Language and OriginsMerlijn de Smit 2008.12.04

First, a recollection In January 2003, almost a thousand people attended a debate between Ulla-Maija Kulonen (Prof. of Finno-Ugric languages, Helsinki) and Kalevi Wiik (Prof. emeritus of Phonetics). The crowd did not fit in the lecture hall, and most had to listen in the corridor.

The occasion: Wiik's book Eurooppalaisten Juuret (2002) had just been nominated for the Tieto-Finlandia award.

Kulonen, together with eighteen others (including me) had signed a letter of protest to Helsingin Sanomat concerning the nomination.

The controversy about the book was the high point of a debate that had raged in the scientific and popular press since 1995.

The ”Roots”-movement. Principles.

Ultimate origins of the Uralic people had to be put far back – to at least the end of the last Ice Age, around 10.000 BC.

The original ”homeland” was a very broad zone in central and northern Europe, circling the receding icecap.

(Image: Kalevi Wiik, Who are the Finns?, Festschrift in honour of Fred Karlsson, SKY 2006: 19, supplement. p. 97-108).

The ”Roots”-movement. Principles.

Rejection of the traditional ”family tree” model of linguistic evolution

”Interdisciplinarity”: the object of research was the roots or origins of peoples and languages, and one single researcher handled both linguistics, genetics, archaeology and other relevant disciplines, striving towards synthesis.

(Image: Rein Taagepera, in: Ago Künnap, Breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics, Tartu 1998 p. 25).

The ”Roots”-movement. People and Publications.

Finland: Kalevi Wiik, Kyösti Julku, Pauli Saukkonen.

Estonia: Ago Künnap, Urmas Sutrop.

Hungary: János Pusztay.

Kyösti Julku (ed.): Itämerensuomi – Eurooppalainen maa (Oulu 1997).

Kalevi Wiik: Eurooppalaisten juuret (Jyväskylä 2002), Suomalaisten juuret (Jyväskylä 2004).

Ago Künnap: Breakthrough in present-day Uralistics, (Tartu 1998).

The Roots of Peoples and Languages of Northern Eurasia I-V.

The ”Roots”-movement. Questions.

What is the object of research? What are the roots of peoples and languages, and can these be researched in a scientific manner?

Is a synthesis of linguistics, genetics and archaeology possible, and does such a synthesis provide a picture of the roots of peoples and languages?

Some preliminary concepts: Identity

Identity: aspects of an individual that are ideal and persistent in time, and are vital in establishing her role in the groups she belongs to.

Identity (as a way of conceptualizing self and others) thus vital in making sense of our own position in a social group, and the position and behaviour of others (within and outside that group).

For example: gender, livelihood, subculture, ethnicity, nation.

Some preliminary concepts: Culture

Culture: a set of symbols employed in behaviour, by which we make sense of the behaviour of others and ourselves; and of the relationships within our group, to other groups, and to nature as a whole.

Language is thus both an aspect of culture and an important medium of culture.

Consider what it is to share a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligible action by myself and are also means for my interpretations of the actions of others. My ability to understand what you are doing and my ability to act intelligibly (both to myself and to others) are one and the same ability. Alasdair MacIntyre, The Tasks of Philosophy. Selected Essays Vol I. Cambridge 2006

p. 4.

Some preliminary concepts: Myth

Myth: a text/narrative which imparts notions of great importance to our self-understanding (as members of groups and communities).

Myths may, for example, contain archetypes exemplifying virtues or vices and obligations to each other regarded as central to our community or tradition.

For myth and science both select certain facts as significant: they differ in their criterion of significance. A metaphysics is a rational myth. A superstition is a myth without the control and criticism of reasoning. A religion is a myth which claims both a foundation in history and to point beyond itself to God.Alasdair MacIntyre, quoted in: P. McMylor: Alasdair

MacIntyre: Critic of Modernity. London 1993 p. 6.

Myths can be true on various levels

Historical: Did things really happen that way? Metaphorical: Do the particulars of the mythological embody universals (love, honour, beauty, etc.) in a way that speaks to our imagination?

