Re: Can relationships between languages be determined after 80,000 y

From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 52068
Date: 2008-01-29

> Sanscrit's system was the obvious starting point.
> and Greek morphology
> plus Anatolian have entailed little adjustements.
> That's how it happened.

It's a gross oversimplification. In the early days of IE studies it was
accepted that Sanskrit was the most ancient and most conservative
language of the family, so of course it was almost identified with PIE.
It took scholars a few decades to realise how wrong they were and to
de-Sanskritise PIE to a large degree. The old saying that PIE = Greek
vowels + Sanskrit consonants is neither literally true nor even roughly
accurate.

Piotr
===============
Tsalam? t?ob

Orthodox PIE phonology is still basically
Sanscrit consonants + Greek vowels.
It 's not a roughly accurate description
it's just precisely what it is.

Look at the reaction to my proposal that PIE had *z !!

Orthodox PIE phonology is not de-sanskritized a single second.

Arnaud
============