Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T22:58:35.173Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Indo-Europeans and Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

André Martinet
André Martinet*
Affiliation:
École pratique des hautes études, Paris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Even in scientific usage there are terms that we believe we understand and when we try to pinpoint what they refer to we notice that these terms do not have a precise meaning. This applies, in linguistics, to the term Indo-European. Mostly, when used as an adjective, it seems to apply to those languages that derive, hypothetically, from a disappeared idiom which some scholars for nearly two hundred years have been trying to reconstruct. Thus, it is said that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin are Indo-European languages. When this epithet is applied to French it causes surprise. From a comparative viewpoint, French is usually seen as a Romance language and only Romance languages taken together or, better said, Latin from which they derive, seem to merit the epithet. When used as a noun, “Indo-European” may designate the disappeared language itself. But serious scholars give it a precision in this case like commun in French, proto in English or Ur- in German. Does this imply that we may designate as Indo-European the sum of the individual languages of this family, whether they still exist or have disappeared? One may indeed take a chance and do it, but not without startling or even shocking one's public.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 37 , Issue 145 , March 1989 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, David W. (1986). “‘The Kurgan Culture’, Indo-European Origins, and the Domestication of the Horse: A Reconsideration,” Current Anthropology, 27, N. 4, p. 291–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgiev, Vladimir. (1981). Introduction to the History of Indo-European Languages, Académie bulgare des sciences, 3ème éd.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, Marija. (1982). “Old Europe in the Fifth Millennium B.C. The European Situation on the Arrival of the Indo-Europeans,” The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and the Third Millennia, ed. Edgar C. Polomé, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1-60.Google Scholar
Haudry, Jean. (1987). La religion cosmique des Indo-Europeans, Milan-Paris, Archè, “Les belles lettres.“Google Scholar
Martinet, Andrè. (1986). Des steppes aux océans, L'indo-européen et les “Indo-Européens,” Paris, Payot.Google Scholar
Thomas, Homer L. (1982). “Archaeological Evidence of the Migrations of the Indo-Europeans,” The Indo-Europeans in The Fourth and Third Millennia, ed. Edgar C. Polomé, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 61-86.Google Scholar