Re: [tied] Re: Agriculture and IE

----- Original Message -----

From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 3:36 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Agriculture and IE

*****GK: Concretely speaking then. Flash back from ca, 1500 BC to 4500 BC (? another 1000 years would fit "considerably more" or is that too much or too little?). Now in 4500 BC we supposedly have "divergences" significant enough to make the "proto" versions mutually unintelligible. Now what could these have been?*****

 

The ancestors of Anatolian, Tocharian and Greek may already have been drifting away from the rest for some time. The bulk of the family would have formed two loose dialectal clusters: something that could be termed pre-proto-Satem (perhaps not "satemised" yet) in the east and proto-Western IE (ancestral to Germanic, Italic, Celtic + two or three minor branches) in the west.

 

***** If I remember your theory Indo-Aryan would not yet have "diverged" into a distinct group: that supposedly happened "only" 500-1000 years prior to the earliest attestation.*****

 

Indo-Aryan and Iranian (+ some "basal" Indo-Iranian dialects like Nuristani) were in all likelihood different (if similar) languages at the beginning of the second millennium BC, and since the whole branch is rather close-knit (there are a large number of shared innovations), there must have been a fairly long period of common Indo-Iranian development -- perhaps some 500 years, give or take. That's why I suggest ca. 2700/2500-2000 BC as the formative stage of Indo-Iranian.

 

***** What could have prompted the earlier "divergence" of Anatolian from all other groups (yet undifferentiated to the point of mutual intelligibility?). Is it simply a necessary assumption? I.e. since the groups were so different by the time of their attestation they HAD to diverge at some point, preferably further back in time (time covers up many sins (:=)) I agree. I am not clear as to the reasons for the divergences. I find it doubtful in the extreme that very closely related dialects, contiguously located, and living the same "way of life" would have diverged as considerably as these groups did were it not for the operation of some factors independent of internal linguistic momentum. Interaction with strong non-IE substrates seems to me a good explanation.*****

 

Anatolian represents the part of IE that was _not_ contiguously located with respect to the rest. It remained in or close to the source area of the early Neolithic Danubian cultures and became geographically separated from the groups that had ventured into the North European Plain. There were doubtless many such stay-at-home groups -- perhaps a whole southern subfamily of IE, but Anatolian is the only branch of which we have any records. Migratory movements to and fro did not cease abruptly, there were trade networks etc., but the contacts were sufficiently tenuous to make differentation inevitable. I don't want to speculate now about the possible connection of those groups with later cultures such as Baden and C^ernavoda/Ezero or their identification with (part of) the pre-Greek substrate of the Balkans. The (pre-)Proto-Anatolians would have interacted with the non-IE groups of the southern Balkans. The entry of the first IEs into Asia Minor would then have been from the Balkans, perhaps during the middle Bronze Age, ca. 2600 BC.  

>(Piotr) By the way, PIE did not _disappear_.

*****GK: Really? Finish your argument. PIE didn't disappear. It..... (what?)******

I just mean we still speak it. It has evolved and changed a bit, but hasn't gone extinct.

 

Piotr