General Lines
The framework of PCT is laid out by Alinei in four main assumptions:
- Continuity is the basic pattern of European prehistory and the basic working hypothesis on the origins of IE languages.
- Stability and antiquity are general features of languages.
- The lexicon of natural languages, due to its antiquity, may be "periodized" along the entire course of human evolution.
- Archaeological frontiers coincide with linguistic frontiers.
The continuity theory draws on a Continuity Model (CM), positing the presence of IE and non-IE peoples and languages in Europe from Paleolithic times and allowing for minor invasions and infiltrations of local scope, mainly during the last three millennia.
Arguing that continuity is "the archeologist's easiest pursuit," Alinei deems this "the easiest working hypothesis," putting the burden of proof on competing hypotheses as long as none provide irrefutable counter-evidence. Alinei also claims linguistic coherence, rigor and productivity in the pursuit of this approach.
Read more about this topic: Paleolithic Continuity Theory
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or lines:
“I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians.... Were it not for the churches,... I think there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them.”
—Frances Trollope (1780–1863)
“Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration; some words go off, and become obsolete; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense or notion, which in tract of time makes an observable change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face.”
—Richard Bentley (1662–1742)