Archaeology & Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins

Description

Author: Renfrew, Colin (1937-2024)

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Pub Date: 1995 (Fifth printing)

Binding: Paperback

Condition:  Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears, folds.  Previous owner’s name on upper corner ffep/half-title page.  All corners slightly bent, worn.  Edge wear.  It’s been used/read, but lightly.

Notes: Historical linguistics.  The nomad factor.  Not much on Western Hemisphere  linguistic changes, primarily Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  “The idea of languages being related to one another was not a new one.  It had long been realized that many of the languages of contemporary Europe–for instance Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese–were related, both in vocabulary and in grammatical structure.  Indeed in this case the explanation was not too far to seek.  The ‘common source’ in this case was Latin, which of course exists actively used in some scholarly writings as well as in the litany of the Roman Catholic Church.  Resemblances between Latin and Sanskrit had already been recognized…Gothic was readily seen to be the ‘common source’ of several languages, such as German and Dutch….And Sanskrit was already understood to be the ancestor of Hindu (with Urdu) and many of the other languages of Indian, including Sindi, Nepali, Bengali, and Sinhalese.” (Page 11)