Re: a moment of Awe

From: Gordon Barlow
Message: 38203
Date: 2005-06-01

Peter's description (see below) of each reconstructed standard PIE word as a "snapshot" gives us a wonderfully precise metaphor.  Spot on!  At this remove, linguistic scholars and students can capture several moments in the early development of a particular word - but only one of those moments can properly be labelled PIE.  Words are always changing.  Figuratively speaking, a moment before the PIE moment, and a moment after it, the selected word will have been just a wee bit different; and we can't at this remove, identify all the differences.
 
Darwin's caution in saying "might well be able to" rebuffs the charge of rashness, I think.  If any of us managed to pronounce one word exactly right, we would have been lucky.  Still, we are so often faced with claims of certainty (on this List and others) that we need to take a step back once in a while and reflect on such claims.  Certainty is common enough - and tolerable enough, IF its ephemeral nature is acknowledged.  Sometimes, even the most scholarly of scholars are blind to this nature - a fault that even the most diligent of peer-reviews sometimes fail to notice.  Here is a famous case in point.  A while back, two highly acclaimed and highly qualified academics - Vice-Chancellors of two ancient British Universities - set out to calculate the age of Earth.  Their answer was accepted as an absolute certainty by their peers in academia and elsewhere, for generations - and indeed is still accepted as certain by tens of millions of laymen today, and thousands of highly qualified and esteemed academics stand in line to confirm it.  The Earth's beginning was stated to be 23rd October, 4004 BC. 
 
Well, religions are by definition based on certainties.  Sciences are based on premises, presumptions and statistics; studies like etymology are based on extrapolations and inferences.  Yes, etymologists (professional or amateur) can have their individual personal certainties, but nobody should expect them all to be taken as permanent.  They are of the moment.  They are snapshots, too.
 
Gordon Barlow
 
 
>>Were a Proto-IE
>> scholar to be taken back several thousand years BCE to
the
>> Pontic-Caspian Steppes, he or she might well be able to converse
with
>> the nomadic cultures living there.
[Darwin]
 
>May I point out that there are
>no
fluent speakers of PIE around today. We can't even be sure on the
>pronunciation of PIE. Can you say **for sure** that there were
voiced
>aspirates in PIE?
[David]

>I share your excitement over what historical
linguistics has achieved, but I
>can't share your certainty about our
results!  There are so many areas of
>uncertainty that
remain.   Furthermore, each reconstruction is a snapshot of
>the moment of splitting - and for each reconstruction that can be a very
>different time.  There may never have been a single spoken language
>completely like our reconstructed PIE.
>Peter