Indo-Aryan invasion

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Jacob Baltuch wrote:

>> In other others, that if IA represented the development in situ of
>> PIE we should notice in IA a linguistic diversity about equal
>> to the diversity noticed in the whole of the IE area outside India
>> combined, and that this is not the case. While somewhat impressionistic
>> and not easy to make completely rigorous (how do you measure
>> "linguistic depth" and "diversity"?), I think this point would
>> nonetheless also deserve some attention from you.

Erik Seldeschlachts wrote:

>The relative lack of linguistic diversity in Indo-Aryan is due to a
>great extent to the unifying action of standard languages in combination
>with political and cultural configurations, which for a very long period
>have counteracted all disintegrating factors there may have been. This
>happened not only for a much longer period than was the case in Europe
>but also on a larger geographical scale.

I assume that when you talk about Indo-Aryan here, you include PIE and its
development (because this is what Jacob and I were discussing).

If you do, the statement above is very interesting. Considering that we are
talking about a period that probably stretches from 4500 BCE till 1000 BCE,
I would like to see some concrete evidence. Furthermore: How is it that such
forces ceased to function in the period 1000 BCE until today? Because in
this period, we have seen a strong diversification of North Indian
languages, with various royal courts supporting different languages through
the ages for literary purposes. Why should it be different in the period
4500 - 1000 BCE?

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse


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