linguists-from-italy

"A migration-free theory that assumes the continuity of all European and Asiatic populations from Paleo-/Mesolithic times is gaining consensus not only among prehistorians (cf., e.g., Marcel Otte's and Alexander Hausler's work) but also, and especially, among linguists (Alinei 1996-2000 n.d.; Ballester n.d; Cavazza 2001; Costa 1998; Poghirc 1992). In this framework not only Andronovo but also the whole cultural sequence that precedes it, from Srednyi Stog to the Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, and Timber Grave cultures (cf. Makkay's comment), can only be seen as expressions of an already developed Turkic branch of the Altaic population, originating in Central Asia in Paleolithic times. Among other advantages, this conclusion produces (1) a straightforward explanation of the numerous Turkic loanwords for horse terminology in Samoyed and other Uralic languages, as well as in Slavic, and (2) a convergence between a hippocentric geo-cultural scenario, on the one hand, and the continuity of the archaeological record, on the other ("The steppe tribes of horse-breeders and mobile pastoralists had already begun, in the Copper Age, to play the role which they were to continue to play for the next 5,000 to 5,500 years of human history" [Chernykh 1992:42-3]), pace Anthony and other scholars who continue to cultivate the myth of the hippocentrism of the Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Iranians. The origin of the Iranians, in turn, must be sought in Iran itself, and their role in the steppes should be seen as an aspect of a later expansion from the south (see Khlopin 1990:177). The Bactrian Margiana complex, in my opinion correctly interpreted by Lamberg-Karlovsky as opposed to Andronovo, may well be an important aspect of the Iranians' earliest northern expansion."

"On February 16, 1918 I went to Suratagadha* [Suratgarh] again, to make from there a tour to the west and explore the ancient theris,† which my travellers had referred us being found in large numbers all along the dry bed of the Ghagghar. This river, locally known under the name of Hakaro or Sotara, but commonly referred to as the nali ‘canal,’ or dariyava ‘sea,’ irrigated in ancient times all the northern part of what now forms the territory of the Bikaner State, from Bhatanera [Bhatnir]—the modern Hanumanagadha [Hanumangarh] to Vijnora [Bijnor, close to the international border], and thence running across the territory of Bahawalpur, went to join the Indus."

"From the vestiges of antiquity which are still abundantly scattered along its bed, it is clear that the Ghagghar once bathed with its waters a florid and prosperous region. Now the bed is dry, and like an immense road of glaring whiteness, crosses a scene of desolation, which is only broken here and there by a small village built of mud, or a field of rape-seed. Otherwise the river bed is barren, a clean sheet of argil, slippery and impracticable to the camel in the rains, hard and intersected by cracks during the rest of the year, and on both its banks and sometimes even in the middle the ancient theris raise their heads all red with fragments of bricks and pottery."

"The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers."

"It is not possible to fully understand modern world culture without appreciating its connection and its continuity with the heritage of classical culture."

"These primitive propositions … suffice to deduce all the properties of the numbers that we shall meet in the sequel. There is, however, an infinity of systems which satisfy the five primitive propositions. … All systems which satisfy the five primitive propositions are in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. The natural numbers are what one obtains by abstraction from all these systems; in other words, the natural numbers are the system which has all the properties and only those properties listed in the five primitive propositions"

"1. 0 is a number. 2. The immediate successor of a number is also a number. 3. 0 is not the immediate successor of any number. 4. No two numbers have the same immediate successor. 5. Any property belonging to 0 and to the immediate successor of any number that also has that property belongs to all numbers."

"1. Zero is a number. 2. The successor of any number is another number. 3. There are no two numbers with the same successor. 4. Zero is not the successor of a number. 5. Every property of zero, which belongs to the successor of every number with this property, belongs to all numbers."

"I am fascinated by his gentle personality, his ability to attract lifelong disciples, his tolerance of human weakness, his perennial optimism. … Peano may not only be classified as a 19th century mathematician and logician, but because of his originality and influence, must be judged one of the great scientists of that century."

"Bertrand Russell never wavered in acknowledging his intellectual debt to Giuseppe Peano. In many ways the contribution that Russell made to the foundations of mathematics, culminating in Principia Mathematica, strongly bears Peano's mark."

"He was a man I greatly admired from the moment I met him for the first time in 1900 at a Congress of Philosophy, which he dominated by the exactness of his mind."

"Peano — whether in Logic or in Mathematics — never worked with pure symbolism — he always required that the primitive symbols introduced represent intuitive ideas to be explained with ordinary language."

"Quaestiones, quae ad mathematicae fundamenta pertinent, etsi hisce temporibus a multis tractatae, satisfacienti solutione et adhuc carent. Hic difficultas maxime en sermonis ambiguitate oritur. Quare summi interest verba ipsa, quibus utimur attente perpendere."

"In every science, after having analysed the ideas, expressing the more complicated by means of the more simple, one finds a certain number that cannot be reduced among them, and that one can define no further. These are the primitive ideas of the science; it is necessary to acquire them through experience, or through induction; it is impossible to explain them by deduction."

"Certainly it is permitted to anyone to put forward whatever hypotheses he wishes, and to develop the logical consequences contained in those hypotheses. But in order that this work merit the name of Geometry, it is necessary that these hypotheses or postulates express the result of the more simple and elementary observations of physical figures."

"Geometric calculus consists in a system of operations analogous to those of algebraic calculus, but in which the entities on which the calculations are carried out, instead of being numbers, are geometric entities which we shall define."

"The Macedonian language is actually an artifact produced for primarily political reasons."