DOCSLIB.ORG

186 GLIMPSES of the ETHNOLINGUISTIC PREHISTORY of NORTHEASTERN INDIA the World's Two Most Populous Families of Languages Meet In

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
186 GLIMPSES of the ETHNOLINGUISTIC PREHISTORY of NORTHEASTERN INDIA the World's Two Most Populous Families of Languages Meet In 186 MARK W. POST Post, M. W. and R. Blench. 2011. Siangic: A new language phylum in North East India. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference of the North East Indian Linguistics Society, Tezpur University, Tezpur, Assam, India. GLIMPSES OF THE ETHNOLINGUISTIC PREHISTORY Post, M.W. and Y. Modi (in press). Language contact and the genetic position of Milang in Tibeto-Burman. Anthropological Linguistics. OF NORTHEASTERN INDIA --in press-b. Prosody and typological drift in Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman: Against "Sinosphere" and "Indosphere." Mon-Khmer Studies. GEORGE VAN DRIEM Ross, M., A. Pawley and M. Osmond. 2007 [2003]. The Lexicon of Proto-Oceanic: The Culture and Environment of Ancestral Oceanic Society. Volume 2: The OLD AND NEw LINGUISTIC PHYLA IN THE NoRTHEAST OF THE SuBCONTINENT Physical Environment. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Sun, T.J. 1993. A Historical-Comparative Study of the Tani Branch of Tibeto­ Burman. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of The world's two most populous families of languages meet in the California, Berkeley. Himalayas. These are Tibeto-Burman, which includes Cantonese and Thomason, S.G. and T. Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Mandarin, and Indo-European, to which languages such as English and Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bengali belong. In addition to these two great linguistic phyla, Kra-Dai alias Daic, Austroasiatic and Dravidian language communities skirt the eastern Himalayan region. For example, the Austroasiatic language Khasi is spoken in the Indian state of Meghalaya. Ahom, a now extinct Kra-Dai tongue, was once a prominent cultural language in northeastern India, where scattered Daic language communities are still settled today. The Dravidian tongues Dhangar and Jhangar, which are basically dia­ lects of Kurukh or Uraon, are spoken in Nepal's eastern Terai. Kurukh is also spoken in scattered communities throughout northeastern India by people displaced by British colonial policies in India involving resettlement, not unlike the policy of transmigrasi in the former Dutch East Indies. Yet the Himalayas would appear to be peripheral to our understanding of the prehistory of Dravidian. The crux of the ethno­ linguistic prehistory of the eastern Himalayan region are the language families Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic, Indo-European and, to a lesser extent, Kra-Dai. The advent oflndo-European and Kra-Dai languages to the northeastern portion of the Indian subcontinent is relatively recent and to some extent historically attested. Yet whilst the impact of Kra-Dai today is marginal, the intrusion of In do-European into the region has been more robust and is represented by expansive languages such as Assamese, Hindi, Bengali and English. At the same time, historical, ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic data all point to an Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman presence in northeastern India which must date back to some hoary period of ethnolinguistic prehistory. Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman, therefore, hold the key to understanding the population prehistory of northeastern India and the Indo-Burmese borderlands. The deeper phylogeny of the Indo-European language family was 188 GEORGE VAN DRIEM GLIMPSES OF THE ETHNOLINGUISTIC 189 once conceived by August Schleicher as a branching oak tree, but the phylum has increasingly assumed a more rake-like appearance in more recent literature. The currently best-informed family tree structure of the Vl Tibeto-Burman phylum is likewise essentially rake-like, a situation for UJ which I introduced the metaphor of fallen leaves (figure 9.1). JJ!~~ "'QJ Vl l'i o:! !:"' :<: ....s u :2: ;:l <:( ;S z 111 1- 0.. 0 ' w ;:l "' 0 Vl s(!) .... :c > .D bO <:( p .D u ;:l ...J • '+-< 0 0 "'.... \!) 0 (!) z • "' ·~ 0 .=: 0 (.) Vl z 1':1 s :2: 0 <:( o:! o:! ...J Lolo-Burmese 0:: <:( .... +-' <:( UJ ...J <:( .D ;:l ...J z :c .... .D 0 0 z 1- (!)" -~ \!) • ••• bO z <:( o:! • • s ;:l 0 :2: (!) :2: • .