Re: Why the Proto-Indoeuropean numerals are not motivated within IE?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> > All these people (Greenberg, Ruhlen, Bengtson) belong to
> > what I call the "Sapir-Swadesh school", whose main
> > representants are Edward Sapir and Morris Swadesh and
> > which sees Comparative Linguistics as a branch of
> > Anthropology. By contrast, modern IE studies, founded by
> > 19th century's Neogrammarians, are a branch of Classical
> > Phylology
>
> I doubt that there are many modern historical linguists
> who see historical linguistics as anything but a
> historical science in its own right, with roots in
> anthropology *and* philology (among other things).
>
> > Buit the thing is, how much do mainstream IE studies actually share

with historical linguistics?

>
> It takes either great ignorance or great prejudice (to the
> point of effectively being ignorance) to ask that question.
>

Actually it was a *rethoric* one, with an ironic purpose.

> Mainstream IE linguistics is a major area of historical linguistics.
>

Yes, precisely. For the most part, historical linguistics is the same
thing that IE linguistics. Anecdotally, I've got Franco Fanciullo's book
"Introduzione alla linguistica storica" which for the most part is
actually an introduction to IE linguistics with only a little bit of
non-IE languages such as Etruscan.

But if you read carefully my above post you'll see I wrote COMPARATIVE
linguistics.