Linnaean linguistics: ‘Bear’, ‘horse’, ‘wolf’ and the Indo-European phylogeny from a zoographical perspective
Affiliation: Austrian Academy of Sciences & University of Vienna, AT
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Chapter from the book: Larsson, J et al. 2024. Indo-European Interfaces: Integrating Linguistics, Mythology and Archaeology.
Taking inspiration from the biological taxonomy of mammals, this paper explores the diversification of the Indo-European language family through a zoographical lens. It investigates shared innovations of phonology, morphology, and semantics in zoonyms across language branches. The aim is to uncover evidence for early splits within the family tree. The study primarily centers on Anatolian versus Core Indo-European and features an extensive discussion of the word for ‘bear’, ‘horse’, ‘lion’ and ‘wolf’. Thorough analysis of these examples will determine their relevance within the proposed scenarios.