=: bO ~· +-' 1':1 .. "' '+-< ~ z 0 z .....••••• o:! <:( <:( ~B 1- 1':1 Vl ;;; b ~ 8 ~--- w C1 .s 1':1 ::.: :c--•~ ·:·' ~ w~· !: "5 ~ Brahmaputran 0:: QJ .D "' ::::> "' • <:(~ i5 1- ... ·c (!) 1- UJ "'-' "'0 +-' UJ .. (!) •• >- "' "' Vl 1-"' :.a .... L!.l • "' 0.. • "' til (!) z (.) .... •• ...J z ·~ "Cl <:( :c • --<:( 1- u a.. .=: 1':1 Vl IJJ O..o Figure 9 .1. The fallen leaves diagram for Tibeto-Burman. Some subgroups N • z ~ s z >- <:( bOo; are well-established, whilst others are less so. Brahmaputran may include <:( \!) • - 0 ·~ 1- 0:: 0 (!)"C) Vl >- z 0 .=: Kachinic and Dhimalish. For the sake of argument, this diagram breaks up the :c ::.: <:( z (.) ::.: 1- 0l o:! traditional catch-all 'Qiangic' into the Ersu cluster and a truncated 'Qiangic', <:( Vl N ;2 0\ i:LI <:( (!) not to posit a robust phylogenetic hypothesis but to challenge, thus empha­ ::.: .... ~ z ;:l sising that crucial work in this area has been left undone. The precise phyla­ <:( z bO 1- <:( ~ genetic relationships between the diverse rGyal-rong languages, Ergong, ~ 1- z Vl Qiang, Mi-fiag (Muyii), Tangut, Ersu, Lusu, Tosu (Duoxu), Namuyi, Shixing, <:( ::.: :c <:( "'QJ \!) a.. Vl Guiqi6ng, Choyo (Queyu), Zhaba and Prinmi (Pumi) have yet to be demon­ LL <:( c strated. What is sometimes called 'Northern Qiangic' is supposed to include ii"' .;c"' the rGyal-rongic group recognised by Jackson Sun (Sun Tianxin) and Hwing z <:( BUfan. Hopefully scholars working on theTibeto-Burmanlanguages ofSichuan 0:: and Yunnan provinces will in the coming years shed light on the structure of this portion of the Tibeto-Burman family tree (van Driem 2001, 2006). 190 GEORGE VAN DRIEM GLIMPSES OF THE ETHNOLINGUISTIC 191 The geographical distribution of the major Tibeto-Burman subgroups Some novel insights into the phylogeny of Kra-Dai have been put for­ saliently shows the densest concentration in the northeastern portion ward by Edmondson and Solnit (1988, 1997) and Ostapirat (2005). of the Indian subcontinent, with most major subgroups being exclusive The location of the Austroasiatic ancestral homeland can be argued to this area (figure 9.2). The most authoritative phylogenetic tree for from a purely linguistic point of view principally on the basis of linguis­ Austroasiatic at present is the model developed by Gerard Diffloth (fig­ tic palaeontology and the geographical centre of gravity of the family. ure 9.3). The latter is ascertained from the distribution of modern Austroasiatic !000 AD 0 AD !000 BC 2000 BC 3000 BC 4000 BC 5000 BC language communities and the deep phylogenetic divisions in the family. The distribution of the modern language communities and the Korku --------, geography of the deepest divisions in linguistic phylogeny would put Kherwarian h Munda the geographical centre of the family somewhere between South Asia Kharia-Juang I -----------------, and Southeast Asia, in the area around the northern coast of the Bay of Koraput -------------' Bengal. Whether we assume that the deepest division in the family lies Khasian---------------, Khasi-Khmuic between Munda and the rest, as an older generation of scholars used Pakamc 1----------------1 to suspect, or assume the veracity of Diffloth 's new tripartite division, Eastern Palaungic ----~ Western Palaungic _____J then the geography of deep historical divisions in linguistic phylogeny Khmuic would compel us to look for a homeland on either side of the Ganges Vietic-------------, Vieto-Katuic and Brahmaputra delta, although we would be unable to say whether this Eastern Katuic -----l___ jl homeland would have to have lain to the east or to the west of the delta. 1 Western Katuic ____----ll When linguists look beyond what linguistic phylogeny can tell them, Western Bahnaric------, Khmero-Vietic they must ask which archaeological transition or modern genetic gradient Northwestern Bahnaric 1--------,L­ Northern Bahnaric -------, j can be related with confidence to an ancient linguistic intrusion or to Central Bahnaric ~ Mon-Khmer the prehistorical spread of a language family. When linguists resort to Southern Bahnaric ____J Khmero- 1---- linguistic palaeontology, they must have recourse to the findings of pal­ Khmeric Bahnaric aeoclimatologists and, more particularly, palaeobotanists. Most conceiv­ Pearic------­ able theories about the homelands of Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic Mollic---------J---~---,]Asli-Mollic