The Indo-European Controversy by Asya Pereltsvaig, Martin W. ... - 9781107054530

The Indo-European ControversyFacts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics\nAuthor(s): Asya Pereltsvaig, Martin W. Lewis\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781107054530, 978-1107054530\nSynopsis\nOver the past decade, a group of prolific and innovative evolutionary biologists has sought to reinvent historical linguistics through the use of phylogenetic and phylogeographical analysis, treating cognates like genes and conceptualizing the spread of languages in terms of the diffusion of viruses. Using these techniques, researchers claim to have located the origin of the Indo-European language family in Neolithic Anatolia, challenging the near-consensus view that it emerged in the grasslands north of the Black Sea thousands of years later. But despite its widespread celebration in the global media, this new approach fails to withstand scrutiny. As languages do not evolve like biological species and do n.