Existential: Does the myth mediate notions that are of vital importance to our own self-understanding, in the here and now?

Neither of these three reducible to the other, neither wholly independent from the other either.

A narrow and a broad view on history

Narrow view: History is the science dealing with human action (and its goals, motivations, etc.) in past times.

Broad view: History is the science of the concrete (Collingwood) – that is, the science of the world as concrete in human perception and of human practice in shaping the world, as well as of ultimate (philosophical) presuppositions underlying that practice. The human sciences then all in some way are historical sciences. The natural sciences, dealing with the abstract laws governing nature, are not – though the philosophy of science is!

In both senses, history is interpretive, not experimental. It is concerned with the action, perception and thought of human beings, and interpretation necessitates some sharing of the cultural (symbolical) framework in which action takes place.

”Roots” are mythological by nature

Any ”unified” picture on the origins of a nation (with a language and other distinctive cultural characteristics) is by necessity an interpretation of historical facts.

As myth, it may be of strong importance in the self-identity of a group. ”Where do we come from?”

But the relevance of prehistorical sciences (such as archaeology and historical linguistics) is not a given!

Compare... The ”roots” of the American nation, as dealt with in film and literature, are often traced to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Archaeology, population genetics and more distant origins may be relevant for individual ethnical groups (such as Native Americans) but not for the nation as such.

The narrative here is one of becoming; emergence out of immigrations, wars, etc.

Compare... The ”roots” of many East European nations (Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Albania) are often traced to the very distant past. Very popular are pseudo-scientific linguistic comparisons (Hungarian and Sumerian, for instance).

The narrative here is one of survival, and retention of culture, in an often hostile environment.

History and mythology On the other hand, historically (and culturally) specific ”mythological” beliefs and interpretive frameworks also shape our understanding of history.

For example, our (implicit) philosophical beliefs

But also our general views on humans, human behaviour, etc. For example, is human history cyclical or linear/progressive?

Two views on humans and human prehistory

The shared values and beliefs of a group is what primarily guides its behaviour. Material circumstances such as economic necessity have secondary importance. In a culture that places high value on war, exploration and conquests, tribes will find a reason to move and go to war, with or without clear economic motives. (An idealist, migrationist viewpoint)

What guides the behaviour of a group are primarily the material circumstances and necessities it is confronted with. And these in turn will inform the shared values and beliefs of a group. Tribes will rarely migrate or form a horde without a very good reason. Therefore, shifts in the archaeological or prehistorical linguistic make-up in an area may well be correlated with a shift in material factors, such as that from a hunter-gatherer to an agrarian society. (A materialist, diffusionist viewpoint).

Both are ”mythological” interpretive frameworks ultimately rooted in philosophical arguments on the relationships between man, culture and nature. Confronted with the same prehistorical (linguistic or archaeological) evidence, both may come to very different conclusions.

Doesn't this lead to relativism?

If our understanding of history is always informed by our own interpretive frameworks, can a conflict between rival interpretive frameworks ever be resolved?

Alasdair MacIntyre: A conflict between rival intellectual traditions cannot be resolved by reference to a ”neutral” third standard, but may be resolved if 1) one such tradition is able to incorporate the contentions of the other in its own terms and 2) is able to pinpoint the defects of the other tradition (better than that tradition itself). (Alasdair MacIntyre: Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame 1988 p. 166-167).

Compare Kuhn's notion of ”paradigms” in natural science: a ”Gestalt shift” between paradigms may occur when a certain amount of anomalies (factual matters not or poorly explicable in the previous paradigm) has accumulated. (Thomas Kuhn: The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago 1962).

In both cases, the method is dialectic, i.e. it proceeds as a dialogue between rival standpoints and a striving to ”overcome” the antitheses, rather than through the logical procedures of hypothesis, deduction, induction.

A problem of the ”Roots”-movement

No hard thinking on such questions as: What are roots? What are peoples, cultures, identities?