have already been put forward. The idea of a Tibeto-Burman homeland Nerthern Asli--------, Senoic _________ situated in or nearby present-day Sichuan has been entertained since the Nico-Mollic Southern Asli 1-----___.J ninetheenth century, especially by British scholars in India. Sinocentrists Nicobarese --------------...J favour a northern Tibeto-Burman homeland in the lower Yellow River basin on the plains of northern China, whereas some have proposed a Figure 9.3. Austroasiatic with Gerard Diffioth's tentative calibration of time provenance within the Himalayan region itself. Scholars have sought to depths for the various branches of the language family (modified from Diffioth situate the Austroasiatic Urheimat as far west as the Indus valley and as 2001, 2005). The precise phylogenetic propinquity ofPearic, after Khmeric loan far east as the Yangtze delta or insular Southeast Asia. However, the main layers have been stripped off, remains uncertain except that Diffioth observes contenders today for the Austroasiatic homeland are the Indian subconti­ that Pearic is M on-Khmer and not 'une espece de vieux khmer ', as some scholars
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Sign Language Typology Series
    SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of South Asian Linguistics
    Volume 8, Issue 1 July 2018 Journal of South Asian Linguistics Volume 8 Published by CSLI Publications Contents 1 Review of The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide 3 Farhat Jabeen 1 JSAL volume 8, issue 1 July 2018 Review of The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide Farhat Jabeen, University of Konstanz Received December 2018; Revised January 2019 Bibliographic Information: The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia: A Contemporary Guide. Edited by Hans Heinrich Hock and Elena Bashir. De Gruyter Mouton. 2016. 1 Introduction With its amazing linguistic diversity and the language contact situation caused by centuries of mi- gration, invasion, and cultural incorporation, South Asia offers an excellent opportunity for linguists to exercise their skill and challenge established theoretical linguistic claims. South Asian languages, with their unique array of linguistic features, have offered interesting challenges to prevalent formal linguistic theories and emphasized the need to expand their horizons and modify their theoretical assumptions. This book is the 7th volume of The World of Linguistics series edited by Hans Heinrich Hock. The current book is jointly edited by Hans Heinrich Hock and Elena Bashir, two excellent South Asian linguists with extensive experience of working in the field on a number of South Asian languages. At more than 900 pages, the volume is divided into ten sections pertaining to different linguistic levels (morphology, phonetics and phonology, syntax and semantics), grammatical traditions to study South Asian languages, sociological phenomena (contact and convergence) and sociolinguistics of South Asia, writing systems, as well as the use of computational linguistics approach to study South Asian languages in the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dravidian Languages
    THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGES BHADRIRAJU KRISHNAMURTI The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarc´on 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Bhadriraju Krishnamurti 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Times New Roman 9/13 pt System LATEX2ε [TB] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0521 77111 0hardback CONTENTS List of illustrations page xi List of tables xii Preface xv Acknowledgements xviii Note on transliteration and symbols xx List of abbreviations xxiii 1 Introduction 1.1 The name Dravidian 1 1.2 Dravidians: prehistory and culture 2 1.3 The Dravidian languages as a family 16 1.4 Names of languages, geographical distribution and demographic details 19 1.5 Typological features of the Dravidian languages 27 1.6 Dravidian studies, past and present 30 1.7 Dravidian and Indo-Aryan 35 1.8 Affinity between Dravidian and languages outside India 43 2 Phonology: descriptive 2.1 Introduction 48 2.2 Vowels 49 2.3 Consonants 52 2.4 Suprasegmental features 58 2.5 Sandhi or morphophonemics 60 Appendix. Phonemic inventories of individual languages 61 3 The writing systems of the major literary languages 3.1 Origins 78 3.2 Telugu–Kannada.
