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@subapicarl @Saatvata Yes there is, pick any work on Indo-Aryan classification and in none of them you'll find Insular being grouped closely with Eastern or supporting your speculations. Yes, I don't understand raw linguistics, I've made it clear since the starting.

@Light3675 @Saatvata My point is you yourself cannot even meaningfully draw upon “current research” or “current consensus” because 1. there is none, and 2. you need to understand the raw linguistics to even know the ideas you’re flailing around.

Rough outline of likely scenario of Indo-Aryan dispersal

@subapicarl @Saatvata All I said was it's a mixed bag which I took from a tweet of @/avzaagzonunaada. Likewise I'm also happy if you're able to discuss the non speculative, verified, consensus linguistic arguments and the non-linguistic arguments concerning other disciplines especially.

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... linguistic expertise to appraise them independently. Not relying on proxies like “in paper format”. Happy to discuss the linguistics if/when you are able to at all argue about them on their own.

@subapicarl @Saatvata .. but I've made it clear since the starting that if you're trying to argue in terms of raw linguistics with me you'll just be wasting both of our time yet you keep repeating t.

@subapicarl @Saatvata The point is: - current research does not verify your claims at all even in the slightest.. - it's an unsolved problem and I'm much welcoming of eastern origin (tho that can work without your speculations too) but other factors make western origin more likely, I can discuss them

@subapicarl @Saatvata Unsubstantial speculations one after another. Will see when any of this garbage gets published in academia.

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... the East, the mainland East underwent significant Westernization through the Gangetic Plains. Modern Eastern Indo-Aryan is very much a “Western IA” lect albeit with “Old Eastern” substrate. The only true “Unwesternized” descendant of Old Eastern Middle Indo-Aryan is Insular.

@subapicarl @Saatvata I told you literally that I don't know linguistics in deep thus I'd much rather base my awareness on the consensus and existing research by academic linguists.

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... be able to understand/critically appraise each line of linguistic argumentation (whether in paper or not) before blindly waving around paper conclusions. And that requires actual technical knowledge of diachrony, which you don’t have. As I said, I am *more than* willing ...

@subapicarl @Saatvata I am just putting the existing research vs your baseless unpublished and unverified speculation s, I don't have ''confidence" in it, you're just dishonest and making strawmans after another and trying to dunk on me rather than addressing the point

@Light3675 @Saatvata Trying to understand your epistemology here. You 1. do not understand historical linguistics, but 2. think you are suddenly magically able to wield the conclusions of studies just because they are put in paper format? This confidence makes 0 sense to me. You yourself must ...

@subapicarl @Saatvata That just means Insular is in clade with Eastern as a whole. Yeah even that isn't supported in the consensus, so completely unverified for now, but looking forward for your work.

@Light3675 @Saatvata I am not claiming Insular IA clusters with Modern Eastern Indo-Aryan, rather that it is the sole surviving descendant of an Old Eastern MIA branch (similar to attested Ardhamagadhi, Magadhi, Eastern Ashokan Prakrit, etc.) that no longer survives on the mainland. It is indeed ...

@subapicarl @Saatvata This is from very older and probably outdated work (Chatterjee 1926), and it somehow found affinity with Girnar and Elu. Though I'm not using it as evidence because it's a lot outdated, but still putting it here

@subapicarl @Saatvata Well I'm not the right person to talk about raw linguistics, tho. Looking forward for your work. But the existing research doesn't support your proposal at all, not even Masica. All the eastern influences are attributable to later Magadhan and Pali mediated influences at best

@subapicarl @Saatvata Source please

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... Prakrit, they are unequivocally very similar to Eastern Ashokan Prakrit.

@subapicarl @Saatvata I know they're not, where have I claimed it? You're mkaing strawman atp. I just said older research did propose some affinity and closeness with Southern rather than Eastern. I can also make strawman that eastern inscriptions are nothing like Elu per consensus

@Light3675 @Saatvata Sorry, you’re completely going out on a limb here. You yourself admitted you do not understand the linguistics well enough, so no idea where you’re getting the confidence to claim things like this. The earliest Elu Prakrit inscriptions are *nothing* like Western Ashokan ...

@subapicarl @Saatvata I don't think that's the consensus, the consensus as I've seen from most trees and even Masica probably is just that Sinhalese is an older split while other branches have somewhat more shared history. Glottolog also has similar glottolog.org/resource/langu…

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... Insular Indo-Aryan diachrony for nearly the past decade or so, so more than happy to discuss the historical linguistics end. Not much on this published yet (soon!), but being deep in the weeds of the linguistic data for years, the linguistics points unequivocally to the East.

@subapicarl @Saatvata So when are you gonna cite the linguistic research paper which makes Insular a subgroup of Eastern?

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... without deeply understanding the assumptions that went into the statistical models at hand. In this sense, historical linguistics is much more accountable — every contirbuting piece of evidence can be examined and appriased case-wise. I’ve been working on ...

@Saatvata @Kar_Bharadwaj @subapicarl Like I said, Old Sinhalese later created these associations with Magadhan sphere after arrival of Buddhism. PGW is not present on Odisha despite much more archaeological exploration from 1st millennium BCE, otoh it is present in Ujjayini which is v close to Supparaka

@Kar_Bharadwaj @Light3675 @subapicarl The daughter of the Vaṅgas left her home and joined a caravan headed from Vaṅga to Magadha. The "lion" attacked the caravan in a forest in the Lāḷa country.

@Saatvata @Kar_Bharadwaj @subapicarl No Bengal likely acquired EA admix when they displaced Munda speakers there upon arrival. Tibetan may have entered later though

@Kar_Bharadwaj @Light3675 @subapicarl Also, the "Bengal" of 2,500 years ago was not the "Bengal" of today. Many geneticists believe the Tibetic/East Asian admixture entered the Bengali population roughly 1,500 to 2,000 years ago.

@subapicarl @Saatvata I know I went too far there and was wrong, anyways Lata seems like a toponym used by both regions but in east the initial l became r. But Lata of Mahavamsa is more likely to be the Gujarat one which was more well known at that time

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... definitely early Eastern MIA dialects which used ⁽*⁾lāḍʰa– (⇐ rāṣṭrá–) for that region, while others had rāḍʰa–. And as @Saatvata mentioned, lāḍʰakē is even attested as the name of a cave in the earliest Elu Prakrit inscriptions (3rd c. BC - 1st c. AD). While ...

@Saatvata @subapicarl It must've, as Ashokan Prakrit from Sopara afaik is Maharashtri like. Regardless Southern IA split earlier and became somewhat isolated so it must've even that way

@Light3675 @subapicarl Did a distinct "Southern IA node" even exist around 500 BC?

@subapicarl @Saatvata Linguistics is not the only factor in determining origin, other metrics are as much valid to give credence to one hypothesis over another. Your linguistic claims are unverified so far and nothing concrete compared to genetic pointing to western origin

@Light3675 @Saatvata ... unproductive here. The models used in those fields are highly sensitive to the specific underlying assumptions and thus aren’t as granularly critiqueable as in historical linguistics, so unless you are able to rigorously critique the linguistic claims, your arguments ...