Thank you very much for reviewing this! I think I'll have a look at it and maybe get the third years to have a brief look because I'll be doing PIE lexicology with them next term, and I always raise the issue of linguistic palaeontology and they look at me blankly, and I say 'Go and read Beekes' (whose book is a perfect example of the discipline - if you would call it a discipline, but I was going to say 'genre' and that didn't sound right[1]).
But it sounds to me as though this isn't based terribly much on the linguistic data from what you say. Is that right? Or is his discussion of the wheel in part based on cognates?
In a way I think the linguistic data are largely separable from the archaeological (and related), especially when you factor in semantic change! And looking for a single population in a single area speaking PIE strikes me as somewhat artificial as well, but it's an approach generally shared by these studies. But these are criticisms of most books on the subject, not this one in particular.
[1] Obviously, the Mallory book that you previously reviewed is another very good example.
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Date: 2009-12-05 12:57 pm (UTC)But it sounds to me as though this isn't based terribly much on the linguistic data from what you say. Is that right? Or is his discussion of the wheel in part based on cognates?
In a way I think the linguistic data are largely separable from the archaeological (and related), especially when you factor in semantic change! And looking for a single population in a single area speaking PIE strikes me as somewhat artificial as well, but it's an approach generally shared by these studies. But these are criticisms of most books on the subject, not this one in particular.
[1] Obviously, the Mallory book that you previously reviewed is another very good example.