Instead, the relevance of linguistics and genetics for the ”roots” of peoples is simply assumed. Peoples are defined on the basis of genes, language or self-identification (Wiik, Eurooppalaisten juuret, p. 29) or just on the basis of genes and languages (Wiik in Tieteessä tapahtuu 2007:8 p. 35).

This assumes a lot of what should be established first (why are genes relevant for the ”roots” of the Europeans or the Finns?) and ”plays at science” by ignoring the subjective aspects of both the question of ”roots” and the position of the historian vis-a-vis those roots.

What is language and what can it tell us of origins?

Language: process and structure. Process: language is the deployment of certain symbols in communicative behaviour. To make things clear to each other, we use certain symbols which have a socially shared, conventional meaning. Temporal aspect.

Structure: Certain subsystems of language (phonology and morphology, to a lesser extent syntax) form a very coherent structure with oppositions in forms and meaning. Ideal aspect.

Interaction between the two: Structure is never entirely fixed, but ”emerges” from regularities in usage; at the same time usage is guided (and made possible) by an ”ideal” or ”eternal” system of norms.

Language as an object of history

A view on the history of language must depart from language as an historical object. We cannot, for example, base historical linguistics on structuralist or hyperstructuralist views such as Chomsky's generative grammar. The history of language is a history of a community of speakers. Or in other words: Language as a historical entity is a network of individual instances of usage, connected through their involvement of each other (in memory, perception, etc.).

At the same time, linguistic usage in prehistorical times cannot be studied directly, but only in as far as it has led to changes and shifts in linguistic structure (which can be uncovered with the comparative method, etc.).

Important to keep therefore in mind that linguistic structure, from the viewpoint of historical linguistics, is a proxy, not the object itself (because structure is abstract and ”eternal” rather than temporal).

Language transmission and change

The structural ”core” aspects of language change in a kaleidoscopic fashion: is is the pattern that changes, as a whole; not simple addition or composition of various elements.

This also implies that they are transmitted from generation to generation in a single whole: a child may learn Swedish, Finnish or both, but not a mixture of both.

This goes for certain structural aspects of language, not for all aspects of language (pragmatics, body language, etc.)

Language and culture Language is an aspect of culture and a medium of culture. As a system of norms shared among a given speech-community, it is ”more than its parts”.

Theoretically, over time a language could exchange all of its lexicon, and all its morphology, and still have been transmitted down generations in a single line.

The interconnectedness between language and other aspects of culture, and the important of language for ethnic or national identity, means that there is a subjective, volitional element to processes of language change. Speech-communities may resist or welcome specific linguistic changes (such as loanwords). This implies that despite its regularities, processes of language change may not be characterized wholly apart from the history of their speakers, and of ”ideal” factors involved in that history.

The family tree model Genetic descent is a metaphor:

linguistic structure is continuously 'created'. But the metaphor does cover that 'core structures' move down time in single wholes.

As an interpretive framework, the family tree model determines how we see the evidence; it is implicit in our method.

However, it is possible for the family tree model and the comparative method to fail to make sense of the data; an alternative interpretive framework might then be more successful (and cover for well-established family trees as well).

First alternative: the 'mangrove' model

Proposed by Künnap, Pusztay and others. Contact and genetic descent are identified; a language has multiple 'ancestors', namely, all the languages it is/has been in contact with. Swedish, Proto-Baltic and Proto-Finnic are all ancestors of Modern Finnish.

Problem: model is profoundly a-historical. It departs from the various origins of different structures or 'parts' of a language, but pays no attention to the actual transmission of language as a historical, cultural 'network' of speech.

Second alternative: the 'shift' model

Proposed by Wiik. Basic 'genetic' metaphor

is kept intact, but language shifts are seen as the primary engine of language change: speakers of B shift to speaking language A, leaving a substratum of traces of language B in their version of language A (A+b).

This kind of development is possible, but Wiik tends to deploy it as a more or less universally applicable model.

