I am familiar with Saxons, Vikings, and Celts by Bryan Sykes and shall
obtain the two books by Professor Coates. Does anyone have an opinion
as to how the two mesh? I found only a few errors in Sykes; e.g., he lists
Basque as the only non-Indo-European language in Europe--ignoring Finnish,
Estonian, and Hungarian--to mention only national languages and ignoring
Maltese--perhaps he does not consider Malta as part of Europe (although
he does include Iceland).
Scott Catledge
-----Original Message-----
From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Richard Coates
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2008 12:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [EPNL] [spam] [EPNL] Britons in Anglo-Saxon England
John,
You don't appear to consider the logical possibility that the emerging
paradigm may be wrong! I don't regard the "gene flow from the east"
evidence as entailing any particular linguistic consequences. And I'm
vexed by Peter Schrijver's conclusions, because I find his arguments
clever but leading in directions I can't accommodate.
My position has always, and only, been that the linguistic (including
toponymic) evidence does not suit the "continuity" hypothesis in any of
its shapes. If nonlinguistic evidence does, then sure, we have something
that needs discussion, but we should not accept subordination of the
linguistic evidence to other sorts.
Richard
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Richard Coates
Professor of Linguistics ~ Professor of Onomastics and
Director of the Bristol Centre for Linguistics at UWE
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/llas/bcl/index.shtml
Hon. Director, Survey of English Place-Names
(w: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins/epns/)
Contact details:
e: [log in to unmask]
t: +44 (0)117 328 3278 (internal 83278)
f: +44 (0)117 328 2295
h: Room 5E26
Dept of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies
University of the West of England (Frenchay campus)
Bristol BS16 1QY, UK
w: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/llas/staff_coates_r.shtml
-----Original Message-----
From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of John Briggs
Sent: 03 October 2008 16:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [spam] [EPNL] Britons in Anglo-Saxon England
I am starting a new thread, because I think the whole linguistic aspect
of the "Why We Don't Speak Welsh" question deserves to be discussed in
its own right. As I see it, the problem is not Hildegard Tristram or
Peter Schrijver - the problem is Richard Coates! By this I mean that
Richard has given in the "Britons in Anglo-Saxon England" and "Language
Contact in the Place-Names of Britain and Ireland" volumes full,
eloquent and carefully argued statements of his position - I can't see
anything wrong with his explanation, and I suspect that neither can
anyone else. But it is not compatible with the "emerging paradigm" in
history and archaeology.
Richard's position must be 'wrong' in some way, or at least capable of
modification to accommodate what we think we are learning from
archaeology and genetics. But I can't see how that could be done. What
do people think?
John Briggs
This incoming email to UWE has been independently scanned for viruses by
McAfee anti-virus software and none were detected
This email was independently scanned for viruses by McAfee anti-virus
software and none were found
