Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EUROLITHIC (The Linguistic Roots of Europe's Agricultural Transition)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-06-30
Europe is nowadays dominated by the Indo-European language family, which includes Germanic, Baltic and Slavic as well as the Romance languages, Albanian and Greek. All of these languages diverged, over the past five millennia, from a single parent language, known as Proto-Indo-European.
Linguistics, archaeology and genetics converge on a scenario in which most Indo-European languages spread from the archaeological Yamnaya culture, which expanded from the East European steppe from the end of the 4th millennium BCE.
However, no consensus exist on what the European linguistic landscape looked like before the Indo-European expansion, because most of the preexisting languages died out before the start of the historical record.
Before the expansion of the Roman Empire, some pre-Indo-European languages are known to have been spoken in Italy, including Etruscan. In addition, Basque is still spoken today in France and Spain. But these are only fragments of the original pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape.
The main goal of this project is to find out more about Europe's pre-Indo-European languages. With no written sources, one of the few ways of doing this is for linguists to search for old loanwords. Many European languages borrowed from each other, at various stages. But they likely also borrowed from extinct non-Indo-European languages, in prehistoric times. Through linguistic analysis, it is possible to determine how many of such loans exist and from what kind of languages or languages families they were absorbed.
Linguistics, archaeology and genetics converge on a scenario in which most Indo-European languages spread from the archaeological Yamnaya culture, which expanded from the East European steppe from the end of the 4th millennium BCE.
However, no consensus exist on what the European linguistic landscape looked like before the Indo-European expansion, because most of the preexisting languages died out before the start of the historical record.
Before the expansion of the Roman Empire, some pre-Indo-European languages are known to have been spoken in Italy, including Etruscan. In addition, Basque is still spoken today in France and Spain. But these are only fragments of the original pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape.
The main goal of this project is to find out more about Europe's pre-Indo-European languages. With no written sources, one of the few ways of doing this is for linguists to search for old loanwords. Many European languages borrowed from each other, at various stages. But they likely also borrowed from extinct non-Indo-European languages, in prehistoric times. Through linguistic analysis, it is possible to determine how many of such loans exist and from what kind of languages or languages families they were absorbed.
To collect the evidence for prehistoric loans, multiple subprojects were created with focuses on different Indo-European subgroups. Originally, three PhDs project were envisaged, focusing on Baltic, Italic and Armenian. Later, a fourth PhD project was added with a focus on Sardinian, a Romance language spoken in Sardinia. Finally, a postdoc project was started with a focus on Celtic.
All of the above projects resulted in collections of evidence for prehistoric language contact. One conclusion of the project is that the Indo-European subgroups of Europe were all in contact with different linguistic entities, which varied according to the different regions. However, all of these subgroups also contain evidence for early loans that were absorbed from a single non-Indo-European source. This source was likely a language with which the Indo-European branches came into contact soon after their split from Proto-Indo-European.
Another important result is that not just the European Indo-European languages were in contact with a single non-Indo-European languages, but in fact also Armenian and possibly Indo-Iranian, despite nowadays being spoken in Asia.
This suggests that most of the Indo-European languages, including the languages that ultimately migrated to Asia, were impacted by the same pre-Indo-European language or language family. These prehistoric contacts could have taken place west of the Yamnaya culture, in East Europe, from from the start of the 3rd millennium BCE. However, it cannot be excluded that these contacts continued deeper inside Europe, until later.
The project results are presented in as many as four dissertations as well as multiple standalone papers. In addition, the project has resulted in a multi-author volume, which offers a range of contributions to the reconstruction of the pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape of Europe. In addition, they offer possible new ways for improving the methodology by which prehistoric loans can be identified and analyzed.
All of the above projects resulted in collections of evidence for prehistoric language contact. One conclusion of the project is that the Indo-European subgroups of Europe were all in contact with different linguistic entities, which varied according to the different regions. However, all of these subgroups also contain evidence for early loans that were absorbed from a single non-Indo-European source. This source was likely a language with which the Indo-European branches came into contact soon after their split from Proto-Indo-European.
Another important result is that not just the European Indo-European languages were in contact with a single non-Indo-European languages, but in fact also Armenian and possibly Indo-Iranian, despite nowadays being spoken in Asia.
This suggests that most of the Indo-European languages, including the languages that ultimately migrated to Asia, were impacted by the same pre-Indo-European language or language family. These prehistoric contacts could have taken place west of the Yamnaya culture, in East Europe, from from the start of the 3rd millennium BCE. However, it cannot be excluded that these contacts continued deeper inside Europe, until later.
The project results are presented in as many as four dissertations as well as multiple standalone papers. In addition, the project has resulted in a multi-author volume, which offers a range of contributions to the reconstruction of the pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape of Europe. In addition, they offer possible new ways for improving the methodology by which prehistoric loans can be identified and analyzed.
Moving beyond the state of the art, the project has resulted in a wealth of new evidence for prehistoric language contact affecting multiple branches of the Indo-European language family. The various project members have analyzed this evidence and offered new insights into the structure and origin of the various strata of non-Indo-European loans. In addition, we have employed this evidence to explore the broader linguistic prehistory of the relevant Indo-European subgroups, to find out how they migrated from the Indo-European homeland to their historically known locations. The subproject on the pre-Roman elements of Sardinian is yielding unexpected new results on the pre-Indo-European linguistic links to eastern Spain and southern France, suggesting a link with the pre-Roman language called Palaeo-Iberian.