The Origin of the Indic Languages: The Indo-European Model

In: Marcantonio A., Jha G.N. (Eds.) Perspectives on the origin of Indian civilization. — New Delhi, 2013. — pp. 259-287. This paper presents the basic assumptions underlying the hypothesis that the Indic languages belong to the Indo-European language family, whose other members include Latin, Greek, Hittite, Persian and many of the major European languages. However, it is argued that this model of language relationship on its own can tell us very little, if anything, about the homeland or society of the original speakers of the language ancestral to the Indo-European family.