Mark O:
>What does Glen mean by 'Old IE'?
I've mentioned this before... Here it is again:
Old IE (7000-6000 BCE)
Mid IE (6000-5000 BCE)
Late IE (5000-4000 BCE)
As you can see, I've divided IE into three neat segments
of a thousand years each. It has to be divided in *some* way
afterall, in order to distinguish different stages of the
language.
Mark O:
>There is something of a lexical gap when speaking of 'PIE', in that we have
>to distinguish between the post-Anatolic state of the
>proto-language, and what it was in unity with Anatolic.
I always consider Proto-IndoEuropean as that which *includes*
Anatolian. IE without Anatolian is just not IE as far as I'm
concerned.
>With full unity, we then travel back through a deep, but not limitless time
>of development as an independent language family, until 'unity' with some
>other language family can be hypothesized ('Indo-Uralic', perhaps).
We have to get over this concept of "unity". No language, especially
as spoken by loose hunter-gatherer tribes, is going to be "unified".
At any given point in time, the language area will be a puddle
of dialects that mutually influence each other. However, there *are*
commonalities and it *can* be reconstructed, including the dialect
areas and mutual influencing, as done for IE. It just takes a bit
of brain power.
So, when visualizing Mid or Old IE, please keep in mind that here
too, there is no "unified" language but a group of constantly
shifting dialects blurring together and fragmenting apart.
Mark O:
>Assigning times is a dangerous exercise. I for one have difficulty
>believing anything beyond 7500 years ago is particularly recoverable.
Assigning times is not dangerous as long as you continue to
understand that these times are approximate (and theoretical).
_Knowledge_ is dangerous :)
Of course, the dating of "Old IE" to 7000-6000 BCE is
my own arbitrary decision, however the dating of preIE features
is not so arbitrary. I know that IE had a centralized vowel
system and penultimate stress accent when the Semitish loans came
in and I know that the Semitish loans could not have occured
until c. 6500 BCE (but before 4000 BCE, obviously). Events like
these which are often associated with the neolithic help me date
things very nicely without much "danger", as you put it.
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gLeNny gEe
...wEbDeVEr gOne bEsErK!
home:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com
email:
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