Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time.

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C

• It is disappointing to have to say that at present there seems to be no hope of estimating objectively and with a useful degree of precision how long an originally homogeneous Indo-European language would have taken to develop into derivative groups or languages which diverged as much as Greek, Sanskrit and Hittite did when the earliest texts in them were composed. Some linguists seem to think that they can make intuitive judgements about the minimum time which a particular phonetic or other change in a language would have taken. But the results of intuition when applied to estimating the minimum time in which a group of cognate languages or dialects would have differentiated to an observed extent vary so much that no useful deductions can be made from them. . . . I sympathize with archaeologists and other prehistorians who are not primarily linguists over this. Linguists are unable to provide the information which would be most useful.
  • Crossland, Ronald. 1972. "Recent Reappraisal of Evidence for the Chronology of the Differentiation of Indo-European." In Acta of the 2nd International Colloquium on Aegean Prehistory (46-55). Athens: Ministry of Culture and Science. Crossland (1972) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

H

• Too many comparative historical linguists want to dig up Troy, linguistically speaking. They consider it more important that comparative historical linguists shed light on prehistoric migrations than to shed light on the nature of language change [...] I do not consider comparative historical linguistics a branch of prehistory, and I sincerely believe that if we cared less about dates, maps and trees and more about language change, there’d be more real progress in that field.
  • S.P. Harrison, 2003:23.1. On the limits of the comparative method, in Handbook of Historical linguistics. Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and Indo-European studies. Aditya Prakashan, page 198

• One overall judgement emerges from this survey of how historical linguists have traditionally sought to set language (pre)histories into real-world contexts: all our traditional techniques and models are less reliable than the discipline has long liked to believe.... The same technique can be open to opposing interpretations, and different techniques often contradict each other on the same language family. Convincing ‘proof’ is hard to come by indeed.... Linguistics alone cannot come to the most plausible overall scenario for the prehistory of the populations involved. That can be assessed only in the light of the archaeological and genetic records, and the cause-and-effect relationship that links them all.... Those other disciplines continue to make spectacular leaps forward, and in historical linguistics itself, dropping the mask of many ‘old certainties’ only throws open the potential for great advances towards a sounder, truly cross- disciplinary understanding of prehistory.... Even for the world’s largest language families, that synthesis still has far to run. For language convergence areas and diversity hotspots, we have barely even begun to unlock the cross-disciplinary potential, so as to round out the rich tale that our languages can tell us of our past.
  • Heggarty, Paul (2014). Prehistory through language and archaeology from: The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics Routledge Editors - Bowern, Claire and Evans, Bethwyn (Heggarty 2014:623-4)

F

• The question of identifying archaeological remains of Indo-European populations in Central Asia has been one of the main questions that has occupied a number of linguists and historians for many years [...] when written records are not available, a reconstructed time-space framework is generally used to substantiate the reconstruction with some relevant illustrative material. The linguistic attributes are mapped onto archaeological correlates: artifacts are selected, like the chariot, as well as ecofacts, like agriculture, or whole archaeological cultures (material assemblages). The archaeological correlates become some sort of labels or tags that one may employ in order to trace the supposed Indo-European populations. But, in fact, very little of the illustrative archaeological material actually exhibits specific Indo-European or Indo-Iranian traits; a question therefore arises: what is the relevance of archaeological material if any sort of assemblage present at the expected or supposed time/space spot can function as the tag of a linguistic group?
  • The Archaeology of Proto-historic Central Asia and the Problems of Identifying Indo-European and Uralic-speaking Populations. Francfort, H.P. pp. 151-163 in ―Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and Archaeological Considerations‖, ed. Carpelan, Parpola, Koskikallio Suomalais- Ugrilainen Seura, Helsinki, 2001.. Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

P

• The only way to establish absolute linguistic chronologies is to correlate linguistic facts with dates fixed by other means.
  • Pereltsvaig, Asya and Lewis, Martin W. (2015). The Indo-European Controversy Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics, Cambridge University Press ” (Pereltsvaig and Lewis 2015:164))