Re: Divergence vs. convergence (was: Witzel and Sautsutras)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

>
> Sanskrit is one of the most conservative IE languages to be sure,
> but its conservatism should not be overrated, and the history of
> the standard model of PIE is a history of emancipation from the
> Sanskrit model - more and more features of Sanskrit were recognized
> as innovations of the Indic branch. And now it turns out that we
> have to posit a quite different Early PIE to account for the
> divergent features of Anatolian.
>
> > Not only "earlier" (in diachronical terms) but also "diverse" (in
> > diatopical terms). Thus we've got (al least) two different "PIE"s.

In my

> > own model, the IE family is the result of the superimposition of

several

> > (proto-)languages due to contact and replacement processes over
> > millenia. The classical genealogical tree model is simply

inadequate.

>
> Would you mind giving evidence for that? There are well-established
> regular sound correspondences linking the various Indo-European
> languages with each other, and the best way of accounting for them
> is to posit a common ancestor language that gradually diversified
> and broke apart.
>

You're contradicting yourself, as you previously said that "we have to
posit a quite different Early PIE to account for the divergent features
of Anatolian". So you're implictly recognizing a single proto-language
doesn't work at all.

> If Indo-European was actually the outcome of
> "contact and replacement processes", one would expect this to show
> in numerous inconsistencies in the sound correspondences. Where
> are they? Granted, there are a few words which look "wrong" and
> are probably loanwords from other IE languages, but if Indo-European
> was a convergence area, such irregularities would have to be far
> more numerous, especially in the derivational and inflectional
> morphologies of the IE languages.
>

As regarding morphology, there're some isoglosses such as -r passive
suffix, the augment, etc. There're also many interesting phonetic
isoglosses as regarding stops and the so-called "laryngeals",
denasalization of initial nasals, an so on.

> Nobody denies that most Indo-European languages contain a large
> number of lexemes that do not have reliable PIE etymologies and are
> thus likely to be loanwords from substratum languages, but that
> still does not make Indo-European a convergence area.
>

There's no simple way the more than 2,000 "roots" reconstructed by some
IE-ists could belong to a single (proto-)language. You and most IE-ists
tend to identify "PIE" with the most recent layer, which represents the
language(s) spoken by Kurgan people, whose lexicon had words for horse
and wheeled vehicles. But older layers are still very significant,
including the agricultural lexicon (i.e. 'plough') from the language(s)
spoken by Neolithic farmers (LBK). Not to mention the "indigenous"
Germanic words for animals such as 'horse' and 'bear', etc.