From: george knysh
Message: 12093
Date: 2002-01-19
> --- In cybalist@..., "michael_donne"normally
> <michael_donne@...> wrote:
> > 1) Isn't it true that the relation between Iranian
> and Vedic
> Sanskrit
> > is somewhat anomalous since they both have
> qualities that make them
> > appear younger and yet older than each other?
>
>(PG) Far from being anomalous, this is what we
> find in any pairan
> of related languages. Each of them has innovated in
> its own way,
> while preserving inherited archaisms lost in the
> other language.
> Laymen like to think that, say, Lithuanian is an
> "old" language while
> English is a "modern" one. In reality they are both
> modern and both
> are equally old, since they derive from a common
> protolanguage (in
> terms of historical attestation, English is actually
> older by many
> centuries). Lithuanian preserves a greater number of
> archaic features
> than English, but there are respects in which
> English is more archaic.
> >(MD) 3) Does the Centum/Satem split argue against
> Indian homeland? Is*****GK: Given the answer to question 1 above, this
> > it even conceivably possible that Centum split off
> from an original
> > Satem?
>
>(PG) It argues neither against nor in favour of _any_
> homeland. But note
> that "the Satem/centum split" is a misnomer. The
> Satem innovation
> took place relatively late, and by that time the IE
> languages were
> already strongly differentiated. The "Centum"
> languages are
> a "paraphyletic" group, which means that it does not
> include all the
> descendants of their common ancestor (which is
> simply PIE). In other
> words, the Centum languages did not split from
> anything -- they are
> the remainder of the family, left after the Satem
> block had split off.