The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity (Indian Philology and South Asian Studies, Vol 1)

The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia : Language, material culture and ethnicity / edited by George Erdosy. p. cm. -(Indian philology and South Asian studies ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language, Material Culture And Ethnicity: Theoretical Perspectives / George Erdosy -- 2. Have Aryans Been Identified In The Prehistoric Skeletal Record From South Asia? Biological Anthropology And Concepts Of Ancient Races / Kenneth A. R. Kennedy -- 3. Vedic Aryans, Non-vedic Aryans, And Non-aryans: Judging The Linguistic Evidence Of The Veda / Madhav M. Deshpande -- 4. Early Indian History: Linguistic And Textual Parametres / Michael Witzel -- 5. The Concepts Of Cultural Tradition And Palaeoethnicity In South Asian Archaeology / Jim G. Shaffer And Diane A. Lichtenstein -- 6. The Avesta As Source For The Early History Of The Iranians / P. Oktor Skjaervo -- 7. The Aryan Question: Some General Considerations / Arvind Sharma -- 8. South Asia From A Central Asian Perspective / Fredrik T. Hiebert -- 9. Central Asia And The Rgveda: The Archaeological Evidence / Walter A. Fairservis, Jr. -- 10. Interaction Systems, Specialised Crafts And Culture Change: The Indus Valley Tradition And The Indo-gangetic Tradition In South Asia / Jonathan M. Kenoyer -- 11. Reconstructing Social Context From Language: Indo-aryan And Dravidian Prehistory / Franklin C. Southworth -- 12. Dialect Variation In Old And Middle Indo-aryan / Kenneth R. Norman -- 13. On Drawing Socio-linguistic Distinctions In Old Indo-aryan: The Question Of Ksatriya Sanskrit And Related Problems / Richard Salomon -- 14. Rgvedic History: Poets, Chieftains And Polities / Michael Witzel. 15. The Problem Of The Aryans And The Soma: Textual-linguistic And Archaeological Evidence / Asko Parpola -- 16. The Problem Of The Aryans And The Soma: The Botanical Evidence / Harri Nyberg. Edited By George Erdosy. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.

The papers in this volume deal with the issue of how corpus data relate to the questions that cognitive linguists have typically investigated with respect to conceptual mappings. The authors in this volume investigate a wide range of issues- the coherence and function of particular metaphorical models, the interaction of form and meaning, the identification of source domains of metaphorical expressions, the relationship between metaphor and discourse, the priming of metaphors, and the historical development of metaphors.

The studies deal with a variety of metaphorical and metonymic source and target domains, including the source domains SPACE, ANIMALS, BODY PARTS, ORGANIZATIONS and WAR, and the target domains VERBAL ACTIVITY, ECONOMY, EMOTIONS and POLITICS. In their studies, the authors present a variety of corpus-linguistic methods for the investigation of conceptual mappings, for example, corpora annotated for semantic categories, concordances of individual source-domain items and patterns, and concordances of target-domain items.

In sum, the papers in this volume show how a wide range of corpus-linguistic methods can be used to investigate a variety of issues in cognitive linguistics; the combination of corpus methods with a cognitive-linguistic view of metaphor and metonymy yields new answers to old questions (and to new questions) about the relationship between language as a conceptual phenomenon and language as a textual phenomenon.

Foreword to the Series Preface List of contributors I. Theoretical perspectives 1. Language, material culture and ethnicity: Theoretical perspectives 2. Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia? Biological anthropology and concepts of ancient races 3. Vedic Aryans, non-Vedic Aryans, and non-Aryans: Judging the linguistic evidence of the Veda 4. Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres 5. The concepts of “cultural tradition” and “palaeoethnicity” in South Asian archaeology 6. The Avesta as source for the early history of the Iranians 7. The Aryan question: Some general considerations II. Historical perspectives 8. South Asia from a Central Asian perspective 9. Central Asia and the R?gveda: The archaeological evidence 10. Interaction systems, specialised crafts and culture change: The Indus Valley Tradition and the Indo-Gangetic Tradition in South Asia 11. Reconstructing social context from language: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian prehistory 12. Dialect variation in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan 13. On drawing socio-linguistic distinctions in Old Indo-Aryan: The question of Kṣatriya Sanskrit and related problems 14. Ṛgvedic history: poets, chieftains and polities 15. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: Textual-linguistic and archaeological evidence 16. The problem of the Aryans and the Soma: The botanical evidence Author Index General Index Since the aim of the conference on palaeoethnicity has been to bring together linguists and archaeologists, it would be appropriate, by way of an introduction, to evaluate their relationship in the field of Indology and to identify recent developments which could facilitate their cooperation.