Journal of Language Relationship • 9 (2013) • Pp. 69–92 • © Dybo A., 2013
Anna Dybo
Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow)
Language and archeology: some methodological problems.1. Indo-European and Altaic landscapes
The article is the first part of a larger work that represents an attempt to systematize ourideas on the natural environment and material culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is based on a more or less complete selection of reconstructed words from the appropriate semantic areas and on their comparison with a similar selection performed for a proto-language of similar time depth, whose speakers evidently inhabited a territory that was notin contact with the Proto-Indo-European one — Proto-Altaic. In this part, only the words that belong to the semantic field of landscape terms are analyzed. The main conclusion is that thehypothesis of a steppe environment is more applicable for the Proto-Altaic population,whereas for Proto-Indo-Europeans a mountainous region seems more appropriate. As forthe water bodies, for Proto-Indo-Europeans we should suppose the existence of a sea (or of avery big lake), and for speakers of Proto-Altaic, the existence of very big rivers with seasonfloods.
http://jolr.ru/files/(108)jlr2013-9(69-92).pdf
Anna Dybo
Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow)
Language and archeology: some methodological problems.1. Indo-European and Altaic landscapes
The article is the first part of a larger work that represents an attempt to systematize ourideas on the natural environment and material culture of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is based on a more or less complete selection of reconstructed words from the appropriate semantic areas and on their comparison with a similar selection performed for a proto-language of similar time depth, whose speakers evidently inhabited a territory that was notin contact with the Proto-Indo-European one — Proto-Altaic. In this part, only the words that belong to the semantic field of landscape terms are analyzed. The main conclusion is that thehypothesis of a steppe environment is more applicable for the Proto-Altaic population,whereas for Proto-Indo-Europeans a mountainous region seems more appropriate. As forthe water bodies, for Proto-Indo-Europeans we should suppose the existence of a sea (or of avery big lake), and for speakers of Proto-Altaic, the existence of very big rivers with seasonfloods.
http://jolr.ru/files/(108)jlr2013-9(69-92).pdf