190) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• It is an elementary mistake to equate common Indo-European words with Proto-Indo- European words and to base thereon conclusions concerning the Proto-European Unolk or Urheimat. Yet this is precisely what has often been done. . . . impassioned linguistic palaeontologists have gone even further. From the existence of certain items of vocabu- lary in all or a majority of the extant Indo-European languages, and blandly ignoring all the pitfalls just noted, they even fabricated conclusions concerning the social organization, the religion, the mores, the race of the Proto-Indo-European.
  • (Pulgram 1958, 145-146) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The arbitrary and unrigorous methods that have characterized much of this linguistic paleontology certainly deserve Renfrew's scepticism. . . . Most of the lexemes that can be confidently assigned on the basis of widespread attestation . . . do not tell us much.
  • Coleman (1988) (450). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The clues afforded by linguistic paleontology were either so general that they accommodated both centres without much difficulty, or they were so hypothetical that they could be easily ignored if unsuitable.
  • McNairn, (quoted in Anthony 1995b, 96). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Most recently, Krell (1998) argued that "the old, pliable crutch of linguistic paleontology should certainly be abandoned, at least until the theoretical uses and limitations of the Proto-Indo-European lexicon have been more precisely defined" (280).... "It is imperative, in working with the problem of Indo-European origins, that the contents of the PIE lexicon not be treated too literally. Historical linguistics has shown numerous examples of how dramatically the meaning of a given word can shift in the course of a few centuries, let alone several millennia" (279). She concludes that "the use of so-called 'linguistic paleontology' . . . has always been a popular method in the construction of Proto-Indo-European urheimat theories. It rests entirely on the supposition that the meaning of a proto-form can be reconstructed beyond a reasonable doubt, a supposition which I argue is false" (279).
  • Krell (1998) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.