[INDOLOGY] Heggarty et al. 2023, "Language trees with sampled ancestors support a hybrid model for the origin of Indo-European languages" - reactions?

[rajam]

I’m not adding anything new or enlightening to the current discussion, but I just wanted to share my frustration that the notion of ‘unification’ or the ‘father/mother’ of this language and that language is all ‘farce,’ if I may say so. 

In Tamil Nadu, the situation is not pleasant, to put it mildly. To begin with, ‘language' is always associated with race and caste. If one likes Sanskrit, that person must be a ‘brahmin’ who must be an ‘enemy’ (தமிழ்த் துரோகி). I don’t have graceful words to express such animalistic attitudes. It causes a problem for academicians like me. For starters, I need to be careful not to use Grantha letters or Sanskrit words in my writing. There are several ‘language vigilantes.’ They republish old writings, by brahmins/non-brahmins, removing/masking the authors' caste names, grantha letters, and such.  

Anyway, in my view … no race or language can be “pure.” 

Regards,
rajam 


> On Aug 24, 2023, at 9:20 AM, Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
> I completely agree with the statement of Thomas Burrow that Dominik reported. A completely unified language without variation is an illusion, often created by the standardized "official" versions. In Marathi, there is a proverb that says that language changes after every 12 Kos [Skt. Krośa = 2 miles?]. As Kiparsky brought out vividly, Pāṇini's Sanskrit also has a great deal of variation, and one can indeed think of various local dialects or varieties of Sanskrit.
> 
> Madhav
> 
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit ane Linguistics
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
> Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
> Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India
> 
> [Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 7:47 AM Dominik via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
> This is just an anecdote, but when I was an undergraduate, my teacher Prof. Thomas Burrow told us that the earliest possible historical reconstruction of PIE still looked like a "loosely connected set of dialects," not a single language.  
> 
> Best,
> Dominik
> 
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