Languages, genes and cultures

As you may know, in this blog I have often criticised many aspects of traditional historical linguistics, e.g. the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), including the imaginary set of laryngeals (one of my 'favourite' topics indeed) or the generally accepted chronology of IE expansion. I have written many posts criticizing these things, inspired by the work of some authors, like Mario Alinei and Xaverio Ballester, who oppose the traditional assumptions held in mainstream Indo-European (IE) studies. The good news is that now a major scholarly work, led by Francisco Villar, seems to support these ideas!

Francisco Villar is a renowned expert in Indo-European, and also in the languages of Pre-Roman Iberia. As we saw in this post, one of his theories is that the study of ancient toponyms, especially hydronyms, shows that the oldest languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula were IE. Any other type of language (Basque, Iberian) appeared later (Villar, 2000). In his last research work (Villar et al 2011), carried out in collaboration with Blanca Prósper, Carlos Jordán and María Pilar Fernández Álvarez, he continues his previous research, comparing the linguistic data with the archaeological and genetic evidence that's now available. I will comment on the results in a series of posts, starting with this one. For the moment, I'll try to summarize some of the main points.

In their research, they focus on the ancient hydronyms of Europe and southwest Asia. The choice of material is relevant: hydronyms usually retain signs of archaic linguistic layers. Analysing these toponyms, they identify a series of components that are significantly present in those areas, e.g. *aisko/isko-, *ab-, or *balso-. Not only that: they also demonstrate, using phonological and lexicological criteria, that these components are IE, with no exception.

The aim of the research is to to try to correlate this set of data with the currently available theories of IE origin and expansion into Europe. The novelty is that the authors take into account Alinei's Paleolithic Paradigm  as one of the possible scenarios. Putting together linguistic, archaeological and genetic data, they reach the conclusion that the distribution of these toponyms correlates basically with two main events: the Mesolithic population expansion from the Glacial refugia of southern Europe, and the expansion of agriculture in the Neolithic. Both events involve IE languages. This is important. If the Mesolithic populations that migrated north were already carrying IE languages with them, then  those languages were there already in the Paleolithic. In order words, the Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (PCP).

Of course, some may think: "Ok, there were IE language in Europe at that early age, but then there was another wave of IE dispersal at the bronze age which brought the IE languages as we know them today and historically". The authors admit this possibility, but also say that it is quite unlikely. As they say, and as I have insisted in this blog many times, there is no evidence of any sort of relevant population movement in the Bronze Age that could even remotely support this theory, usually known as the Kurgan theory.

As I said, I'll publish more posts getting into the details of this important research work. For example, I'll talk about their criticism of some aspects of traditional IE reconstruction, e.g. the reconstruction of PIE phonology. Let's see some excerpts (the highlighting is mine):

(p. 724-725): "Ciertas líneas de investigación han tendido a limitar el sistema vocálico indoeuropeo a dos vocales /e/ y /o/ e incluso a una sola (...). Tal reconstrucción, que no vamos a criticar aquí en detalle, desemboca en sistemas vocálicos irreales, inexistentes en las lenguas del mundo, sea cual sea la familia lingüística en la que busquemos. El testimonio de los arqueo-hidro-topónimos lleva la reconstrucción profunda del vocalismo indoeuropeo por derroteros muy diferentes. En las series vocálicas de nuestras arqueo-raíces la /e/ y la /o/ se manifiestan como variantes triviales y en parte locales de las respectivas formas básicas /i/, /u/ y /a/ (...). De ese modo, el sistema vocálico que se dibuja en el estadio cero es de tres miembros (a, i, u)".

(p. 726): "al pretender, como se ha hecho tradicionalmente, explicar la supuesta lengua común como un sistema cerrado en sí mismo, sin un origen y un devenir, se ha incurrido en simplificaciones, distorsiones e invenciones tendentes a buscar regularidades artificiales en terreno de la fonética, la morfología y la semántica".

The authors use cautious language, but this is actually a complete demolition of the many aspects of traditional PIE reconstruction, including laryngeals and other inventions.

NOTE (Apr 22, 2012): I have translated the quotes into English. See comments.

References:
- VILLAR, Francisco (2000). Indoeuropeos y No-Indoeuropeos en la Hispania Prerromana. Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
- VILLAR, F., B. PRÓSPER, C. JORDÁN, and  M.P. FERNÁNDEZ ÁLVAREZ (2011). Lenguas, genes y culturas en la prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental. Salamanca, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Toponymic notes (1): Valentia

It's summer time and the temperatures are getting high around Valencia. I can enjoy the sandy Mediterranean  beaches near my home, which is quite good, but sometimes I wish I were in a place with milder weather, somewhere in the mountains or further north, for example on this beautiful island off the southwest coast of Ireland (picture taken from here).

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Beautiful, isn't it? And refreshing. The funny thing is that this place is actually called... Valencia, like my home town. The complete name is Valencia (or Valentia) Island, also Dairbhre (= "place of oaks"), in Irish. The question is: Why is there a Valencia in this corner of County Kerry? It's difficult to imagine the reason, but there must be one. I'll go into the details later. First, a little digression.

The best known 'Valencia' is the one I live in, in eastern Spain, but there are others in this country and also in France, Portugal and Italy, with variations like 'Valença' or 'Valence'. The original form derives from Latin Valentia, used by the Romans to name some new settlements (the Spanish one was founded in the 2nd c. BC), but in some cases, e.g. Valence d'Albigeois (Tarn, France) or in Valencia de Don Juan (León, Spain), the place-name was coined at a later age as a calque on the original model, for reasons of beauty or prestige. Later on, it was also exported into the Americas (for some curious US examples take a look at this post from Vent d Cabylia, a blog I usually read).

