The Classics Society Mk II

Oooh, shame on you. Don't you like pronouncing Latin? I love it. My ears actually jangle when people pronounce things wrong.

Well I struggle with some English words (darn speech impediment) although I generally like reading outloud, it's because I wasn't confident having not pronounced any for a a year before the lesson.

Hm. Do you not pronounce it in your head when you read? That's what I usually do.

Oh I do, I just then get nervous having to read it out plus I hadn't seen much latin for that year (well it was more like 9 months)

Oh right, that makes sense now. All the better that you got back to it

Yeah, I think (but am very happy to be corrected) that Germanic mainly crops up in introductory handbooks; so it's not being used actually to reconstruct anything anew, but simply to allow readers to compare the various families alongside standardly accepted reconstructions (which will not necessarily have been reconstructed from the "data-sets" given). And they can do their own kind of proto-reconstruction with the given forms just to see how the reconstructions came about, which is easier for introductory purposes than them having always to use the most valuable forms from languages they know little about. So whilst there may be no objective/scientific reason why modern German is chosen, rather than middle Aryan or whatever (which, in fact, as Lyceum says, would undoubtedly be a better choice when doing original reconstruction), I think the cultural reason is compelling enough, that lots of readers will be familiar with modern German but not middle Aryan -- and then giving German, alongside English, allows the reader to compare another modern Germanic tongue, since English is going to be there anyway (if only to serve as a translation), and allows them to compare and contrast the effects, for example, of Grimm's Law in the two languages (which, of course, has nothing to do with reconstructing PIE, but is interesting for its own sake).

So, yes, it would be a methodological fault if those tongues were used in the reconstruction of PIE, but when just introducing students to the received wisdom, it seems quite useful for German to be included.

Also, Apeiron: it's been a while since I've read anything relating to PIE, so I may be a bit shaky here, but you say that one should assemble proto-Germanic, proto-Indo-Iranian etc. and use those forms to shed light on PIE, but I'm wondering how useful that would be, when we know, for example, that proto-Romance is markedly different from the form of Latin that the Romance languages did actually evolve from (in other words, one doesn't get a very accurate picture of the ancestor language because its descendants lost so much information)? So if you forgo the intermediate step, you're likely to get a more accurate result (since you won't be reconstructing from hypothetical forms that are bound to contain errors), right? Or not?

Yes, I agree it is useful when explaining the comparative method to use languages that are familiar and I don't really see that as a methodological problem. Almost all disciplines consist of 'lies to children' in their early pedagogical stages because reality is complex and going further into a subject consists, in part, of unlearning what you previously thought you knew.

Your point about proto-Romance is a good one. I, too, have been out of the game for a while, although I have done a fair bit in my time. Proto-Romance does actually give a fair idea of Latin (see, for example, W. D. Elcock), but it's not the Latin of Cicero, it's the 'street Latins' of people all over western Europe and the rise of Church Latin is also a complicating factor.

Ancient languages are mostly presented to us as the encoded speech remains of a ruling elite, but in reality they would have existed in many overlapping dialectal forms each with its own history, just like any language today.

I don't think given the ideological history of this discipline that little white lies are the best things to be honest, and as I said when we're talking about PIE studies there is more than simple linguistic reconstruction and that suffers even more from ideology. I think it's marked that even despite all our hard evidence (linguistic data) so much can be interpreted via euro-centric bias (i.e Germanic/Occasionally North European, see Lincoln etc). I also don't like the way so often things are being presented as absolutes in the wider field.

As for Elcock (1975) it is an interesting, but admittedly old, study. I think the level of verisimilitude between Latin and P-Romance is an interesting one. I do wonder to what extent the similarities we're seeing existed in actual speech. I suspect the disparity was much more apparent than our dry papers let on. I would be interested to see what more recent scholars have been up to in this area, I've only had a chance to flick through books though.

I don't think the classical languages are always or even that commonly taught as embedded elite codes by the way. In terms of Latin most students will come across Cicero's Letter or the Comedies. Anyone staying with Latin long enough will eventually come across Pliny, Juvenal etc...i.e later authors but still Roman. Most teachers will point out the colloquialisms, the subtle changes in the way the language works over time etc

Likewise in Greek, the emphasis on understanding "register" is much more pronounced. There have been quite a few recently studies in this area too, see for example Willi (2003) etc

I have been out of comp. phil. a long time...

I don't think I really disagree with you but I am curious to know why you think that ideological bias is such a big problem -- I am aware it was, but has it been seriously so in the last 20 years (or even 50), disregarding any lunatic fringe?

It seems to me that if you are writing an elementary textbook in English you would tend to use, at least initially, examples drawn from English/French/German rather than, say, Armenian/Hindi/Pashto. I agree, however, there is an overall European preponderance.

Re the development of Latin, I would not deny that Juvenal's language is different from Cicero's, but it is closer to it, in terms of phonology and morphology, than it is to near contemporary graffiti (obviously, there are stylistic/register issues here).

I have been out of comp. phil. a long time and I am guessing you are better connected. Recently, I read Anthony's Horse/Wheel/Language, though. Just curious to know how it's rated, if you know.

If you don't mind my asking, what's your background? Where/what did you study?

