Re: Models and PIE reconstruction [was: Ligurian]

2012/5/4, Tavi <oalexandre@...>:

> I strongly disagree. It's "Truth" or "Being" (in Heidegger's
> terminology) who speaks through ourselves.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Are there times your disagreement isn't strong?

> As Tavi will promptly remember to us, we have
>> to take into consideration Basque as well (although no Basque
>> linguistic text has ever been found in this area).

>> Tavi (promptly):
> I'm afraid you confuse (I don't know if purposely or not) Basque and
> Vasco-Caucasian.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
half-purposely. Purposely in the sentence "take into consideration
Basque as well", because what you do is to compare Basque words (in
order to reconstruct VC ones, but they are nevertheless Basque as for
their attested forms); of course you compare Caucasian words as well.
I should have added "Caucasian languages". Does it suffice?
Not purposely in the following sentence, which I as promptly as I
can correct into: "although no Vasco-Caucasian text has ever been
found in this area". I this way your situation is still worse.

> Tavi (new message):
> You've got to face the *hard* evidence that neither Basque nor Iberian
> are demonstrably IE.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Read Forni 2011 and after having really done that give us your
motivated response. If it's wrong, it will be a light task for you.

> I've simply notied that already
> the Aurignacian colonization can well have brought more than a single
> language

>> Tavi:
> Unfortunately, this is utterly indemonstrable.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
please don't play with words. If it's indemonstrable that it can
it's automatically indemonstrable that it cannot, so everything
becomes indemonstrable.
You mean that it's the realization of such a possible that is
indemonstrable, and this is precisaly what one means when he says
"can"

> Tavi:
> However, what really
> matters is your apparent *emphasis* on the first colonization, which
> implictly minorizes the impact of the following ones. By contrast,
> Villar states that the Aurignacian episode wouldn't have left any
> detectable linguistic traces in Europe. And although I won't go so far
> as Villar, I've got to recognize that linguistic impact of the
> Gravettian and the Neolithic colonization episodes was much more
> important than the Aurignacian one.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
all you recognize is based on previous equations between languages
and cultures. What you've written simply means that you've got to
recognize the impact of the languages you have associated with
Gravettian and Neolithic colonizations has been much more important
the the one you associate with the Aurignacian colonization.
We are interestingly discussing precisely about such associations
between languages and cultures. We won't arrive at an end.
Anyway please stop confusing my working hypothesis with assertions
on my side. There's a fundamental difference between hypothesis and
conclusion. I've stated my hypotheses, not my conclusions. You assert
my hypothesis have been already falsified, but till now you've never
given a measurement, so it doesn't matter what you think, until you
haven't given any measurement I can't leave my hypotheses.
Moreover, nobody really cares about what I think and I don't care
about what people think about me or my theories, I just care about
what you and other people think about linguistic history and
prehistory (and also politics and religion if you want). So please
once for all stop criticizing every word of mine, even when I'm
writing to other people, and give us more etymologies and,
necessarily, sound laws. You see I almost never criticize you apart
minimal details and anyway always in relation of what I've written;
can't you do the same as well?

>
>> > Tavi: I've given several reasons which lead to that conclusion, and
> this is precisely why my own model is closer to Villar's than to Alinei's
> or your own.
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>> anyway Villar is closer to me than to you, and the three of us are
>> equally far from Alinei
>> Tavi:
> Not really, because Villar's model consist of a very early "paleo-IE"
> which fragmented into several paleo-dialects detectable in the ancient
> topoponymy and hydronymy. Only much later the historical IE languages
> emerged, arising from the "explosive" (in Villar's own words) expansion
> of the Steppes dialect in the Chalcolithic-Bronze Age, replacing other
> linguistic varieties which acted as substrates.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
OK, this is a pertinent discussion. In my opinion, if you leave a
wide place for VC in European prehistory and both Villar and I don't,
Villar is closer to me than to you, because such a difference is
greater than preconstructing Palaeo-IE with /o/ or with /a/, with /b d
g/ of /bh dh gh/.
Greater or not, this was what I meant. Now that we have stated it,
there's no more need to calculate the respective distances, everyone
can see them. This chapter is closed.

>
>> I agree (against Alinei) that Kurgan peoples probably spoke PIE

>> Tavi:
> Not "PIE" but a paleo-IE dialect.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Please, I'm stating what I think. Can I state what I think? Or
shall I declare that I think what you want?

>> with Renfrew, I think that PIE was spoken also before them, for
> instance from Anatolian agriculturalists;

>Tavi:
> I don't think Anatolian farmers spoke IE but most likely VC languages.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
I know, but I think different from you. At least there's freedom of thinking

> Tavi:
> Unlike Villar, I think paleo-IE dialects aren't exclusively detectable
> in the ancient toponymy and hydronymy but also in the IE (not "PIE")
> lexicon thanks to sound correspondences. In some cases, we've got
> doublets (and even triplets) of unrelated "roots" in the traditional
> model but corresponding to different paleo-dialects.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
It's always good to learn what you think

> Tavi:
> I must insist that "PIE" refers to the entity reconstructed by IE-ists
> using the comparative method, but not to the actual "last common
> ancestor of all IE languages", to which I'd prefer "paleo-IE" or, if
> you prefer, "Paleolithic PIE".

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
I was using (in reference to Kuragn people) "PIE" in the sense you
have just now mentioned, but you didn't seem satisfied with that

>> Alinei, for its own, assigns PIE in its usually reconstructed form (but
>> without any trace of laryngeals) to Palaeolithic and no later.
>> I assign PIE in its usually reconstructed form - with laryngeals - to
>> Palaeo-, Meso-, Neo- and Chalcolithic.

>> Tavi:
> Both approaches are huge misrepresentations, involving a lot of
> unwarranted (and most unlikely) assumptions and ignoring linguistic
> data.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
assumptions must be unwarranted. In my case I make just one
assumption (not "a lot"): there are no linguistic a priori
restrictions for back-projections of IE lexicon through generally
acknowledged sound laws.
I'm also sympathetic with macrocomparisons, so I think there are
no linguistic data that I "ignore". My explanations always explain
everything. You can find better explanations - there's no limit - but
not say that my explanations haven't explained linguistic data.

>> The difference is therefore that I postulate a longer duration of PIE
>> than you.

>>Tavi:
> This is the part which *doesn't* work at all.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Why? Please try a reductio ad absurdum

>> Please explain:
>> 1) your criterion of validity

>> Tavi:
> An *uncontroversial* etymology strictly obtained by derivation from
> "PIE" using std sound correspondences.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Please show me a sound correspondence I've used that wasn't std

>
>> 2) (optional) a quantification of the expected amount of valid
>> inherited etymologies, especially in the case of Latin.

>> Tavi:
> Take for example Matasovic's or De Vaan's dictionary and try finding the
> amount of "inherited" etymologies over the total. I bet you'll get lower
> figures that expected, say 40%-60% and possibly less in the case of
> Latin.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
They are just samples. I can offer, if you want, etymologies à la
Matasović or de Vaan for the amount of lexicon you expect (BTW, you
haven't yet given a quantification of the expected amount)