Diversity vs. Uniformity: Europe before the arrival of the Indo- European languages – A comparison with prehistoric Australia (original) (raw)
This paper reviews current theories on the linguistic prehistory of Europe and draws a comparison to prehistoric Australia. It presents evidence for the view that Europe after the last ice age was relatively low in linguistic diversity, giving rise to the remarkably uniform system of place names across Europe. However, when the Indo-European languages arrived, the linguistic map of Europe was probably a great deal more diverse, forming a highly heterogeneous layer of contact languages. Indo-European languages were in all probability not connected to the spread of agriculture and they spread without significant movements in population. The paper presents the extension of the Pama-Nyungan languages in prehistoric Australia as a parallel to the way the Indo-European languages occupied most of Europe, suggesting that languages spread in a variety of different contact scenarios as small groups of culturally and technologically superior people Europe advanced across Europe. * This is the revised version of a paper presented at the Centre for Research on Language Change, The Australian National University, in 2009. I would like to thank the audience for constructive feedback. In addition, I am grateful to Patrick McConvell, Malcolm Ross and Theo Vennemann for reading over a draft version of this paper, proposing many improvements. Any remaining errors are my own.
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