Occurence of words in Dravidian and IE-languages

Jon Skarpeid jon.skarpeid at HINT.NO
Wed Mar 4 14:40:58 UTC 1998


Some decades back Thorleif Boman made his dissertation "Hebrew thought
compared with greek"(actually written in German, but translated to some
other language, including English and Japanese).

In this study, among others, he studied the use and occurence of different
kinds of words. One striking observation was that the hebrew(semitic)
language(s) has more verbs denoting action and greek(indo-european) on the
contrary, more verbs connected to condition/statelanguage(s), and of course
vice versa. According to Boman this also has implication for the religious
concepts, including the developement of Christian though in Europe.

I am wondering, though not a linguist, if some similar study has been
undertaken with regards to South- and North-Indian languages? If yes, what
was the results or tendency? Maybe such a study, though implying great
methodolgoical problems, could through some light upon the AIT.


Jon Skarpeid





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