Re: [tied] The Black Sea Flood

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2000 1:38 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] The Black Sea Flood

 

You know I think they were, Mark. Ecologically, the Steppes are unlikely to have been anyone's Early Neolithic homeland, and the Linear Pottery culture is the only one that has expanded sufficiently (producing a number of "daughter cultures") to account for the distribution of the IE branches.

 

I'm not quite happy with your "falling-together" (or "consolidation") of PIE. Reconstructable PIE certainly shows no typical features of "contact languages", which militates against its being the result of creolisation. Creoles don't have rich inflections (case/number endings, aspect/tense/mood/voice distinctions), irregular morphology (ablaut etc.), marked phonological features (three-way stop system, labiovelars). PIE certainly interacted with its neighbours, but its structure is not what one would expect of a truly "mixed" language.

 

Piotr

 

 

Mark wrote:

 

The cold event which ended 8200 ya is real enough of course, and would have sent the shivering people running south. This date, of course, is about the earliest I've seen mentioned for the falling-together of PIE, with 5500 and thereabouts being more popular. Were the Linear Band Pottery folk IE-speakers?