From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 4561
Date: 2000-11-02
----- Original Message -----
From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 8:55 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity
> Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>
> > If PIE resulted from a split-and-diverge process that had begun,
> say, in Anatolia before 7000 BC, then the root of the IE family tree
> would be a node in a larger phylogeny, and if we knew any non-IE
> outgroup belonging to the same extended family, we could attempt to
> reconstruct pre-PIE stages of the process on a comparative
> basis. "Tyrrhenian" may or may not represent such an outgroup; its
> tiny size, the poor documentation of Etruscan (not to
> mention "Lemnian" and Rhaetic) and the immense time depth between the
> putative "Proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian" node and historical Etruscan
> militate against a reliable comparative reconstruction.
> >
> > If, on the other hand, PIE emerged from a rapid "punctuation" in a
> local linguistic area, terminating a long-lasting state of
> equilibrium (such an area may have originally covered the Balkans
> together with Anatolia and the entire Near East), the comparative
> method would be of little use in reconstructing its remoter ancestry,
> but comparison within the area would nevertheless reveal a
> regional "prototype" (consisting of shared diffusional traits) -- the
> sort of typological convergence that can be observed in Australia,
> South Africa or North America. This, rather than shared ancestry, may
> be what links PIE with Etruscan, and further with Semitic or
> Kartvelian.
>
> These two theories need not be mutually incompatible.
>
> Personally I see a phylogenic linkage between Semitic, Kartvellian,
> Proto-Tyrrhenian, PIE in operation (Nostratic). There is evidence, I
> believe, for a "prototype" with shared diffusional traits extending
> with this group to cover Khattic, Hurro-Urartuean, Proto-Euphratean,
> some of the Caucasian languages and possibly Elamo-Dravidian. This
> is linked with the original discovery of farming, which I believe on
> the basis of the evidence to have been a breakthrough achieved by
> Caucasian speakers. It is, I believe, what explains some of the
> Semitish trend Glen sees in PIE (for eg. "wine" in the various
> languages from Semitic, to Kartvellian, Hurrian, Tyrrhenian to PIE).
> The other evidence for Semitish I see as being their common Nostratic
> inhertance.
>
> I see evidence of a second "prototype with shared diffusional
> traits" existing between Uralic, Altaic and various "Paleo-Arctic"
> (including Innuit) languages, but with phylogenic connections between
> Uralic and Yukaghir. This is what seems to give a "best fit"
> explanation of the genetic and archaeological evidence, and seems, I
> understand, even to be accepted by the bulk of the Altaicists.
>
> Whether this is true or not at this stage is not clear (the time
> lines we are talking about are so far back that it becomes difficult
> at this orizon to separate between your hypothesis 1 and 2 there
> Piotr.
>
> Regards
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>