Re: Limitations of the compartive method

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2008-01-27 04:27, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > Try 31 and 54.
>
> Did you pick (31) because it's the only diagram in the handout with
> Indo-Iranian somewhere near the centre? There are others where it's
> position is more peripheral ;)

You mean 54. I did not chose 53 because it does not show Hittite and
Tocharian. In any such diagram "Indo-Iranian" MUST be at the center
becasue these languages are the most innovative.

>
> >> Anyway, diagrams like (31) are hardly useful in
> >> pinpointing the homeland.
> >
> > Why? The place where "Paris" or "Barcelona" varieties are spoken is
> > the homeland for Latin. These places would have provided the
> > necessary masses of people to generate the dialect continuum.
>
> So Latin originated in France and Catalonia? This is even more
> revolutionary than your Out-of-India stuff!

I did not say France and Catalonia. I said The place where "Paris" or
"Barcelona" varieties are spoken is
the homeland for Latin.

>
> All right, in case you don't know, the homeland of Latin was the

ancient

> region of Latium, with Rome in the centre, which is why the folks who
> originally spoke are called the Romans. Rome is still there, it's the
> capital of Italy.

Cool! If Rome is homeland of Latin (aka proto-Romance) then the place
where the oldest IE langauge is known to have been spoken is the
"homeland" of IE; and that means India.

>
> > Indo-Iranian territory would have done that for PIE dialects. Since we
> > know that Avesthan is later than Rg Vedic Sanskrit, that means India.
>
> Indeed. India is the cradle of IE the way Barcelona is the cradle of
> Romance.

See above. I was not referring to Barcelona as a geographic place. My
point is wherever the central varieties are spoken is the "homeland"

>
> > And even less legitimate to speak of Proto
> > Indo-Iranian-Hittite-Celto-Germanic-Tocharian! Am I missing something
> > here?
>
> Yes, you are.

That was a rhetorical question. If it is less legitimate to speak of
Proto-Germanic-Balto-Slavic-Italic then it is illegitimate to speak of
a "Proto-Indo-European."

M. Kelkar



The evidence for a large genetic grouping may be more

> robust than that for its subdivisions. For example, it's clear that the
> Germanic languages form a very well-defined genetic grouping. But the
> subdivisions of Germanic into smaller units (like e.g. East vs.
> Northwest or West vs. Northeast) are less secure for a variety of good
> reasons. This does not in the least invalidate the status of

Germanic as

> a unit. Likewise in biology: taxonomists have a zillion competing
> hypotheses about how to divide the birds (Aves) into smaller units and
> how those units are related to one another, but any ornithologist
> questioning the validity of Aves as a genetic unit (clade) would

rightly

> be considered a lunatic. There's A LOT of incontrovertible support for
> such a unit, more that for any particular bird order or family.
>
> Piotr
>