Problems with the shift model

Like the mangrove model, it tends to become a-historical to the extent that languages are defined as collections of superstrata and substrata with different origins, i.e. as an aggregate of different parts.

The historical origin and transmission of a language is however something different than the historical origin and transmission of any of its particular structures (or that of those taken together).

A given sociolinguistic process (such as language shift) may lead typically to a given linguistic outcome (such as substratal traces in phonology and syntax) – but without very good independent knowledge of the sociolinguistic processes involved, we cannot infer the process from the outcome!

Structural features (phonology, syntax) are much harder to assign to either foreign influence or 'internal' development than lexical features.

The 'human factor' in linguistic change

Tariana is an Arawak language from the Vaupes region of Brazil. A fair deal of its more structural features resemble those of the surrounding East Tucanoan languages. On Wiik's model, we would likely surmise that speakers of East Tucanoan shifted to an Arawak language, leaving an East Tucanoan substratum.

This is not what happened. There is very strong cultural resistance against lexical borrowing among the Tariana – 'words' are seen as a marker of language and ethnic identity. But borrowing of structural features is not so objected to.

(See: Alexandra Aikhenvald, Mechanisms of change in areal diffusion: new morphology and language contact, Journal of Linguistics 39 p. 1-29, 2003.)

This and other factors make proving a prehistoric language shift, without auxiliary evidence, extremely problematic. At the very least, we would want place-name and other lexical evidence to 'pinpoint' the original language.

The 'shift model' is more specific than the traditional family tree model. It contains more information - namely, that languages are 'born' through language shifts.

However, linguistic evidence of such shifts is often unavailable, or too general to be reliable.

Some proposed language shifts

Germanic is argued to have a Uralic substratum: Indo-European 'became' proto-Germanic when speakers of a Uralic language began to shift to speaking Germanic.

Wiik's proposal is very detailed, but the details have been heavily criticized. For example, one 'substratal' feature is the shift of the accent to the first syllable. This was however a quite late development in Germanic.

(Wiik: Eurooppalaisten juuret, p. 162-163; Kallio, Koivulehto and Parpola: ”Kantagermaanin suomalais-ugrilainen substraatti”: perusteeton hypoteesi. Tieteessä tapahtuu 8/1997)

Greek is supposed to have an Illyric substratum. However, we know almost nothing about Illyric (no texts, just place-names. They seem Indo-European but that's all we know).

Saami is argued to have Basque influences. Wiik lists four features, one of which is wrong (i.e. the feature does not actually occur in Saami) and the other three are relatively unexceptional phonological developments.

(Wiik: Eurooppalaisten juuret, p. 322-325, 349)

Evaluating the shift model For a model or interpretive framework to replace another, it would need to be able to account for the latter's result in a better way and to account for new results as well.

However, Wiik's model is actually more specific, not more general, and leads to a very speculative assignment of substrata and language shift on the basis of very little information.

In this, and in the underlying notion of language as a sum of its historical layers, the model it too mechanistically 'clean' and belies the complexity found in well-studied language contact situations.

The interdisciplinary program

A feature of the ”Roots-movement” is to create a synthetic view on the origin of peoples, on the basis of linguistics, archaeology and population genetics.

Culture (of which language is an important part) is directly relevant to ethnic and national identity; genes never are (as people are not directly aware of their genes). Phenotypic and physical differences which are the results of genes may be relevant to ethnic and national identity in specific societies.

As normative, semiotic systems, culture and language have an ”ideal” side which genetics lacks. As far as population genetics goes, a population is a sum of its parts (its individual genotypes) and nothing more.

Language and archaeology Because language is an aspect of culture, and connected to a network

of speakers using that language, it is a priori not unreasonable to expect a correlation between linguistic distinctions and distinctions in other cultural artifacts.

Thus the traditional identification between prehistoric languages and archaeological cultures (such as Finno-Ugric and the Comb Ceramic culture of 4000-2000 BC).

Obvious problems: multilingualism, incompleteness of archaeological and linguistic record may mask linguistic and cultural differences.

