Was Indo-European Group a Sprachbund?

Creation vs. Evolution Was Indo-European Group a Sprachbund? · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica Interesting Videos, MegalithHunter, I just provide an Alternative Timeline · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere Babel (and excursus: Can't Take a Screenshot from Here, But ...)

Take a look at these trade networks:

Let's credit the author of the video this is from by linking to it:

The Terramare Culture and the Bronze Age Collapse
Dan Davis History, 23 Dec. 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL5GDXq1acE

Now for the discussion.

A Sprachbund requires bilingual people. People who carry over habits (words, syntagms, even endings) from one of their languages to another.

This you can have in fairly close neighbourhoods, and obviously the Balkan is one, where you find Greek, Slavic, Romance, Albanian, formerly Turkic languages (actually, there are some Turkish speakers left in Bulgaria). These languages have in different ways taken over speech habits from each other, so they are closer to each other now than Greek was to the others in Classical times, than Romance, Slavic, presumably Turkic are elsewhere, and presumably this goes for Albanian as well.

Trubetskoy was a linguist who founded Balkan linguistics, and he thought that Indo-European, like Balkan languages, was a Sprachbund.

In the Balkans, bilingualism is on the forefront because it is very common. You walk one or two villages away, certain periods, you come to people speaking a different language. Slavs in Thessaloniki, Djudezmo speakers in Thessaloniki, Greek speakers on the Turkish Black Sea coast, these are things of the past. Voyevodina in Serbia has minorities all over the places, like Rusyns, who are cousins to Ukraineans, like Germans, you find Germans, Jews, Hungarians and the other Hungarians called Székely in Romania, and no doubt a few more I have missed, this is what the Balkan is like.

On trade routes, bilingualism would be less common, only those who went on trade routes and the locals who were involved in the exchange and had sometimes to deal with traders who were young and hadn't acquired their language yet, only those would need to be bilinguals. But bilingualism would be prominent anyway, because the bilinguals of the categories I mentioned would have a high status. For the 17th C. France, a Lewis XIV pronounces R like [ʁ] or possibly [ʀ], and a farmer in Bourgogne more likely like [r] - which pronunciation is more common in France now? Well, you'll find [r] for textbooks in Italian, but not for text books in French. Prominence of social status is a key factor in sociolinguistics, not that it is never opposed, but oppositions tend to be more local and divergent ...

I think the trade routes we are dealing with would push bilinguals and polyglots to the forefront in these areas for centuries (the trade routes Dan Davis speak of are not springing into existence in 1550 BC to end in 1450 BC in isolation), and, as said, such people carry on habits from one of their languages into another. Speakers of a language formerly known as Ænglisc and now spoken of as Anglo-Saxon for that period didn't turn into speakers of what we call English just by changing consonants and vowels, but also by acquiring words and more from Norse (Viking era), from Norman French (esp. after 1066), from Welsh (the word "do" may be Anglo-Saxon, but it's use in Modern English isn't) ... that is, by being bilinguals.

Note that for this period, the only two written attested Indo-European languages are Hittite (with Palaic and some) and Mycenaean Greek. We do not have attestations for Celtic from this time, or for Germanic, or for Italic (the Terramare culture was analphabetic, and Celts at a few centuries later than this time are commonly thought to have lived across the Alps in Hallstadt). Or for Slavic, or for Baltic. Or for Old Persian or Old Indian (Vedic or Sanskrit). This means, we cannot know exactly how Indo-European the other ones were at this point. They could right in this period have been about to become somewhat more Indo-European than they were before.

Now, what is the Biblical relevance for this?

One, somewhat less serious, is, the timeframe.

For those holding Indo-European as being a family (a group of languages sharing a common mother language, all being daughter languages of it, like French and Spanish are for Latin), there are two options of when and where.

A) The most common one refers to Yamnaya culture, dated to 4000 BC,
B) Alinei prefers Anatolian Farmers, c. 10 000 BC or BP.

