Re: Pre-IE languages in Europe

At 8:24 am -0500 9/1/99, Hawksinger wrote:
>Tom Wier wrote:
.....
>> As far as I know, there's very little direct evidence about any of the
>> languages that were spoken then.  Some have claimed that Basque
>> is the last remaining language spoken by the Neanderthals, or those
>> people who painted the caves in Lascaux and Altamira.
No doubt - the Basque language has given rise to all manner of unlikely
theories.  Whether Neanderthals had language or not is itself very
controversial.  That Basque is a survival of pre-Indo-European language is
certain, but what its affinities are is unknown and continues to be a
source of speculation.

>> Of course,
>> not knowing any other languages from that area, that's hard if not
>>impossible
>> to prove.
>>
>> I believe Pictish, a language spoken in what is now Scotland, is thought
>>to be
>> preindoeuropean, but IIRC, it died out sometime during late antiquity,
>> with only a handful of carvings and the like as direct empirical evidence
>> for any posited relationships with other languages.
>>
>> Does anyone know anything more detailed than this?
'Picti', of course, merely means "painted people" and seems to have been a
pretty generic term given by Roman writers to those north of Hadrian's
Wall.  A good proportion of these (if not all) were speakers of Brittonic
Celtic.  But there are a handful of strange, undecipherable incriptions
from IIRC the north east of Scotland which may well be survivals of a
pre-Celtic and pre-IE language.

>There is also Etruscan
yep - tho some claim Etruscan has an affinity with IE, I think this most
unlikely.  I'm sure Etruscan is another example of a pre-IE survival.  It
seems to have survived, just, into the 1st cent. AD.

>and a scattering of inscriptions across the
>Balkans, Asia Minor, and Mediterranean Islands in a variety of lgs.
Yep - on the Greek island of Lemnos there's an inscription in an unknown
language which appears to have many resemblances to Etruscan.

In Crete some inscriptions have been found, written in varieties of the
Greek alphabet but clearly in some unknown language.  The language is
dubbed "Eteocretan" (i.e. 'true Cretan') and gives all appearance of being
non-IE and non-Semitic.  Six of them come from the region of Praisos, the
earliest dating from late 7th or early 6th cent.BC, the others from the
4th, 3rd & 2nd cents.BC.  Three of these are very fragmentary (indeed, one
at least might even be Gree :), but the other three, including the oldest,
are more substantial and certainly not Greek.

There is also a somewhat enigmatic 3rd cent. inscription from Psykhro in
Crete which is non-Greek and may be in the same language as the Praisos
inscriptions.  It also has three 'linear signs' following the alphabetic
inscription.

There were also two bilingual inscriptions found at Dreros in East Crete.
The non-Greek language appears to the same or similar to that of Praisos.
But the Greek was so worn it was difficult to read them with certainty.
However, modernn technology would probably have brought much to light.
Alas, the inscriptions, together with other Greek inscriptions from Dreros,
were lost during the Italo-German occupation of the island in WWII.

You'll find some info on these inscriptions in "Pre-Greek Speech on Crete"
by some guy called Ray Brown ;)   It was published in 1985 by Hakkert in
Amsterdam (ISBN 90-256-0876-0); but I don't know how easy it is to come by
now.

>I was quite interested in these at one time although I never did
>any work with them.  I know the U. of Chicago's Regenstein library
>had dozens of books on the subject so the references exist.
Wonder if mine's there ;)

>Caveat,
>here more than most I would be very careful about accepting the
>quality of these works.  It seems about once a decade or so, someone
>'proves' that Basque is related to lg X or publishes the definitive
>analysis of Etruscan.
This, alas, is all too true.  I doubt that there is any natlang to which
some crank has not tried to prove a relationship with Basque!

I assure you I have done neither of these things.

>Most such work goes on the proverbial rubbish
>heap of linguistic history.
I agree.

Ray.