From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 328
Date: 1999-11-23
----- Original Message -----From: Alexander StolbovSent: Tuesday, November 23, 1999 2:38 PMSubject: [cybalist] Germanic againDear Piotr,Please excuse my rather late reply on the materials concerning the position of Germanic in the IE dialect tree.I used to relay on the scheme of IE dialects by T.Gamkrelidze & V.Ivanov developed by Cyril Babaev. It can be represented in the following form:PIE/ \Non-Anatolian IE Anatolian/ \(Western block) (Eastern block)/ \ \ \ \(Non-Tocharian W.) Tocharian \ \ Greek-Thraco-Phrygo-Armenian\ \ \ \ \ Indo-Iranian\ \ \ Celtic Germano-Balto-Slavic\ \ Italic / \\ Venetic Germanic Balto-SlavicIllyrianTo my mind this scheme remains "correct" , i.e. inwardly non-contradictory (at least in the aspect of Germanic), if we take into account only morphological evedences and ignore phonological ones (which are very strong indeed: satem/centum division, RUKI rule).I think your scenario given in the message of November, 2 can be shown in the analogues form (please correct me if I represent it not quite precisely):PIE/ \/ \ Anatolian(Non-Anat.-non-Toch. IE) Tocharian*/ \Western block Eastern block\ \ \ / \\ \ Celto-Italic Hellenic "Satemic"\ "Pannonian" (incl.Illyrian) / \Northern "Transylvanian" "North Pontic"/ \ / \Germanic extinct group Balto-Slavic Aryan("Old European")*The position of Tocharian should be the subject of a special discussion.Again, this scheme is absolutely "correct" (inwardly non-contradictory) if we take one sort of evidences (phonological in this case) and ignore another one (morphological: *m/*bh division and other).What to do in such a situation? To my mind:1. To try to prove theoretically that one sort of evidences is principally more conclusive for problems of genetic kinship than another one. For example: "morphological evidences should be considered only if they don't contradict to phonological evidences" or vice versa. We treat so lexical evidences now - as the weakest argument for genetic relations. If this question is solved theoretically we get the hierarchy of arguments (in order of decreasing the conclusive ability): phonological-morphological-lexical or morphological-phonological-lexical.2. If the question formulated above principally has no general solution we need to consider contradicting evidences together and to find a compromise solution of the highest probability.Piotr, you have suggested a variant where Germanic is an independent (non-West and non-East) branch of IE family. It can be shown like this:PIE/ \/ \ Anatolian/ \ Tocharian/ Germanic/ \Western Easternblock blockLooks like "the golden mean". However in this case it is necessary to demonstrate some archaic features of Germanic and to find innovations, which are shared by the languages of both the Western and the Eastern block contrary to Germanic+Tocharian+Anatolian (or maybe without Tocharian - only Germanic+Anatolian).Alexander
Dear Sasha,The dispute will no doubt continue. I'm inclined to treat morphological and phonologial evidence on a par (lexical arguments are clearly the weakest), so I'm in two (or more) minds on the Germanic question myself. The third scenario could solve some problems, but of course one would need some shared innovations of the W/E languages to justify it. No archaic features in Germanic would be necessary, since archaisms do not prove anything about relatedness. It would be enough if Germanic were excluded from the common Western/Eastern innovations.We may draw some comfort from the fact that even biologists, whose data are much easier to work with and who can always hope that palaeontology will yield fresh evidence, have to modify their evolutionary scenarios all the time.Piotr