Language and genes Correlation very problematic; language and culture may be transmitted down time in more-or-less coherent wholes; but a genome is always a mixture of two parent genomes. Also, language and culture are ”more than their parts”, but there is no such emergent dimension to a genetic population.

In cases of linguistic shifts and cultural change, genetic patterns may persist where cultural ones do not; but the other way around as well (there may be linguistic and cultural continuity with constant gene flow from outside. Exogamy etc.).

It is entirely unclear whether genes have any relevance to the ”roots” of a people (as opposed to the roots of an individual).

Language and genes in interdisciplinary research

Population genetics may suggest linguistic or cultural shifts, but nothing more than that: any linguistic or cultural hypothesis should be primarily supported by linguistic or cultural (archaeological) evidence.

On the basis of genetic material, Wiik argues the ancestors of the Saami and Samoyeds shifted to Uralic from resp. a Basque and Paleo-Siberian language. No linguistic evidence is adduced for either of the two shifts. At the same time, ethnolinguistic labels and categories (Basque, Paleo-Siberian) are nonetheless applied here.

The time-depths involved here (>4000 BC) make any ethnic, linguistic or cultural continuity virtually meaningless, and hence the use of ethnic and linguistic labels and categories.

The whole procedure begs the question: connections between hypothesized prehistoric populations based on genetics and ethnic/cultural/linguistic groups should be demonstrated, but here they are quietly assumed.

Conclusions on the ”Roots”-movement

Lack of conceptual thinking on the nature of language, its relationship with culture, genes, etc. Instead, peoples are defined on the basis of language and genes.

Poor models of linguistic change; models based on languages as 'aggregates' of various parts, each with its historical origins; this hypostasizes linguistic structure and ignores the 'emergent', social/normative side of language (as an aspect of the culture of a language-using community).

Problematic reasoning in synthesizing the results of archaeology, linguistics and population genetics. Population genetics used as a basis for culture-historical and linguistic hypotheses, ethnolinguistical labels and categories then applied to these hypotheses.

Two interdisciplinary approaches

Bottom-up approach: linguists, archaeologists and other researchers primarily work in their own area. Principle: ”Linguistic hypotheses need linguistic evidence” and vice versa. Tentatively, and in a dialogue between specialists, a ”synthetic” picture of prehistory may emerge.

Top-down approach. Disciplines of archaeology, linguistics, genetics handled by a single researcher. Ethnolinguistic hypotheses often based on genetic or archaeological evidence, and vice versa.

History is messy! Compare the two ”interpretive frameworks” presented earlier:

1) Migrationism: tribes have often been on the move, and eager to conquer other tribes. The spread of a linguistic family is often interpreted as a movement of tribes. Often, some kind of ethnic continuity is presupposed.

2) Diffusionism: people generally stay in their place, and languages as well as other cultural artefacts may spread without the concurrent movement of people. Large-scale linguistic and cultural shifts are often correlated with large-scale shifts in livelihood such as the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies.

The ”Roots”-movement generally represents an extreme version of diffusionism. Hence genes seen as potentially more reliable in long-distance prehistorical hypotheses than languages and cultural artefacts.

History is messy!Now look at some relatively well-documented events in the Classical and post-Classical age.

1000 BC: Etruscan migration from Lydia in Asia Minor to Italy.

400 BC: Incursion and settlement of Gauls in Northern Italy, Brennus' attack on Rome.

300 BC: Spread of Hellenic culture from Greece to India through cultural diffusion but also military conquest (Alexander the Great).

280 BC: Celtic tribes move to Thrace and from there to Asia Minor (Galatians).

300-700 AD: Great Migration. All originally from Eastern Europe, the Vandals ended up in Southern Spain and Northern Africa, the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain.

History is messy!

Morale Models such as clear-cut versions of migrationism or diffusionism should be distrusted (even though interpretive frameworks as such may be unavoidable). History is complex.