    [Show full text]
  • Drastic Demographic Events Triggered the Uralic Spread to Appear in Diachronica
    Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread To appear in Diachronica Riho Grünthal (University of Helsinki) Volker Heyd (University of Helsinki) Sampsa Holopainen (University of Helsinki) Juha Janhunen (University of Helsinki) Olesya Khanina (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences) Matti Miestamo (University of Helsinki) Johanna Nichols (University of California, Berkeley; University of Helsinki; Higher School of Economics, Moscow) Janne Saarikivi (University of Helsinki) Kaius Sinnemäki (University of Helsinki) Abstract: The widespread Uralic family offers several advantages for tracing prehistory: a firm absolute chronological anchor point in an ancient contact episode with well-dated Indo-Iranian; other points of intersection or diagnostic non-intersection with early Indo-European (the Late PIE-speaking Yamnaya culture of the western steppe, the Afanasievo culture of the upper Yenisei, and the Fatyanovo culture of the middle Volga); lexical and morphological reconstruction sufficient to establish critical absences of sharings and contacts. We add information on climate, linguistic geography, typology, and cognate frequency distributions to reconstruct the Uralic origin and spread. We argue that the Uralic homeland was east of the Urals and initially out of contact with Indo-European. The spread was rapid and without widespread shared substratal effects. We reconstruct its cause as the interconnected reactions of early Uralic and Indo-European populations to a catastrophic climate change episode and interregionalization opportunities which advantaged riverine hunter-fishers over herders. Keywords Uralic; Finno-Ugric; Indo-European; Yamnaya; Indo-Iranian; Siberia; Eurasia; Seima-Turbino, 4.2 ka event; linguistic homeland Note: In-text references have not yet been fully deanonymized. 2 Drastic demographic events triggered the Uralic spread (Contents, for convenience) Main text (pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic History and Language Diversity in India: Views and Counterviews
    J Biosci (2019) 44:62 Indian Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1007/s12038-019-9879-1 (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().,-volV) Linguistic history and language diversity in India: Views and counterviews SONAL KULKARNI-JOSHI Deccan College, Pune, India (Email, [email protected]) This paper addresses the theme of the seminar from the perspective of historical linguistics. It introduces the construct of ‘language family’ and then proceeds to a discussion of contact and the dynamics of linguistic exchange among the main language families of India over several millennia. Some prevalent hypotheses to explain the creation of India as a linguistic area are presented. The ‘substratum view’ is critically assessed. Evidence from historical linguistics in support of two dominant hypotheses –‘the Aryan migration view’ and ‘the out-of-India hypothesis’–is presented and briefly assessed. In conclusion, it is observed that the current understanding in historical linguistics favours the Aryan migration view though the ‘substratum view’ is questionable. Keywords. Aryan migration; historical linguistics; language family; Out-of-India hypothesis; substratum 1. Introduction the basis of social, political and cultural criteria more than linguistic criteria. The aim of this paper is to lend a linguistic perspective on This vast number of languages is classified into four (or the issue of human diversity and ancestry in India to the non- six) language families or genealogical types: Austro-Asiatic linguists at this seminar. The paper is an overview of the (Munda), Dravidian, Indo-Aryan (IA) and Tibeto-Burman; major views and evidences gleaned from the available more recently, two other language families have been literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Machine Translation for Dravidian Languages Using Stacked Long Short Term Memory
    MUCS@ - Machine Translation for Dravidian Languages using Stacked Long Short Term Memory Asha Hegde Ibrahim Gashaw H. L. Shashirekha Dept of Computer Science Dept of Computer Science Dept of Computer Science Mangalore University Mangalore University Mangalore University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract are small literary languages. All these languages except Kodava have their own script. Further, these The Dravidian language family is one of 1 the largest language families in the world. languages consists of 80 different dialects namely In spite of its uniqueness, Dravidian lan- Brahui, Kurukh, Malto, Kui, Kuvi, etc. Dravid- guages have gained very less attention due ian Languages are mainly spoken in southern In- to scarcity of resources to conduct language dia, Sri Lanka, some parts of Pakistan and Nepal technology tasks such as translation, Parts- by over 222 million people (Hammarstrom¨ et al., of-Speech tagging, Word Sense Disambigua- 2017). It is thought that Dravidian languages are tion etc. In this paper, we, team MUCS, native to the Indian subcontinent and were origi- describe sequence-to-sequence stacked Long nally spread throughout India1. Tamil have been Short Term Memory (LSTM) based Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models submit- distributed to Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Fiji, ted to “Machine Translation in Dravidian lan- Madagascar, Mauritius, Guyana, Martinique and guages”, a shared task organized by EACL- Trinidad through trade and emigration. With over 2021. The NMT models are applied for trans- two million speakers, primarily in Pakistan and two lation using English-Tamil, English-Telugu, million speakers in Afghanistan, Brahui is the only English-Malayalam and Tamil-Telugu corpora Dravidian language spoken entirely outside India provided by the organizers.
