Paleo-European languages: Difference between revisions

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'''Old European''' is a designation for the (unknown) languages of the first Neolithic farmers in central Europe, who immigrated from the east around the year 5500 BC.  Their original homeland probably no longer exists: it is drowned beneath the Black Sea, and was where now is the Bay of Odessa.  (Before about 5500 BC, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake - the ''Euxine Lake'' - with a level much lower than the present day sea level.  Then the rising sea burst through the Bosporus and flooded the Black Sea basin within a few years to almost the present day level.)
'''Paleo-European''' (or '''Old European''') is a designation for the (mostly unknown) languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] family which dominates the continent today.  In this sense, [[Basque]] and the [[Wikipedia:Languages of the Caucasus|Caucasian languages]] are Paleo-European languages (however, the languages spoken today are certainly not identical with the languages that were spoken before the spread of Indo-European - they certainly changed a lot over time).


The Old European languages are not attested in writing (but see [[WIkipedia:Old European Script|Old European script]] for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the easternmost parts of the Old European area, which may or may not have been a writing system).  The only access to it we have are place names and especially river names that are found all over central Europe, and possibly loanwords in the Indo-European languages now spoken there.  The area across which these Old European river names occur largely coincides with the area where remnants of the central European Neolithic (the so-called Linear Pottery culture) and its daughter cultures can be found.
==Traces of lost Paleo-European languages==


==Hypotheses about the relationships of Old European==
The prehistoric Paleo-European languages are not attested in writing (but see [[Wikipedia:Old European Script|Old European script]] for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the [[Vinča culture]], which may or may not have been a writing system, but are at any rate undeciphered).  The only access to them we have are place names and especially [[Old European hydronymy|river names]] that are found all over central and western Europe, and possibly loanwords in the Indo-European languages now spoken there.


There are several hypotheses concerning the relationships of Old European to other, attested languages.
==Theories about Paleo-European languages==


The German linguist Hans Krahe ascribed the Old European hydronymy to an Indo-European language that, according to him, was the common ancestor of Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and possibly Slavic.
There are many theories about these languages.  The German linguist [[Wikipedia:Theo Vennemann|Theo Vennemann]] assumes that most languages of Neolithic Europe were related to Basque, and claims to have found evidence for this in the [[Old European hydronymy]].  Most of his colleagues, however, remain unconvinced.  [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]] speculates that some of them - those reflected in the [[Old European hydronymy]] - belonged to a language family ("[[Aquan languages|Aquan]]") related to the [[Indo-European languages]].  


However, there are two problems with this hypothesis.  First, these languages are not characterized by any shared innovation and do not seem to form a valid node in the Indo-European family tree; second, the Old European river names, while seemingly having Indo-European etymologies, do not reflect the characteristic sound changes of the languages in which they are found and are thus more likely to be borrowed rather than inherited.  For example, the Old European river names show a predominant /a/-vocalism which looks quite un-Indo-European, while the vowels /e/ and /o/ which are frequent in Indo-European appear to have been absent.
===Languages and migration patterns===


Another German linguist, Wolfgang Paul Schmid, addressed the first problem by assuming that Krahe's Old European was Proto-Indo-European itself, which he localized in central Europe. This is widely rejected today, and it doesn't solve the second problem.
Before the Neolithic, Europe probably was linguistically very diverse, especially in the Mediterranean, as there had been time for a high diversity to build up, and forced that could have established large families probably were absent. Nobody knows for sure, however. The linguist Don Ringe assumes [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=980 a high degree] of diversity. Pre-colonial North America may be a useful standard of comparison. North America has about 50 indigenous language families and isolates; Europe is about half the size and may thus have had about 20 to 25 stocks. However, there is no solid evidence for this, and diversity may have been lower, with only one stock in each of the three great Mediterranean peninsulas and two to four stocks north of the Alps. Certainly, diversity was low in the British Isles and Scandinavia, which had been only recently been settled by humans after the ice sheet had receded.


The second problem was addressed by Theo Vennemann (again, a German linguist) who proposed that Old European was not an Indo-European language at all, but related to Basque.  According to Vennemann, 'Vasconic' languages were spoken all across continental Europe west of a line that approximately runs from Riga to Odessa. (East of that line, Uralic was spoken in the north and Indo-European in the south; in the British Isles, Vennemann assumes, an Afro-Asiatic language was spoken.)  However, Vennemann's Vasconic etymologies are very weak.
The spread of agriculture in the Neolithic probably was mostly ''demic'', i.e. by the migration of farming population, especially in Central Europe, but partly ''culturally'', i.e. by local hunter-gatherer populations adopting farming. This would have been accompanied by the spread of large language families, one in the Mediterranean, one north of the Alps, possibly related to each other, though some older language families would have survived. The result would have been a landscape characterized by a complex patchwork of large and small language families.


