Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IE CLIMATE (Climate and Weather in Indo-European)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-09-01 do 2023-08-31
This project, IE CLIMATE, has as its primary objective the investigation of the climate and weather vocabulary of the Proto-Indo-European language from a linguistic and cultural standpoint, in order to identify what words the early speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language used to describe the climate and weather conditions they encountered. Proto-Indo-European is the reconstructed language that is hypothesized to be the ancestor of many of the languages spoken in Europe and Asia today (for example, Germanic languages like English, German, and Danish; languages descended from Latin, like Spanish and French [and let's not forget the relatives of Latin who left no descendent languages!]; Indo-Iranian languages, like Hindi, Urdu, and Farsi; Celtic languages like Irish and Welsh; Greek; Armenian; Albanian; Slavic and Baltic languages like Russian and Lithuanian, respectively; and some language groups that are entirely extinct, like Anatolian and Tocharian languages). Researchers hypothesize that the people who spoke this early ancestor language lived in the Pontic-Caspian steppe region in the late Neolithic to early Bronze Age. We can learn about what Proto-Indo-European must have been like as a language by studying its attested descendent languages, also known as "daughter languages"- the languages mentioned above, which have written records. IE CLIMATE specifically investigates the climate and weather vocabulary in order to figure out both what words the Proto-Indo-European speakers used to describe climate and weather phenomena and to investigate cultural attitudes of the speakers of early IE languages towards climate and weather phenomena. This last section is important, since language leaves a record of what people think is culturally important and interesting.
The relationship between humans and the natural world they encounter was as dynamic and critical in the prehistoric past as it is today, although people in early societies understood their relationship to the natural world perhaps somewhat differently than we do in modern societies today. Investigating the behavior and attitudes of the people of the past with respect to climate is critical for our understanding of our place in the world as a society, and as a species.
The objectives of the project are twofold: 1) gather the lexicon of Indo-European climate and weather vocabulary, and 2) see what we can learn from the study of the use of this vocabulary about speaker attitudes towards climate and weather phenomena.
The relationship between humans and the natural world they encounter was as dynamic and critical in the prehistoric past as it is today, although people in early societies understood their relationship to the natural world perhaps somewhat differently than we do in modern societies today. Investigating the behavior and attitudes of the people of the past with respect to climate is critical for our understanding of our place in the world as a society, and as a species.
The objectives of the project are twofold: 1) gather the lexicon of Indo-European climate and weather vocabulary, and 2) see what we can learn from the study of the use of this vocabulary about speaker attitudes towards climate and weather phenomena.
Work was conducted via 8 work packages (WP). WP1 involved the collection of the shared Indo-European climate and weather vocabulary, and thus involved a great deal of data gathering and analysis. This work resulted in 3 conference presentations, 1 manuscript, 1 forthcoming book chapter, and one invited talk. WP2 involved the analysis of some of the shared poetic and mythological motifs to be found in the use of this climate and weather vocabulary in the literature of the early-attested Indo-European daughter languages, in order to gather insights about speaker attitudes towards climate and weather phenomena; this work resulted in one conference presentation, two invited talks, and is also incorporated into the previously-mentioned forthcoming book chapter. WP3 involves the creation of an interactive online atlas which presents the climate and weather vocabulary and indexes it to time and place of attestation; this atlas is forthcoming. WP4 involved further dissemination of the results, which included two more invited talks and an interview in an outreach article in Horizons magazine; it will also result in the publication of an edited volume on weather in Indo-European. In WP5, I organized a conference on the subject of Weather and Climate in Indo-European, the first ever convened on the subject, which took place in November 2023 and featured talks on linguistic, literary, and cultural aspects of the problem. WP6 concerned researcher development through teaching: I designed and taught a course at the University of Copenhagen on the historical grammar of the Greek language; additionally, I guest lectured in a class on the Indo-European lexicon, speaking about the shared vocabulary describing the physical world. Finally, in WP7 and 8, which dealt with the development of research skills, I was a member of the Roots of Europe Research Centre and the Language History Research Group at the University of Copenhagen, which are dynamic and collaborative communities which facilitate discussion and innovation on the subjects of historical linguistics and Indo-European studies.
This project has contributed to the study of the language and culture of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European in a number of ways. First of all, this project represents the first study concentrating on collecting the shared climate and weather vocabulary of Indo-European as such; this has been done partially in the past as part of general summaries of the Indo-European lexicon but never in a focused way. The work done as part of this fellowship has also brought together researchers working on questions related to climate and weather, which has not been done before- the conference "Weather and Climate in Indo-European" was the first (although hopefully not last!) of its kind. The connections made at the conference have sparked new research and collaboration on an edited volume of the same name (again, the first on the subject), which is forthcoming. Finally, the atlas of climate and weather vocabulary (forthcoming) will present the lexical results of this project to the wider community of Indo-European language researchers, again facilitating new research on the topic.
In my work, I try to continually raise a subject which is not often discussed: what historical linguistics methodologies can tell us about climate and prehistory, and how climate can affect the history of languages. This subject is relevant not only for the subject of the past but for societies today: climate change affects speech communities all over the world, and in affecting the lives of these communities, it affects the history of the languages themselves, in ways that will not be seen for many years. By studying the way that climate and weather have affected the shape of language in the past- whether by looking at what terms were present in the lexica of ancient languages, or by assessing speaker attitudes towards weather phenomena- perhaps we can learn more about the ways that speech communities react to changes in their environment.
In my work, I try to continually raise a subject which is not often discussed: what historical linguistics methodologies can tell us about climate and prehistory, and how climate can affect the history of languages. This subject is relevant not only for the subject of the past but for societies today: climate change affects speech communities all over the world, and in affecting the lives of these communities, it affects the history of the languages themselves, in ways that will not be seen for many years. By studying the way that climate and weather have affected the shape of language in the past- whether by looking at what terms were present in the lexica of ancient languages, or by assessing speaker attitudes towards weather phenomena- perhaps we can learn more about the ways that speech communities react to changes in their environment.