    [Show full text]
  • Origins of the Japanese Languages. a Multidisciplinary Approach”
    MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS Titel der Masterarbeit / Title of the Master’s Thesis “Origins of the Japanese languages. A multidisciplinary approach” verfasst von / submitted by Patrick Elmer, BA angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2019 / Vienna 2019 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 066 843 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Masterstudium Japanologie UG2002 degree programme as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Mag. Dr. Bernhard Seidl Mitbetreut von / Co-Supervisor: Dr. Bernhard Scheid Table of contents List of figures .......................................................................................................................... v List of tables ........................................................................................................................... v Note to the reader..................................................................................................................vi Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................... vii 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Research question ................................................................................................. 1 1.2. Methodology ........................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Survey of the World's Languages
    Survey of the world’s languages The languages of the world can be divided into a number of families of related languages, possibly grouped into larger stocks, plus a residue of isolates, languages that appear not to be genetically related to any other known languages, languages that form one-member families on their own. The number of families, stocks, and isolates is hotly disputed. The disagreements centre around differences of opinion as to what constitutes a family or stock, as well as the acceptable criteria and methods for establishing them. Linguists are sometimes divided into lumpers and splitters according to whether they lump many languages together into large stocks, or divide them into numerous smaller family groups. Merritt Ruhlen is an extreme lumper: in his classification of the world’s languages (1991) he identifies just nineteen language families or stocks, and five isolates. More towards the splitting end is Ethnologue, the 18th edition of which identifies some 141 top-level genetic groupings. In addition, it distinguishes 1 constructed language, 88 creoles, 137 or 138 deaf sign languages (the figures differ in different places, and this category actually includes alternate sign languages — see also website for Chapter 12), 75 language isolates, 21 mixed languages, 13 pidgins, and 51 unclassified languages. Even so, in terms of what has actually been established by application of the comparative method, the Ethnologue system is wildly lumping! Some families, for instance Austronesian and Indo-European, are well established, and few serious doubts exist as to their genetic unity. Others are quite contentious. Both Ruhlen (1991) and Ethnologue identify an Australian family, although there is as yet no firm evidence that the languages of the continent are all genetically related.
    [Show full text]
  • Aleksandra Jarosz, Miyako-Ryukyuan and Its Contribution to Linguistic
    Miyako-Ryukyuan and its contribution to linguistic diversity Aleksandra Jarosz (Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan) Abstract The paper provides introductory information on Miyako-Ryukyuan (Miyakoan). Miyakoan belongs to the Sakishima branch of the Japonic language family, the concept of which counterbalances the until-recently prevalent notion that Japan should be a linguistically homogenous country, and Japanese a language isolate with many unintelligible “dialects”. Following the statement that the endangered Miyako- Ryukyuan language is in an urgent need of extensive documentation and in-depth description, as well as producing more works in English devoted to it, the author introduces a few topics that may be of interest to Japanese/ Japonic linguists and language typologists alike: the “apical” vowel, syllabic consonants, focus marking strategies and formal modality markers. Each topic has been exemplified by Miyako- Ryukyuan samples from Nikolay Nevskiy’s Taishō-era handwritten fieldnotes, as retrieved and analyzed by this author. 1 Foreword The goal of this paper is to exemplify the ways in which Miyako-Ryukyuan (or Miyakoan), an endangered language of the southern periphery of Japan, contributes to the linguistic diversity in Japan and worldwide. The concept of Japonic languages – i.e. of the family to which Miyako-Ryukyuan belongs – which interprets the ethnolects of Japan as multiple related languages rather than as Japanese and its dozens of often unintelligible “dialects”, is still relatively new, only gaining popularity in the last ten-fifteen years. Few research results have so far been made available to the English-speaking readers1, and therefore, the topic of Japan’s endangered languages is still often absent from discussions concerning language documentation or linguistic typology.
