Indo-Slavic Lexical Isoglosses and the Prehistoric Dispersal of Indo-Iranian

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-73053-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 26, 334 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 709 g

Reihe: Leiden Studies in Indo-European

During the past decade, the ancient DNA revolution has had a massive impact on the scholarly debates on the origins and dispersals of language families. Now, linguists are asking the question: does linguistic and genetic evidence paint the same picture of the human past? This book sheds new light on an old hypothesis on the relatedness of Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages, by studying unique lexical correspondences of these branches. It argues that their common Indo-Slavic origin supports an emerging picture based on ancient DNA, which shows a genetic relationship between prehistoric populations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Palmér, Axel I

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Tables and Figures

List of abbreviations

1 Introduction 1.1 Preliminaries: historical linguistics and the study of human prehistory 1.2 Aim of the monograph 1.3 State of the art: the position of Indo-Iranian within the Indo-European language family 1.4 Research questions

2 Theory and methodology 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Phylogenetic subgrouping 2.3 Dialectal subgrouping 2.4 Hybrid models 2.5 Linguistic palaeontology

3 Lexical isoglosses shared by Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Isoglosses: plausible shared innovations 3.3 Isoglosses: possible shared innovations 3.4 Uncertain isoglosses 3.5 Rejected isoglosses

4 Analysis of the Indo-Slavic isogloss corpus 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Attestation across Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Baltic, Slavic 4.3 Typological classification of isoglosses 4.4 Semantic clusters in the isogloss corpus 4.5 Non-exclusive isoglosses 4.6 Indo-Slavic? Innovations, archaisms, and quantity of isoglosses 4.7 Indo-Slavic and alternative scenarios

5 The archaeology and genetics of Indo-Iranian prehistory 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The Indo-European homeland question 5.3 The Sintashta culture as an archaeological context for Proto-Indo-Iranian 5.4 The Abashevo culture as an archaeological context for Pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian 5.5 From Yamnaya to Abashevo and Sintashta 5.6 Integration with linguistic evidence 5.7 Limitations and outlook

Bibliography

Word Index

Über Autor(innen)

Axel I. Palmér, Ph.D. (2024, Leiden University), is currently a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (Uppsala). His research focuses on the origin and development of the Indo-European languages in prehistory, with papers such as Indo-European Cereal Terminology Suggests a Northwest Pontic Homeland for the Core Indo-European Languages (PLoS ONE, 2022).