Latin is a daughter of Proto-Italic, which is a daughter of PIE. In that sense, the connection is no more direct than between PIE and any other second-order descendant of PIE. Latin is much closer in time to PIE than modern IE languages are, so it looks much more similar (it has undergone fewer changes) - other IE languages attested from the same time as Classical Latin (e.g. Greek, Sanskrit, Gothic, little bits of Gaulish) also look pretty similar to PIE (and to Latin). Moreover, Latin and Italic (and Italian within Romance) are fairly conservative members of IE (unlike, say, Albanian, Parsi or Irish, which have undergone huge amounts of change).
The conclusion offered, after an interesting wander around the world, is that the original Indo-Europeans probably inhabited the plains north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea around six thousand years ago
Maybe Mallory has a point; I remember reading a few years ago that there is a theory that the closest extant languages to the original Proto-Indo-European are in fact Lithuanian and Latvian. Again, a subject that has never failed to fascinate me.
I read that a while ago; it's pretty good on explaining the archaeological data, though the linguistic side is sometimes a bit dubious and there are other plausible interpretations which get ignored (Mallory is an archaeologist, not a historical linguist, after all). For instance, the point you mention about how we conclude that the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in an area with horses - all the horse cognates in IE languages tell us is that PIE speakers were familiar with something which they called *ekwos, not that it was a horse as we know it: the meaning could have drifted over time. (In the case of horses, this is unlikely since I think pretty much all the descendents have the meaning "horse", but with other words, attested in fewer daughter branches, the problem can be serious; many forms reconstructable for PIE have very uncertain meanings
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It's not the mentioning of other theories that I objected to at all - it's the treatment they get, which is very dismissive. Renfrew's book is already on my wishlist, and it's very likely I'll read it at some point.
Oh, OK, I must have misunderstood what you meant by I think the book would have lost little of real value had it not had the argument or even any mention of the alternative theories. I think I would be disappointed by a book which purported to be about Indo-European origins, but which didn't mention alternative models (even to dismiss them).
The impression I got when I was immersed in this a few years ago was that most historical linguists (traditionalists, anyway) loved Mallory's account, while archaeologists seemed to be moving in Renfrew's direction.
The intended interpretation was that I thought that treatment of alternative models was so bad that the book would have been better than it is now if it hadn't mentioned them at all. It would be better still if it mentioned them in a less negative way. (I thought the rest of the book was fine.)
In Search of the Indo-Europeanslethargic_manJune 17 2005, 15:47:30 UTC
It's a few years since I read this book*, but I the impression I remember getting was that the book was part of an ongoing rather heated debate between Mallory and Renfrew, though I agree it did seem unnecessarily petty.
Amusingly, whilst Mallory is critical of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's lack of information on the subject, more recent editions of of the Britannica refer back to this book in the bibliography!
There was an articlelivredor pointed me to in Nature a couple of years ago (December 2003, I think) arguing from rates of linguistic change that the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in Anatolia 9000 years ago - which is, of course, what Mallory spends a lot of the book arguing against. (Though the article acknowledges the Kurgan migration would still play a part in the picture; unlike Renfrew as portrayed by Mallory, they do pay attention to the archaeological evidence.) livredor, "lj user="rysmiel"> and I spent some time discussing this (though none of us have read the full article, only the summary of it then available on the Web (and now
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Maybe Mallory has a point; I remember reading a few years ago that there is a theory that the closest extant languages to the original Proto-Indo-European are in fact Lithuanian and Latvian. Again, a subject that has never failed to fascinate me.
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The impression I got when I was immersed in this a few years ago was that most historical linguists (traditionalists, anyway) loved Mallory's account, while archaeologists seemed to be moving in Renfrew's direction.
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Amusingly, whilst Mallory is critical of the Encyclopaedia Britannica's lack of information on the subject, more recent editions of of the Britannica refer back to this book in the bibliography!
There was an article livredor pointed me to in Nature a couple of years ago (December 2003, I think) arguing from rates of linguistic change that the Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in Anatolia 9000 years ago - which is, of course, what Mallory spends a lot of the book arguing against. (Though the article acknowledges the Kurgan migration would still play a part in the picture; unlike Renfrew as portrayed by Mallory, they do pay attention to the archaeological evidence.) livredor, "lj user="rysmiel"> and I spent some time discussing this (though none of us have read the full article, only the summary of it then available on the Web (and now ( ... )
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