Indo-European substrate hypotheses
Encyclopedia
The term pre-Indo-European languages relates to several (not necessarily related) non-classified languages that existed in prehistoric Europe
and South Asia
before the arrival of bearers of Indo-European languages
.
Some of them are attested only as linguistic substrates in Indo-European languages; however, some others (like Etruscan, Minoan, Iberian etc.) are also attested with inscriptions, most of them dating back to the Bronze Age
.
Surviving pre-Indo-European languages include the Basque language
, Nihali, and Burushaski.
Prehistoric Europe
Prehistoric Europe refers to the prehistorical period of Europe, usually taken to refer to human prehistory since the Lower Paleolithic, but in principle also extending to geological time scale - for which see Geological history of Europe....
and South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
before the arrival of bearers of Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
Some of them are attested only as linguistic substrates in Indo-European languages; however, some others (like Etruscan, Minoan, Iberian etc.) are also attested with inscriptions, most of them dating back to the Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
.
Surviving pre-Indo-European languages include the Basque language
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Nihali, and Burushaski.
Asia
- Substrate in Vedic Sanskrit
- Harappan languageHarappan languageThe Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization ....
- Harappan language
- Vedda languageVedda languageThe Vedda language is the language of the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka. But communities, such as Coast Veddas and Anuradhapura Veddas, that do not strictly identify themselves as Veddas also use the Vedda language in part for communication during hunting and or for religious chants,...
(a dialect of Sinhalese containing pre-Sinhalese substrate lexicon) - Hurro-Urartian languagesHurro-Urartian languagesThe Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian, both of which were spoken in the Taurus mountains area.-Classification:...
and Hattic languageHattic languageHattic was a language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC. Scholars call this language 'Hattic' to distinguish it from the Hittite language--the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empire....
(substrates in AnatolianAnatolianAnatolian means of or pertaining to Anatolia, or a person from Anatolia, including:Geography*Anatolian:of or pertaining to the region Anatolia.Biology* Anatolian Black, a breed of cattle* Anatolian buffalo, a domestic animal of Anatolia...
)
Europe
- Old European hydronymyOld European hydronymyOld European is the term used by Hans Krahe for the language of the oldest reconstructed stratum of European hydronymy in Central and Western Europe...
- Pre-Indoeuropean
- Basque languageBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
- Basque language
- Pre-Greek substrate
- Pelasgian
- Eteocretan (see also Minoan language, Linear ALinear ALinear A is one of two scripts used in ancient Crete before Mycenaean Greek Linear B; Cretan hieroglyphs is the second script. In Minoan times, before the Mycenaean Greek dominion, Linear A was the official script for the palaces and religious activities, and hieroglyphs were mainly used on seals....
, Cretan hieroglyphsCretan hieroglyphsCretan hieroglyphs are hieroglyphs found on artifacts of Bronze Age Minoan Crete . Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans , Meijer , Olivier/Godart...
) - EteocypriotEteocypriotEteocypriot was a pre-Indo-European language spoken in Iron Age Cyprus. The name means "true" or "original Cyprian" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholarship to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a...
(see also Cypro-Minoan script)
- Pre-Germanic
- Germanic substrate hypothesisGermanic substrate hypothesisThe Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family...
- Germanic substrate hypothesis
- Pre-CelticPre-CelticThe term pre-Celtic refers to the period in the prehistory of Central and Western Europe postdating the emergence of Proto-Celtic and predating the expansion of the Celts, or Celtic culture, in the course of the earlier Iron Age . The area involved is that of the maximum extent of Celtic languages...
or "para-Celtic"- Continental Pre-Celtic:
- Ligurian language
- Pre-Celtic of the British Isles, see Celtic settlement of Great Britain and Ireland
- Goidelic substrate hypothesis
- Pictish languagePictish languagePictish is a term used for the extinct language or languages thought to have been spoken by the Picts, the people of northern and central Scotland in the Early Middle Ages...
(sometimes classified as Celtic)
- Continental Pre-Celtic:
- Tyrrhenian languages including at least:
- Lemnian language
- Etruscan languageEtruscan languageThe Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
- Raetic languageRaetic languageRaetic is an extinct language spoken in the ancient region of Raetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a limited number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet...
- Paleohispanic languagesPaleohispanic languagesThe Paleohispanic languages were the languages of the pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, excluding languages of foreign colonies, such as Greek in Emporion and Phoenician in Qart Hadast...
- Iberian languageIberian languageThe Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC...
- Tartessian languageTartessian languageThe Tartessian language is the extinct Paleohispanic language of inscriptions in the Southwestern script found in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula: mainly in the south of Portugal , but also in Spain . There are 95 of these inscriptions with the longest having 82 readable signs...
- Iberian language
- Non-classified pre-Roman languages of Italy (except for those affiliated with the Tyrrhenian):
- Camunic languageCamunic languageThe Camunic language is an extinct language which was spoken in the first millennium BC in the Valcamonica and Valtellina valleys of the Central Alps. It has most recently been considered to represent a form of Celtic .-Language:...
- Elymian languageElymian languageThe Elymian language is the extinct language of the ancient Elymian people of western Sicily. It is not known whether Elymian was an Indo-European tongue...
