Paleolithic Continuity Theory - Reception

Reception

Alinei's Origini delle Lingue d’Europa was reviewed favourably in 1996 by Jonathan Morris in Mother Tongue, a journal dedicated to the reconstruction of Paleolithic language, judging Alinei's theory as being

"both simpler than its rivals and more powerful in terms of the insights it provides into language in the Meso- and Palaeolithic. While his book contains some flaws I believe that it deserves to be regarded as one of the seminal texts on linguistic archaeology, although given its lamentable lack of citation in English-language circles, it appears that recognition will have to wait until a translation of the original Italian appears."

Morris's review was reprinted as the foreword to the 2000 edition of Alinei's book.

Renzi (1997) sharply criticized Alinei's book, refuting in particular the claim of the presence of Latin and of its different territorial forms in Italy in the 2nd millennium BC. Renzi argues that this theory would subvert firmly established concepts of Romance philology and dialectology, such as the concepts of substratum, vulgar Latin and so on.

Alinei's theory was again critically reviewed by Adiego Lajara (2002):

Although some of Alinei's reflections on linguistic change are very interesting, it should be said that certain conceptions in his work -- such as the excessive immobility of languages or the relationship between types of language and progress in the prehistoric lithic industry -- are very debatable. Alinei's core theory -- continuity from the Palaeolithic --, runs into a serious difficulty: it obliges us to deal with words traditionally reconstructed for Indo-European, referring to notions that did not exist in the Palaeolithic as loans, when from the formal standpoint they are indistinguishable from those Alinei sees as being Indo-European in the Palaeolithic period.