Yes, of course what you're saying makes sense, if only it was restricted to entry levels I think we'd all be fine. Just recently for example I had the pleasure of reading a contemporary academics thesis how the Mycenaeans were really Germans, for example. It is a lunatic fringe, yes, but shockingly these lunatics occasionally have university places (admittedly, not in the UK usually) and this is the face we present to the wider public.

As for "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" I think reactions were a bit mixed, mostly on the meh side. I don't remember it being overly Eurocentric or anything, I think the biggest meh with it was that it doesn't really do much new, for your money the old Mallory book is still much better. Thankfully it tries to stay away from what some people still deem "Anthropology" i.e measuring faces.

You know in terms of books like the above, Mallory etc, there's not much been written which isn't better served as toilet paper. Partially I know because everyone half decent at that stuff I've spoken with does not want to touch it with a barge pole, even ACTUAL anthropologists like N Allen. I think in general the linguistic side of PIE studies are in better overall shape but that's not saying much. It's far from being a respectable discipline.

EDIT: Also there are massive problems with things like invasion theories that we've stepped away from...only one of the branches actually testifies to violent take overs and that's problematic in its own way.

As for Latin I agree that, obviously, there's a wilful tendency to mimic classical Latin. Compare Fortunatus and Cicero versus their respective contemporary speech (what we can reconstruct of it, at least) and you do admittedly get much more similarities than divergences, however bits can be seen through the cracks so to speak and for that reason alone I think most teachers will try to explain linguistic changes to their pupils.

Thanks! That's very informative. Myceneans = Germans? I've clearly led a sheltered life. Haven't read Mallory for years - must get a copy. That's early 90s, if I recall, not long after Renfrew's book appeared on Anatolian origins. I liked that book and I thought he argued well, but for an untenable hypothesis. I take it that would still be the majority view today?

I added a bit to my profile. That's enough, for now.

Totally off-topic, but I love the snow. I just went out to buy something from the shop and on my way home got into a snowball fight with three very flirty girls (not minors, of course) and then got hit on by a completely different girl five minutes later. Must be something in the air!

Snowing there too eh? It's snowing down here too...not enough for snowball fights but more than enough to make running around naked yelling the Aeneid a stupid idea.

Oh yeah there is a sizeable amount of Geman scholars who pretty much assume PIE = Germanic. Understandably the real scholars in Germany who deal with this stuff are pretty pissed about it, especially as they seem to be the more vocal part.

The idea behind the theorising is that the IE language which became Greek had to come from somewhere, they assumed North and then linked that to Germans (who they assume to be indigenous). I don't think I need to point out the logical flaws in the theory, let alone the linguistic etc.

Your analysis of the Renfew book is spot on, an otherwise amazing Archaeologist but he should leave well alone in that area. It is an interesting hypothesis but untenable for a variety of reasons. Incidentally most people support a central Asiatic origin, it is one of the least problematic (but still pretty crappy) solutions. The book you asked about takes a similar tack if I recall correctly. I myself am agnostic; I don't really care though I like to work from a process of elimination. I think its fair to say we can exclude Europe and wide parts of Asia so a central/north central is probably as correct as we can get.

Yes well the Mallory book is quite generalist but his overall fairness and willingness to sit on the fence make it one of the most useful books in the area and certainly its the best recommended.

Conversely there's been a relatively recent book out on OUP (!!!) concerning the Indo-Aryan origin arguments. I know that doesn't sound that promising since its linked to one sub-grouping and is mainly a consideration of the controversial Out of India Hypothesis however it is actually one of the most brilliant expositions produced recently in this area. He sensibly, tentatively, rules against the OOIndia hypothesis but does well in general when dealing with the discipline as a whole. It really exposes some gigantic problems in our current models and assumptions.

It's Bryant's "Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture" and part of the reason I'm forcing myself to deal with the bronze age is because one day I would love to do something similar for the Greeks.

Thanks once again. The Bryant book looks interesting. I didn't know there was a serious OOIndia hypothesis but I m not surprised. I guess it claims pIE was spoken in the Indus Valley. Not snowing in London (yet).

Yep, been snowing heavily all day; the BBC said that we have a snowstorm from Russia meeting winds from the West, or something ever-so-slightly Homeric like that. I'm not entirely sure that running around naked yelling the Aeneid needs any conditions attached to be a stupid idea though.

Yeah, I guess Indian scholars are sort of stuck in the past a bit on that one for various political reasons. It's been a long time since we've considered India. Though the book does make some serious points actually. The problem is we need to get the Arya in India, the Hittites in Hattusas, Greeks in Greece really early and thus India is a bad node. Conversely the Indic branch is ridiculously conservative in sooo many areas. For starters they're the only ones that kept something of the IE religion (we killed of the Lithuanian version in Europe...ffs!) and the level of IE "use words" in every day speech is significantly higher than other branches. However conservationism does not equal origin. Although if we decipher the IV scripts and it turns out to be IE I'm going to just throw out all of my textbooks and give up.

The book is right in lamenting the lack of Indian participation in PIE studies though. They wield Sanskrit better than Western scholars can manage Greek and Latin and if they stopped being stroppy we'd make some real advances. Ah well.

Ah London...hopefully I get to visit again soon. I miss the BM.


Remember my plan to memorise sizeable chunks of it? I got to 1.49