The Indo-European controversy continues – Part 2

Linguist Asya Pereltsvaig and geographer/historian Martin Lewis have a new book entitled The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In it they argue against the evolutionary biologists Gray and Aitkinson, whose article in Science in 2012 gained wide attention, especially in the popular press (see earlier post, August 23, 2012).

Here the authors discuss their criticism of the Gray-Aitkinson model in this interview:
http://newbooksinlanguage.com/2015/07/21/the-indo-european-controversy-facts-and-fallacies-in-historical-linguistics-cambridge-university-press-2015/

Pereltsvaig and Lewis argue that any theory of the Indo-Europeans must be based on linguistic evidence. They argue that the Gray-Aitkinson model is based solely on words, which linguists recognize as – in some ways – the least important part of language; they are also skeptical that borrowings have been eliminated from the Gray-Aitkinson model. They point out that this model assumes that language can spread only via demic diffusion, thus rejecting the possibility of migration, language contact, and rapid spread (all of which we know has happened). Overall, they find the Gray-Aitkinson model simplistic and clearly in conflict with many of the known linguistic facts.

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