[[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]] assumes that the Old European language was related to, but distinct from Indo-European.  Together, Old European and Indo-European form the [[Europic]] language family.
===Typology===


==Old European conlangs==
If anything can be said about the lost Paleo-European languages on the basis of what we find in the attested ones - Basque, the Caucasian languages and Etruscan -, we can say that the Paleo-European languages were synthetic languages with rich inflectional morphology and diverse [[morphosyntactic alignment]]s (Basque and most Caucasian languages are ergative, Georgian split between accusative and active/stative, Etruscan is accusative).  The Caucasian languages have very rich phoneme inventories and seem to always have had, but Basque and Etruscan have more moderate phoneme inventories, perhaps reflecting an old east-west cline.


* [[Albic]] by [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]]
==Attested Paleo-European languages==
* Thalassan by Rob Haden


===Living===
* [[Basque]]
* [[Wikipedia:Northwest Caucasian languages|Northwest Caucasian]]
* [[Wikipedia:Northeast Caucasian languages|Northeast Caucasian]]
* [[Wikipedia:Kartvelian languages|Kartvelian]]
===Extinct but fairly richly attested===
* [[Wikipedia:Etruscan language|Etruscan]] - possibly not native to Italy but immigrated from the Aegean region in the Late Bronze Age; many open questions
===Fragmentarily attested===
* [[Wikipedia:Aquitanian language|Aquitanian]], a close relative of Basque
* [[Wikipedia:Iberian language|Iberian]] does not show clear affinity to Basque; language is not understood yet
* [[Wikipedia:Tartessian language|Tartessian]] - probably not a Celtic language; language is not understood yet
* [[Wikipedia:Raetic language|Raetic]] and [[Wikipedia:Lemnian language|Lemnian]], apparently related to Etruscan
* [[Vinča culture|Vinča]] language; script - if it is a script at all - undeciphered
* [[Wikipedia:Minoan language|Minoan]]; scripts (two different but related ones) only partially deciphered
* [[Wikipedia:Eteocretan language|Eteocretan]] may be a descendant of Minoan, but this is uncertain; language is not understood yet
* [[Wikipedia:Cypro-Minoan language|Cypro-Minoan]]; script is not yet deciphered
* [[Wikipedia:Eteocypriot language|Eteocypriot]] may be a descendant of Cypro-Minoan; language is not understood yet
==Hypothetical Paleo-European languages==
* [[Aquan languages|Aquan]] languages, posited based on loanwords in western Indo-European languages and the [[Old European hydronymy]]; according to [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]], spoken widely across western Europe and related to (or an early diverging branch of) Indo-European
* [[Danubian]] languages of the Lower Danube and Central Europe (Linearbandkeramik) Neolithic
* [[Wikipedia:Atlantic (Semitic) languages|Atlantic]] languages; according to Theo Vennemann, related to Semitic and spoken in the British Isles
* [[Paleo-Atlantic]] languages - name coined by Jörg Rhiemeier for a hypothetical family of the western refuge area in Paleolithic Europe during the last glacial maximum; may be the same entity as Vennemann's Vasconic
* [[Paleo-Pontic]] languages - name coined by Jörg Rhiemeier for a hypothetical family of the eastern refuge area in Paleolithic Europe during the last glacial maximum
* [[Vasco-Caucasian languages|Vasco-Caucasian]] languages; hypothetical family including Basque, Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and various extinct languages of Europe; according to [[User:Talskubilos|Octavià Alexandre]], widely spoken in Europe and responsible for substratum loanwords in Indo-European languages; not to be confused with Vasconic
* [[Wikipedia:Vasconic substratum theory|Vasconic]] languages, hypothetical relatives of Basque; according to Theo Vennemann, spoken widely across western Europe; not to be confused with Vasco-Caucasian
See also [[Paleo-European history overview]].
==Paleo-European conlangs==
Naturally, this lost world has inspired some conlangers to come up with fictional re-creations of these languages.  There are several conlangs which represent Paleo-European languages.  Some of these are:
* [[Alpic]] by [[User:TaylorS|Taylor Selseth]]
* [[Eteonoric]] by various members of the [[League of Lost Languages]]
* [[Hairo]] by Christian Thalmann
* [[Hesperic]] by [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]]
:* [[Albic]]
:* [[Alpianic]] by various members of the [[League of Lost Languages]]
:* various others, see [[Hesperic#Classification|here]]
* [[Maerik]] by [[User:Melroch|Benct Philip Jonsson]]
* [[Thalassan]] by [[User:RHaden|Rob Haden]]
See also [[League of Lost Languages]].
[[Category:Paleo-European languages|*]]
[[Category:Historical linguistics]]
[[Category:Natlangs]]
[[Category:Natlangs]]
[[Category:LLL]]

Latest revision as of 11:17, 27 January 2018

Paleo-European (or Old European) is a designation for the (mostly unknown) languages that were spoken in Europe prior to the spread of the Indo-European family which dominates the continent today. In this sense, Basque and the Caucasian languages are Paleo-European languages (however, the languages spoken today are certainly not identical with the languages that were spoken before the spread of Indo-European - they certainly changed a lot over time).