The time problem is not just about the archaeological dating methods, it's also about the speed of language change. How much of the divergence between "branches of" Indo-European is due to separate language change and how much is due to the languages not even ever starting out as same and similar? Well, the more you speak of a family, the more of it is to be put down to processes of divergence, that is these have to have lasted longer.

In my tables, 4069 to 3946 BC are really carbon aliases for 2019 and 1996 BC. 10 000 BP or 8000 BC, well 8111 to 7889 BC are really 2511 to 2489 BC. By contrast, the time we deal with here, 1511 to 1478 BC is 1431 to 1408 BC. We cannot go back to further than say 2556 BC, the birth of Peleg and the division of languages at Babel.

This means, we have 600 to 1100 years for Hittite to diverge from Mycenaean Greek - which, considering their vast difference, is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. Danish and Icelandic are far closer to each other and their story of divergence starts with a common language barely different dialects 1000 years ago. This would be a time problem for Indo-European language family fitting into the Biblical chronology. Perhaps not an insuperable one, see NativLang's videos on Dyirbal, but still somewhat uncomfortable to me.

Another time problem with the Proto-Language Theory in Biblical chronology is, it takes some time for presumed Indo-European invaders into Greece to displace the pre-Greek language. Mind you it wasn't totally displaced, it features pretty often in Greek, Jerker Blomqvist mentioned sth like Greek, like Germanic, having a very solid (and for each of the two different) thesaurus of non-Indo-European vocabulary. But still. This time is obviously reduced by accepting a Biblical chronology, so accepting this is what happened is less compatible with it.

Now, there is a geographic problem too. Greeks are very obviously descended from Javan. Some guys North (North-West? North-East?) of the Black Sea are presumably descended from Magog. For some reason, both Hittites in Anatolia and Celts in Gaul, Spain and Ireland are descended from Gomer. Germanic peoples have been diversely credited to Ashkenaz and to Togormah. Some guys in Spain would at some point have been descended from Thiraz - this could be the Basques (Western Hunter Gatherer genome). Presumably each of these had their own language after Babel.

Obviously, God is able to simulate a language family while imposing languages at Babel - I think this is probably what happened with Afro-Asiatic, formerly divided into Semitic and Hamitic. Hebrew belonging to it was the original language, and yet it can be viewed in reconstructions as descending from Proto-Afro-Asiatic, as can fellow Semitic Akkadian, as can Hamitic Egyptian and Berber and Chad languages. So, presumably Afro-Asiatic is God's way of simulating a language family. If Tolkien could do it with Quenya and Sindarin (each not totally worked out for full communication purposes, though Helge Fauskanger is translating the Bible to Quenya), if David Peterson could do it with Dothraki and High Vallyrian, obviously God could do it as well. So, this could be one cue about the Indo-European mega-group, the languages can be analysed as a family of families, because the original families (plural) on God's decree simulate a language family, as does Afro-Asiatic.

The other possibility is, they look like a language family due to prolonged Sprachbund situations. Not just one prolonged such, but more than one. Like the trade routes shown in above diagramme.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Chair of St. Peter in Rome
18.I.2023

Cathedra sancti Petri Apostoli, qua primum Romae sedit. Ibidem passio sanctae Priscae, Virginis et Martyris; quae sub Claudio Imperatore, post multa tormenta, martyrio coronata est.

PS, later on in above video, a very mobile mercenary-warrior and trader élite is credited to c. 1200 BC, which is also an opportunity for bilingualism and Sprachbund situations./HGL

NativLang's videos on Dyirbal:

How Fast Do Languages Evolve? - Dyirbal glottochronology 1 of 2
NativLang, 25 Aug 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evJ_E7k1pvY

How long can a language last before it's unrecognizable? - Dyirbal Glottochronology 2 of 2
NativLang, 15 Sept. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVBtIPOnNI