Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.8

c14.8

There is one other point of some importance. There has been a growing appreciation among linguists of the concept of the geographical distribution of languages and language-groups in their relationship one to another, with a realization of a distinction between central language areas, where innovation is common and rapid, and peripheral regions, where ancient linguistic traditions survive more or less unchanged. In this context, equations may with some confidence be made between areas geographically remote, if these are within the peripheral zone, as they may contain the same survivals, lost in the central area of rapid development. Grammatical peculiarities in Tocharian, for instance, recur in the Italo-Celtic group, and Hittite and Old Irish both preserve archaic survivals lost elsewhere.