"What has always filled me with wonder is the assurance with which many historical linguists assign a date to their reconstructed proto-language. . . . We are told that proto-Indo- European was spoken about 6,000 years ago. What is know with a fair degree of certainty is the time between proto-Indo-Aryan and the modern Inclo-Aryan languages—something in the order of 3,000 years. But how can anyone tell that the development from proto- Indo-European to proto-Indo-Aryan took another 3,000 years? . . . Languages are known to change at different rates. There is no way of knowing how long it took to go from the presumed homogeneity of proto-Indo-European to the linguistic diversity of proto-Indo- Iranian, proto-Celtic, proto-Germanic, etc. The changes could have been rapid or slow. We simply don't know. . . .Why couldn't proto-lndo-European have been spoken about 10,500 years ago? . . . The received opinion of a date of around 6000 BP for proto-Indo- European . . . is an ingrained one. I have found this a difficult matter to get specialists to even discuss. Yet it does seem to be a house of cards. (47-49)"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Linguists from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumniMemoirists from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Dixon, R. M. W. 1997. The Rise and Fall of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_M._W._Dixon
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert M. W. Dixon
1 quote on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert M. W. Dixon →
Related Quotes
"The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of a swimming journey. I started to dream ever …"
"From water level, I observed the mating joined in flight like refuelling aircraft, and the random progress of the clo…"
"It is through trees that we see and hear the wind: woodland people can tell the species of a tree from the sound it m…"
"Waterlog (1999), Roger's now-classic account of swimming through Britain, published twenty years ago this year, opens…"
"In 1973, Roger Deakin, a British writer and environmental activist, acquired a tumbledown sixteenth-century farmhouse…"
"Besides the darkness of the night, many minor shadows cross our paths, making the hues of Life obscure. These are not…"
"Many argue that the is inhumane, that meat is expensive, that it contains uric acid, that it may be tubercular, and s…"
"Hallie Eustace Miles ... The daughter of the of , Hallie Killick married the sportsman and writer in 1906. Together w…"
"The twentieth century had conclusively settled the question of how a society should be organised: liberal democracy, …"
"For James, there was no sense that expanding Tesco’s sales onto the web was what the human race urgently needed. It d…"