On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 4:14 AM, Jan E.M. Houben via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Article "Linguistic paradox & diglossia"

(De Gruyter Open Linguistics) : Just published & freely available 

DOI: 10.1515/opli-2018-0001

https://goo.gl/Rqkw6i

Keywords: Sanskrit; Prakrit; sociolinguistics; “Hybrid” Sanskrit; Old Persian; diglossia; emerging languages

Background: 

Since the discovery of the Vedas and of the Avesta and since the decipherment of old Persian inscriptions and of the royal inscriptions of Aśoka, 

modern scholarship has made efforts to distinguish and separate well-defined ancient languages and has tried to link these as discrete "entities" in a genetic tree. 

This has been only partly succesful and we are left with several problems, including a considerable amount of linguistic evidence that has to be arranged in the category of "hybrid".  

In the study linguistic evidence the view points of "entities", "waves" and "fields" have their value and their contribution to make to a better understanding. 

Recent scholarship in emerging languages (H. Kloss, Ž. Muljačič, J. Goossens, and others) -- e.g. on the development of romance languages, and on the grammatical standardization of French and Dutch starting in the 16th century 

(L. Maigret, H.L. Spiegel), that of English ONE century later (unless we count W. Bullokar's rudimentary Pamphlet on Grammar and Amendment of Orthography) and that of German some TWO centuries later (J.C. Adelung) -- has reached a level of maturity which makes it now possible to shed new light on the linguistic evidence of some of the most ancient testimonies of Indian and Indo-European ritual, religious and philosophical poetry and literature.

--

Jan E.M. Houben

Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, PSL - Université Paris)

Sciences historiques et philologiques 

54, rue Saint-Jacques, CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben@ephe.sorbonne.fr

johannes.houben@ephe.psl.eu

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
indology-owner@list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing committee)
http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or unsubscribe)