- North Picene languageNorth Picene languageThe North Picene language is a hypothetical construct based on four inscriptions of the Italian Iron Age from the Pesaro region of northeast Italy. The total number of words is about 60...
- Paleosardic language (aka Paleosardinian, Protosardic, NuraghicNuragheThe nuraghe is the main type of ancient megalithic edifice found in Sardinia. Today it has come to be the symbol of Sardinia and its distinctive culture, the Nuragic civilization...
language) - Sicanian language
- Sicel languageSicel languageSicel was an ancient language spoken by the Sicels , one of the three indigenous tribes of Sicily; the Elymians and the Sicani were the other two. According to some authors the speakers of Sicel entered Sicily from the Italian mainland, and the language is quite likely of Indo-European origin...
(probably Indo-European)
- Camunic language
Hypotheses
- Germanic substrate hypothesisGermanic substrate hypothesisThe Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family...
- Vasconic languagesVasconic languagesThe Vasconic substratum theory is a proposal that many western European languages contain remnants of an old language family of Vasconic languages, of which Basque is the only surviving member. The proposal was made by the German linguist Theo Vennemann, but has been rejected by other linguists...
- Vasconic substratum hypothesis
- Atlantic (Semitic) languagesAtlantic (semitic) languagesThe Atlantic languages of Semitic or "Semitidic" origin are a disputed concept in historical linguistics put forward by Theo Vennemann...
See also
- Pre-Indo-European (disambiguation)
- Indo-Aryan superstrate in MitanniIndo-Aryan superstrate in MitanniSome theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion....
- Lusitanian languageLusitanian languageLusitanian was a paleohispanic language that apparently belonged to the Indo-European family. Its relationship to the Celtic languages of the Iberian Peninsula, either as a member, a cousin , or as a different branch of Indo-European, is debated. It is known from only five inscriptions, dated from...
and Venetic languageVenetic languageVenetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North East of Italy and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
- non-classified extinct Indo-European languages - Saami languages (containing pre-Uralic substrate)
Archaeology and culture
- Anthony, David with Jennifer Y. Chi (eds., 2009). The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC.
- Bogucki, Peter I. and Pam J. Crabtree (eds. 2004). Ancient Europe 8000 BC—1000 AD: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
- Gimbutas, Marija (1973). Old Europe c. 7000-3500 B.C.: the earliest European civilization before the infiltration of the Indo-European peoples. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 1/1-2. 1-20.
- Tilley, Christopher (1996). An Ethnography of the Neolithic. Early Prehistoric Societies in Southern Scandinavia. Cambridge University Press.
Linguistic reconstructions
- Bammesberger, Alfred and Theo VennemannTheo VennemannTheo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
(eds., 2003). Languages in Prehistoric Europe. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. - Blench, Roger and Matthew Spriggs (eds. 1). Archaeology and Language. Vol. I. Theoretical and Methodological Orientations.
- Dolukhanov, Pavel M. (2003) Archaeology and Languages in Prehistoric Northern Eurasia // Japan Review, 15:175-186. http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/IJ1507.pdf
- Gimbutas, MarijaMarija GimbutasMarija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...
(1989). The Language of the Goddess - Greppin, John and T.L.Markey (eds., 1990). When Worlds Collide: The Indo-Europeans and the Pre-Indo-Europeans, Ann Arbor.
- Lehmann, Winfred P.Winfred P. LehmannWinfred P. Lehmann was an American linguist noted for his work in historical linguistics, particularly Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic, as well as for pioneering work in machine translation.-Biography:After receiving B.A. in Humanities at the Northwestern College in Watertown in 1936, he...
Pre-Indo-European. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man. 2002. ISBN 0-941694-82-8. - Mailhammer, Robert (2010). Diversity vs. Uniformity. Europe before the Arrival of Indo-European Languages. http://www.lrz.de/~mailhammer/htdocs/pdf/SWE_paper-MTP_draft.pdf // to appear in: Mailhammer, Robert and Theo Vennemann. Linguistic Roots of Europe. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
- Pre-Indo-European // Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe. Edited by: Glanville Price. 2000. eISBN 9780631220398.
- Ringe, Don. The Linguistic Diversiry of Aboriginal Europe // Language Log. January 6, 2009. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=980
- Vennemann, TheoTheo VennemannTheo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
. Languages in Prehistoric Europe north of the Alps. http://www.scribd.com/doc/8670/Languages-in-prehistoric-Europe-north-of-the-Alps - Vennemann, TheoTheo VennemannTheo Vennemann is a German linguist known best for his work on historical linguistics, especially for his disputed theories of a Vasconic substratum and an Atlantic superstratum of European languages. He also suggests that the High German consonant shift was already completed in the early 1st...
(2008). Linguistic reconstruction in the context of European prehistory. Transactions of the Philological Society. Volume 92, Issue 2, pages 215–284, November 1994 - Woodard, Roger D. (ed., 2008) Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press.
- Woodard, Roger D. (2008) Ancient Languages of Europe. Cambridge University Press.
External links
Reconstructed migration of language families and archaeological cultures in Europe during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic- www.oocities.com/linguaeimperii/index_en.html