Traces of lost Paleo-European languages

The prehistoric Paleo-European languages are not attested in writing (but see Old European script for a set of undeciphered signs that were used in the Vinča culture, which may or may not have been a writing system, but are at any rate undeciphered). The only access to them we have are place names and especially river names that are found all over central and western Europe, and possibly loanwords in the Indo-European languages now spoken there.

Theories about Paleo-European languages

There are many theories about these languages. The German linguist Theo Vennemann assumes that most languages of Neolithic Europe were related to Basque, and claims to have found evidence for this in the Old European hydronymy. Most of his colleagues, however, remain unconvinced. Jörg Rhiemeier speculates that some of them - those reflected in the Old European hydronymy - belonged to a language family ("Aquan") related to the Indo-European languages.

Languages and migration patterns

Before the Neolithic, Europe probably was linguistically very diverse, especially in the Mediterranean, as there had been time for a high diversity to build up, and forced that could have established large families probably were absent. Nobody knows for sure, however. The linguist Don Ringe assumes a high degree of diversity. Pre-colonial North America may be a useful standard of comparison. North America has about 50 indigenous language families and isolates; Europe is about half the size and may thus have had about 20 to 25 stocks. However, there is no solid evidence for this, and diversity may have been lower, with only one stock in each of the three great Mediterranean peninsulas and two to four stocks north of the Alps. Certainly, diversity was low in the British Isles and Scandinavia, which had been only recently been settled by humans after the ice sheet had receded.

The spread of agriculture in the Neolithic probably was mostly demic, i.e. by the migration of farming population, especially in Central Europe, but partly culturally, i.e. by local hunter-gatherer populations adopting farming. This would have been accompanied by the spread of large language families, one in the Mediterranean, one north of the Alps, possibly related to each other, though some older language families would have survived. The result would have been a landscape characterized by a complex patchwork of large and small language families.

Typology

If anything can be said about the lost Paleo-European languages on the basis of what we find in the attested ones - Basque, the Caucasian languages and Etruscan -, we can say that the Paleo-European languages were synthetic languages with rich inflectional morphology and diverse morphosyntactic alignments (Basque and most Caucasian languages are ergative, Georgian split between accusative and active/stative, Etruscan is accusative). The Caucasian languages have very rich phoneme inventories and seem to always have had, but Basque and Etruscan have more moderate phoneme inventories, perhaps reflecting an old east-west cline.

Attested Paleo-European languages

Living

Extinct but fairly richly attested

  • Etruscan - possibly not native to Italy but immigrated from the Aegean region in the Late Bronze Age; many open questions

Fragmentarily attested

  • Aquitanian, a close relative of Basque
  • Iberian does not show clear affinity to Basque; language is not understood yet
  • Tartessian - probably not a Celtic language; language is not understood yet
  • Raetic and Lemnian, apparently related to Etruscan
  • Vinča language; script - if it is a script at all - undeciphered
  • Minoan; scripts (two different but related ones) only partially deciphered
  • Eteocretan may be a descendant of Minoan, but this is uncertain; language is not understood yet
  • Cypro-Minoan; script is not yet deciphered
  • Eteocypriot may be a descendant of Cypro-Minoan; language is not understood yet

Hypothetical Paleo-European languages

  • Aquan languages, posited based on loanwords in western Indo-European languages and the Old European hydronymy; according to Jörg Rhiemeier, spoken widely across western Europe and related to (or an early diverging branch of) Indo-European
  • Danubian languages of the Lower Danube and Central Europe (Linearbandkeramik) Neolithic
  • Atlantic languages; according to Theo Vennemann, related to Semitic and spoken in the British Isles
  • Paleo-Atlantic languages - name coined by Jörg Rhiemeier for a hypothetical family of the western refuge area in Paleolithic Europe during the last glacial maximum; may be the same entity as Vennemann's Vasconic
  • Paleo-Pontic languages - name coined by Jörg Rhiemeier for a hypothetical family of the eastern refuge area in Paleolithic Europe during the last glacial maximum
  • Vasco-Caucasian languages; hypothetical family including Basque, Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and various extinct languages of Europe; according to Octavià Alexandre, widely spoken in Europe and responsible for substratum loanwords in Indo-European languages; not to be confused with Vasconic
  • Vasconic languages, hypothetical relatives of Basque; according to Theo Vennemann, spoken widely across western Europe; not to be confused with Vasco-Caucasian

See also Paleo-European history overview.

Paleo-European conlangs

Naturally, this lost world has inspired some conlangers to come up with fictional re-creations of these languages. There are several conlangs which represent Paleo-European languages. Some of these are:

See also League of Lost Languages.

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