What about the British Isles? The other day, reading a book about Romano-British place-names, I made an interesting discovery: by the end of the 4th c. AD, the Roman Emperor Theodosius decided to reorganize the province of Britannia adding a new sub-division in northern England that he called Valentia, probably as a tribute to Emperor Valens. It seems that the capital was Carlisle (Rivet - Smith, 1979: 46). The name of this territory can be found in some classical texts but it disappeared from common use.

In England there are nowadays a couple of place-names with a 'Valence' element in them. One of them is Sutton Valence (Kent). Its name derives from a French noble family that settled in England in the 13th c. They were called de Valence, after a small French village in France with the same name, in Poitou-Charantes. (On the right you can see a picture of Saint Mary's Curch, in Sutton Valence, taken from this web page).There is also a small village in Hampshire called Newton Valence. I haven't found information about its etymology, but I guess it must also have a medieval origin from a noble family.

Now, let's go back to our green Irish island. Its name is certainly not from Roman times (Ireland, or Hibernia, was never a Roman province), and there are no links with any noble familiy from medieval France. So where does this 'Valencia' come from? According to Mills' Dictionary of British Place Names, it derives from the Irish words Béal Inse, with the meaning "estuary of the island". The present form of the name is probably influenced by the Latin ones, but, as we have seen, its origin is completely different. And quite unexpected! As usually happens in the world of toponymy, a place-name is definitely not what it seems.

References:
- Mills, A.D: ( 2003). Dictionary of British Place Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Rivet, A.L.F., and C. Smith (1979). The Place-Names of Roman Britain. London: Book Club Associates.

How old is English?

That's a good question. And it's also the title of an interesting website that I have recently discovered. Its authors ("Michael Goormachtigh with the help of Dr Anthony Durham") propose an alternative view on the origins of English. According to them, English was spoken in England long before the 'arrival' of the Jutes, Angles and Saxons in the 5th c. AD. And there are important reasons to think so, as they show in the various sections of the website. Sound familiar? Definitely. They're not the only ones who have proposed these hypotheses, as we have seen in this blog with reference to the Paleolithic Continuity Paradigm (PCP) and the works of Mario Alinei and Xaverio Ballester. Apparently, however, Goormachtigh and Durham are not aware of the existence of the Continuity Theory, and it's quite interesting that they have reached similar conclusions independently.

One of the arguments they use to back their thesis is population genetics. The authors draw extensively from Stephen Oppenheimer's (2007) The Origins of the British, a book that I reviewed in a previous post. Maybe they should try to read other sources too. Oppenheimer's book offers an apparently simple and comprehensive analysis of the population history of Europe and the British Isles, and the results of his research seem really spectacular, offering the perfect answer for the whole process. I really enjoyed the book when I read it, but now I'm more sceptical about Oppenheimer's methodology (for further criticism, see here). Very probably things are not as simple as Oppenheimer portrays them.

One of the most interesting aspects of Goormachtigh and Durham's website is their study of place-names. They take some ancient toponyms, already recorded in Roman times, e.g. Thames, Lincoln or London, and interpret them as originally Germanic. Needless to say, this analysis would be completely verbotten in the traditional view, where Germanic languages were not expected to be there at such an early time. As a consequence, the whole tradition of British toponymy has treated ancient place-names as non-Germanic, not even allowing the slightest shade of doubt about it. But now we have some authors trying to offer an alternative view for some of those place-names. And not only on their website: Goormachtigh and Durham have also published an article with their toponymic proposals in a journal (see reference below). These authors are probably not at the cutting edge of place-name studies, and they cannot be qualified as 'expert' toponymysts, but in any case their proposals are interesting enough to be taken seriously, and they actually open a completely new line of research in British toponymy. As far as I know, there are no major research projects exploring these possibilities, and for the moment what we have is Goormachtigh and Durham's suggestive proposals and little more. Now, let's see one example of their proposals. And a big one: London.

According to the authors, the toponym London derives from the Germanic word 'land'. In origin, it would be the plural form of this word, meaning something like "the lands by the river Thames', which the Romans rendered simply as Londinium. Now, why 'Londinium' with an "o", and not *'Landinium'? The answer is quite simple: before a nasal + consonant, West Germanic */a/ was written "o" in the Anglian dialect of English, probably reflecting the local pronunciation at the time. This "o" spelling was later replaced by standard "a", as in 'land', but was kept in some place-names, which tend to be more conservative in general.

I think this proposal about the interpretation of 'Londinium' looks quite promising. But, obvioulsy, if you want to accept it, first you have to accept the fact that Germanic languages were present in the British Isles in Roman times, which is currently an academic anathema. Now, what have the experts said so far about the origins of this toponym? I have recently read an article about it (Coates, 1998), with a thorough analysis of the literature and a new proposal, connected with Hans Krahe's Old European stratum. Richard Coates' article is a good piece of scholarly work, one done by an expert, with richness of detail and depth of linguistic analysis. However, I find his proposal a bit artificial, or a bit forced, requiring a complicated set of events to make sense of the evolution of London as a place-name. I think it would be great if some eminent scholars such as Coates decided to explore other possible ways of analysing the ancient place-name material of England.

Reference:
- Coates (1998). "A new explanation of the name of London", in Transactions of the Philological Society, 96 (2): 203-229.
- Goormachtigh, M., and A. Durham (2009). "Kentish place-names: were they ever Celtic?", in Archaeologia Cantiana, 129, 279-293.

Picture: a plaque with the Latin name of London (source).