    [Show full text]
  • Ancestral Dravidian Languages in Indus Civilization
    ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00868-w OPEN Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization: ultraconserved Dravidian tooth-word reveals deep linguistic ancestry and supports genetics ✉ Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay 1 Ever since the discovery of Indus valley civilization, scholars have debated the linguistic identities of its people. This study analyzes numerous archaeological, linguistic, archae- 1234567890():,; ogenetic and historical evidences to claim that the words used for elephant (like, ‘pīri’, ‘pīru’) in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, the elephant-word used in the Hurrian part of an Amarna letter of ca. 1400 BC, and the ivory-word (‘pîruš’) recorded in certain sixth century BC Old Persian documents, were all originally borrowed from ‘pīlu’, a Proto-Dravidian elephant-word, which was prevalent in the Indus valley civilization, and was etymologically related to the Proto- Dravidian tooth-word ‘*pal’ and its alternate forms (‘*pīl’/‘*piḷ’/‘*pel’). This paper argues that there is sufficient morphophonemic evidence of an ancient Dravidian ‘*piḷ’/‘*pīl’-based root, which meant ‘splitting/crushing’, and was semantically related to the meanings ‘tooth/tusk’. This paper further observes that ‘pīlu’ is among the most ancient and common phytonyms of the toothbrush tree Salvadora persica, which is a characteristic flora of Indus valley, and whose roots and twigs have been widely used as toothbrush in IVC regions since antiquity. This study claims that this phytonym ‘pīlu’ had also originated from the same Proto-Dravidian tooth-word, and argues that since IVC people had named their toothbrush trees and tuskers (elephants) using a Proto-Dravidian tooth-word, and since these names were widely used across IVC regions, a significant population of Indus valley civilization must have used that Proto-Dravidian tooth-word in their daily communication.
    [Show full text]
  • Genomic Insights Into the Formation of Human Populations in East Asia
    Article Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03336-2 The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood owing to a lack 1,2 Received: 19 March 2020 of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people . Here we report genome-wide data from 166 East Asian individuals dating to between 6000 bc and Accepted: 5 February 2021 ad 1000 and 46 present-day groups. Hunter-gatherers from Japan, the Amur River Published online: 22 February 2021 Basin, and people of Neolithic and Iron Age Taiwan and the Tibetan Plateau are linked Check for updates by a deeply splitting lineage that probably reflects a coastal migration during the Late Pleistocene epoch. We also follow expansions during the subsequent Holocene epoch from four regions. First, hunter-gatherers from Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by individuals who speak Mongolic and Tungusic languages, but do not carry ancestry characteristic of farmers from the West Liao River region (around 3000 bc), which contradicts theories that the expansion of these farmers spread the Mongolic and Tungusic proto-languages. Second, farmers from the Yellow River Basin (around 3000 bc) probably spread Sino-Tibetan languages, as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet—where it forms approximately 84% of the gene pool in some groups—and to the Central Plain, where it has contributed around 59–84% to modern Han Chinese groups. Third, people from Taiwan from around 1300 bc to ad 800 derived approximately 75% of their ancestry from a lineage that is widespread in modern individuals who speak Austronesian, Tai–Kadai and Austroasiatic languages, and that we hypothesize derives from farmers of the Yangtze River Valley.
    [Show full text]
  • Families Indo-European Is Just One of Many Large Language Families in The
    Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 8: Families, 1 Families Indo-European is just one of many large language families in the world today. A brief survey of some other language families will help illustrate the extraordinary diversity of human language. [Add Anchors for the following families] [Uralic] [Austroasiatic] [Indo-Pacific] [Nilo-Saharan] [Altaic] [Tai-Kadai] [Australian] [Khoisan] [Caucasian] [Sino-Tibetan] [Afroasiatic] [The Americas] [Dravidian] [Austronesian] [Niger-Congo] Uralic The Uralic family (see Table 1) contains about twenty languages and has approximately 22 million speakers. Uralic languages are spoken in a band across the northern part of Europe, all the way from northern Norway to Siberia. Uralic has two major branches: Samoyed and Finno-Ugric. The Samoyed branch contains a handful of languages spoken in northern Russia, particularly in areas around the Ural Mountains, and also in Siberia. The most widely spoken Finno-Ugric language is Hungarian. Other Finno-Ugric languages are Finnish, Lapp (also known as Lappish or Saame, spoken in northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia), Estonian (Estonia), Livonian (Latvia), Karelian (eastern Finland and northwestern Russia), Erzya, and Cheremis (both spoken in the former USSR). Uralic languages are primarily agglutinating and most have postpositions with SOV or SVO word order. The nouns often have many cases (Finnish has Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 5th edition, Chapter 8: Families, 2 fifteen), which appear to have developed historically from postpositions that became attached to nouns as suffixes. [back to top] Altaic Languages belonging to the Altaic family are spoken in a continuum from Turkey to Siberia, and China. The membership of the Altaic family (see Table 2) includes three main branches—Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic.
    [Show full text]