Talk:Indo-European studies

while the article makes clear that the IE theory is only a theory, it doesn't mention any objections and controversies or alternate explanations to questions answered by the IE theory. I know by my personnal reading that there are many philologists who dismiss the theory altogether, or disagree with large parts of it (for example, that Greeks don't belong in the family). Sadly, I am not a linguist nor a historian to expand this field myself. I write the present notice so that someone more aware should consider adding the controversies as well. Pictureuploader 16:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, what? There is no credible philologist who can doubt the general notion that Indo-European language family originated from the same language. Obviously there are many disagreements about details, but "dismissing the theory altogether" is something akin to, for example, dismissing the theory of evolution in biology. Someone who does this is not a philologist.

As for Greek, I am aware of scholarly discussion over certain issues, e.g. the nature of the substrate language believed to be native to Greece before the Proto-Hellenic Indo-European speakers arrived. But there is no doubt of the status of modern and ancient Greek as Indo-European languages: the etymologies and connections with other Indo-European languages are very well-established. It was the comparison of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit that gave rise to the field itself. --Saforrest 20:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Second the motion. I suppose that in any field of study there are people who, for whatever reason, challenge extraordinarily solidly-grounded conventional wisdom: the Flat Earth people, the perpetual motion people, the holocaust deniers, the folks who are sure that Britons (or is it Anglo-Saxons?) are the "real" Jews, and of course the platoons of Atlantis freaks and so on. But as Saforrest says, there's no denying the massive, interlocking, internally-consistent, sometimes obvious sometimes amazing, interconnections of the Indo-European languages that can only be explained by the usual hypothesis. (And you know, it's not just a matter of finding "similarities": our science requires us to reject many similar-looking elements as necessarily unrelated, for a trivial example the "obvious" comparison of English he, she, it com-es with German er sie es komm-t, actually matches only in the root of the verb (though there are those who would equate she and sie; in error, I believe). That is, these elements (apart from come = komm-) cannot be connected historically.)

I myself know, if only by rumor, that there are people out there, now, who insist that since if you know Latin you can't read Greek, they can't be "related" (really, it's true), and even more strangely, young German university students who think that "sound laws" were some sort of idealistic nonsense cooked up by the Nazis (really, it's true). Others, ignorant of how languages work, seem to think that the patterns of similarity and difference can be equally well explained as borrowing. (Actually, no less a scholar than Kretschmer suggested such a thing in his History of Greek -- plainly the wrong man for the job!). But ... but ... "many philologists who dismiss the theory"? Name one, Pictureuploader. Better yet, name many. (And for heaven's sake get a new reading list.) Alsihler 23:40, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Books

I was wondering, do anyone here know the best books to buy to get a general overview of Indo-European scholarship and studies, particularly its religion, and as well as of the current discussions in the field. I've looked around for a number of books, but I'm not sure what the best ones to get are. Any help is accepted. Thanks in advance. Satanael 13:24, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

the EIEC gives a good overview of the field, a bit heavy on archaeology, and it's reasonably recent too. Oswald Szemerenyi's Introduction is rather advanced for its title, but certainly recommendable. dab (ᛏ) 14:31, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Criticism"

political ideologies of individual scholars is not "criticism" of the field by any stretch. We can well discuss ideological currents that affected the field in the past, in the "history" section. This has nothing to do with "criticism", but simply amounts to generally acknowledged events in the field's (rather remote) history. dab (𒁳) 16:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only individual scholar that was discussed in some detail was Dumezil, who is essential for the post-war history of the field. Some aspects of IES have been ideologically abused in politics, and deserve a mention. The history section of this article should also mention the history of the field during the Nazi period, but strangely the article has nothing about this. You cannot compare this article to the Physics article, which is a completely different topic. When a supporter of "Deutsche Physik" is criticized, he is criticized without taking into account the field of physics. This is different here, where some of Dumezils critics argue that his beliefs also influenced his studies. I'm writing a shorter note about this in the history section, what do you think about it?. --RF 17:57, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I quite agree. Aspects of the field have been abused in politics. This is, as such, not a criticism of the field, but a criticism of people who abuse linguistic scholarship for political purposes. The case is perfectly comparable to nuclear physics being abused to kill people. But in the physics case, actual results are abused for such ends, while in the field of linguistics, it isn't so much results as obstruse speculations loosely based on results that have a political impact. dab (𒁳) 19:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we agree that the debate about IES and fascism (e.g. Dumézil, Indo-Europeanists and the Nazi regime, Haudry, Pearson) deserves a mention. If you want, we can ask User:Paul Barlow, who has been using the same source, if he could write a better write-up. --RF 19:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm. And I have to say that the idea of Indo-European Linguistics (and related studies) as a sort of "bourgeois" hobby pursued by scholars who prevailingly "identify" (present tense) with Proto-Indo-Europeans is either grossly inaccurate or grossly anachronistic. There was a marked tendency, which perhaps reached into the early 20th century, to characterize the speakers of PIE or even the early dialects as brave, noble, upstanding, blond, long-headed, clever, manly, and so on. But such ravings were in any case confined to Introductions and Forwards. When actually worrying about the likely makeup of the optative mood, or whatever, there was little appeal to that sort of thing, at least once one got past Grimm's speculations that things like strong verbs were an expression of the Teutonic Vigor of Intellect and Love of Freedom (or was that the first consonant shift? It's so hard to keep nonsense straight). And where the Soviets get off talking about pseudo-scholarship I don't know. Alsihler 20:48, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The real criticism of IE should be that no one knows when to stop reconstructing. Some aspects of IE and some vocabulary seem extremely solid (Father/pater et cetera). These are clear and obvious, with lots of examples of similar words in different languages and few and simple sound changes. But, there are other derivations out there that are based on very little evidence, that assume sound changes of bizarre complexity and specificity, and are thus highly implausible. And, of course, there are also derivations in the middle which are probably mostly right, but who really can tell? The problem is that the field has not attempted to develop a good way to tell the solid from the silly. So, there is good reason for criticism on technical grounds. Gpkh 23:49, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]