[tied] Re: Albanian as a satem langauge

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G&P@...> wrote:

> > "Albanian
> > adjectives and ordinals come after the stressed nouns unlike any other
> > European tongue.
> > The law formulated in 1892 ...
> > makes Albanian the oldest living Indo European language."
>
> This is just daft.
> Firstly all living Indo-European languages are by definition of

identical

> age. One cannot be older than another.
> If you mean that Albanian separated off from all the other IE

languages at

> an earlier stage, then it's quite a startling statement, and few

linguists

> could agree with you.

It will not be so if you move the hypothetical homeland of IE
languages out of Europe. Perhaps its time to review the whole
framework of the so called "IE languages. May be Albanian is not an
"IE" language at all.


Or none.

> Secondly, French also puts adjectives after nouns (mostly). But we

know

> that this pattern became fixed later than Latin. But we don't know

enough

> about Albanian to know when its sentence structure patterns became

fixed.

> They could be a survival from IE (perhaps!), or an early innovation,

or an

> innovation later even than French!
>
> I appreciate your desire to make Albanian special. I think it is.

But not

> for the reasons you suggest.
>
> Peter

I question the idea of an "IE family" of languages. There is so much
that has gone on that simply cannot be known because of lack of
written records. Albanian has its roots in Asia.

M. Kelkar