Re: [tied] IE classification: a lexicostatistical experiment

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@> wrote:
>
> > Families have to be named after the analysis is conducted, not before.
> > Take a good look at McMahon McMahon 2005.pdf especially the boxes at
> > the center of the fig. They indicate multiple parents.
>
> Thay may represent words diffusing. My feeling is that the Slavic
> group should be considered as a model of ethe early IE family.
> Another phenomenon they could indicate is that meanings may have more
> than one word, but that such synonymy does not persist.
>
> > Now which languages would you put in which families?
>
> I see no problems with the traditional families, other than the loss
> of *modern* support for Indo-Iranian.
>
> Richard.

The words used in Balto Slavic are not much older than modern "
Indo-Iranian." and still the prgram was able to pick them up.
I see the boxes at the center of McMahon McMahon2005.pdf as support
for the Mesoeuropiec family or just a European family if one throws in
Greek and Armenian.

"there is evidence that
Romance, Germanic, and Baltoslavic are most closely interrelated among
the
distinct branches of Indoeuropean, thus suggesting, though the
evidence is far
from conclusive, that these three divisions form a single separate
branch, for
which the term Mesoeuropeic is introduced (Dyen, Kruskal, Black 1992)."

And the fact that these boxes do not cut across to Indian and Iranian
languages means that they have *nothing to do* with the European
languages.

M. kelkar