From: markodegard@...
Message: 274
Date: 1999-11-15
A modest proposal to modify the standard nomenclature: if Indo-Hittite is such a bad name, if the "Indo-Hittite" theory is essentially correct, and since Indo-Germanic was used even before Indo-European as a term for a family including Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Persian, Celtic and Germanic (etc.), what about calling non-Anatolian IE Indo-Germanic, reserving the term IE for the entire family? Indo-Germanic makes perfect sense in cladistic terms: it means "the common ancestor of Indic and Germanic plus all the languages derived from it". It would mean exactly what 19th c. scholars wanted it to mean. They had no idea of the existence of Anatolian, and so the Brugmannian IE family was not the same as our Indo-European.What do you think of it? The name "non-Anatolian IE" is a pain in the *xorsos.
Well, if you can get the editors of the Journal of Indo-European Studies to go along with your modest proposal, I have no objections (but I can already hear members of the Eastern School cursing as only Slavs can curse at such an idea, so I don't think it'll pass).I've only read of the "Indo-Hittite" hypothesis secondarily. My understanding of it is that Anatolian and the remaining Indo-European languages are separate language families, in the sense that Indo-European, Uralic and Afro-Asiatic are separate language families. Since everyone seems to poo-poo such an idea, I wonder why everyone spills so much ink poo-poo-ing it in the first place.
It is obvious to me (and presumably, to everyone else), but unprovable by anyone, that quite a few Indo-European languages were born, flourished, then died, completely unrecorded. Certain of these languages must have constituted entirely separate branches of the family.
Had Hittite and its cognate languages never been put into writing, we would not be concerned with such questions. Hittite would have been one of the unnumbered lost IE languages. But we do have Hittite. And since the standard model puts Anatolian not less than 1000 years, and more likely 1500 years (or more, depending on your views) away from the group all other IE languages are said to descend from, we need a way to speak of the two states of IE: the one before Anatolic broke off, and the state just before all other know IE languges broke off. We don't have such a word. You have to use 'non-Anatolic Indo-European' if you are going to be precise.
Not for a moment do I believe that Germanic is ancestral to all the other non-Anatolic Indo-European languages. At best, like Anatolian, it is an elder sister to all the rest.
I would be nice if someone came up with a revised system. We might even rename the family. Since Nostratic is taken, I propose Nesic ( = Ours-ic). If you can form this into a certifiable PIE word, this would be even better, something that translates as 'our language', 'our tongue', even 'our thing', something that would translate into down-home American English, as us'ns-ish (us-ones'-ish). The Hittites called themselves Nesi, as I recall.
We could keep IE as the regular term for non-Anatolic IE. We'd just retire PIE.
This is written tongue-in-cheek, but there is nothing unreasonable here. It might actually solve the problem. Suggest it to James Mallory if you see him.
Mark Odegard.