The farther we go back in time, the greater the number of ”unknowns”. In early Classical times, there are some traces of remnant non-Indo-European peoples in the Mediterranean (Etruscans, maybe Minoan Crete) and elsewhere (Picts?). Thousands of years earlier, the number of tribes whose languages have disappeared without a trace must have been considerably higher.

The fact that a model, or an interdisciplinary approach, promises to go back farther in time (10.000 BC?) than anything else does not necessarily make it better. To the contrary.

The ”Roots”-movement and myth

The work of the ”Roots”-movement has a somewhat 'scientistic' approach: the emphasis on the 'hard evidence' of population genetics, the mechanistic models of linguistic evolution, etc.

The more subjective aspects of ”roots” are disregarded: the ”roots” of ”peoples” are presented as something that can be straightforwardly uncovered by scientific research.

In contrast, I presented the concept of ”roots” above as belonging to mythology, even if it may have a basis in science: the aspects of their historical origins that a given group regards as constitutive of their identity often depends on very contemporary concerns.

The ”Roots”-movement and myth

Compare these book titles:Itämerensuomi – Eurooppalainen maa (ed. Kyösti Julku, Oulu 1997)Eurooppalaisten juuret (Kalevi Wiik 2002) And these titles of columns by Kalevi Wiik in Turun Sanomat

Mongoleista eurooppalaisiksi (2002.06.12)Genetiikkakin tukee Suomen EU-jäsenyyttä (2002.07.10)Suomi: EU:n puhdas reuna-alue (1998.07.18) Or:Europe's oldest language? (Kalevi Wiik, Books from Finland, 3/99). Which word appears in all these titles?

The ”Roots”-movement and myth

The use of the concepts Europe and European in prehistory is anachronistic: Europe, or the Occident, as a distinct cultural entity emerged only with Charlemagne's empire in the 9th century and the great schism between the Roman and Orthodox churches.

Before, linguistic and cultural movements usually bridged Europe and Asia (Hellenism; the Byzantine empire; Christianity; Islam).

The ”Roots”-movement and myth

Europeanism in archaeology according to Alexander Gramsch: (...) the conviction of interpreters of pre- and protohistorical material culture that it must be possible to find common European characteristics in their data that account for a lasting European commonness, and which enable the discovery of ”Europe” in pre- or protohistory. These interpreters claim the ability to present histories of the ”Europeanness” of prehistoric cultures in Europe. ('Reflexiveness' in archaeology, nationalism and Europeanism. Archaeological Dialogues, 4-19, 2000).

According to racist Swedish-nationalist views of the early 20th century (for example the poet Bertel Gripenberg), the Finns represented a ”mongolic” and inferior race.

The ”Roots”-movement seems to polemicize against this view while retaining the East-West dichotomy inherent in it: rather than Asiatic immigrants from the East, the ancestors of the Finns were the original population of most of Northern Europe!

Postscript: a ”counterrevolutionary”

movement in Uralic research Since the early 1980s, the expansion of Finno-Ugric languages (with or without immigration) from the Urals westward has generally been placed earlier and earlier in history. The ”Roots”-movement takes this to the extreme.

However, in very recent research an opposite tendency appears! Petri Kallio: Suomen kantakielten absoluuttista kronologiaa (Virittäjä 1/2006

p. 2-25): On the basis of primarily linguistic reasoning, Kallio dates the break-up of Proto-Uralic and its spread westwards significantly later than 4000BC/Combed Ceramic culture, namely to ca. 1900 BC.

Ante Aikio: An essay on substrate studies and the origin of Saami (Hyvärinen, I., Kallio, P. and Korhonen, J. (eds.): Etymologie, Entlehnungen und Entwicklungen. Festschrift für Jorma Koivulehto zum 70. Geburtstag. Mém. de la Soc. Néophilologique de Helsinki LXIII, Helsinki 2004 p. 5-34). Based on studies of place-names and semantically and phonologically distinct subsets of the Saami lexicon, Aikio argues that a shift from a non-Uralic language to Saami did indeed take place, but probably relatively recently (0-500 AD).