[Indo-Eurasia] **The Farmer-Sproat-Witzel Model

Asko Parpola asko.parpola at HELSINKI.FI
Sat Feb 10 17:20:27 UTC 2007


Quoting Michael Witzel <witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU>:

>Incidentally,  if some things were said about the F-S-W paper at 
Madison in October 2005(?), this has not reached my ears yet. The only  
thing in writing  so far is a rather polemic paper by my friend  A. 
Parpola, his talk at Tokyo in June 2005, where I was present. There was 
NO time for discussion! We did that a few weeks later, in his, M. 
Kenoyer's, Steve's and my  presence, at Kyoto.  A good defense for the 
"script" model did not emerge. Kenoyer conceded that the Indus signs do 
not represent written language (like sentences)  but he still called 
them a 'script' ...

**********************

A PDF file of my paper is available at the following internet address:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/tices_50.pdf 

In the paper I analyze all the arguments of the Farmer-Sproat-Witzel paper 
and find them inconclusive. To what extent I succeeded in defending the 
"script" model and to what extent the paper is polemic is of course not for 
me but for the readers to judge.

With best regards, 

Asko Parpola
Institute for Asian and African Studies
POB 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland





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