Re: A weak PIE adopted by the world?

Marija Gimbutas' Kurganish culture-language would be a very
primitive  proto-IE type. Although dominant in specific districts, it's use
and associated material assemblage would be spotty. In the end it would be
so weak an expression that it was more-or-less absorbed by the much larger
non IE speaking population.

Dear Joseph Crary,

   Isn't the whole idea of PIE that it was a strong language and that the
basic core words had forms and constructions that could be found from Ireland
to India?  How could a weak language with few speakers manage to displace
such words as mother, father, daughter, water and horse within a larger
indigenous population that they were infiltrating.  

   An analogy might be the million Vietnamese who migrated to the US after
the war  being so influential that we started using the Vietnamese words for
Mother and Father, displacing their usage from American English within two
generations.  Even if the Vietnamese conquered the United States and we were
under the occupation of a five million man Vietnamese Army occupation force,
what is the liklihood that 30 years later I would be referring to my parents
and children by Vietnamese words and using their language for terms like
water, river, snow, corn, bread and ice cream?

   I think the least intrusive impact of PIE speakers would be a conquest of
an area followed by the slaughter or enslavement of all the men and
usurpation of all the women and small children.  Then the IE dialect could be
imposed on the conquered.
The most intrusive would be the complete displacement of the indigenous
peoples and the full occupation of their lands. The truth may be somewhere in
between.

   I consider it highly unlikely that terms like mother, father, daughter,
water etc would be voluntarily sought out and adopted by any tribal society  
to be taken on as its own.

Best regards,  John Piscopo
http://www.johnpiscoposwords.com
PO Box 137
Western Springs, IL 60558-0137
(708)246-7111