--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
[snip]
Piotr:
I'm pretty sure, for example, that the alleged close relation
between Germanic and Balto-Slavic which makes some linguists propose
a Germano-Balto-Slavic genetic unit or claim that Germanic is a
secondarily "desatemised" language, is in fact a purely areal
phenomenon.
Torsten:
Now this proposed "desatemisation" has got me curious. Who said that
and would you give a sketch of how they think that happened?
Piotr:
As a matter of fact, we don't see neat family trees very often -- the
model works best in cases like Polynesia, where there is a natural
barrier between any pair of languages.
Torsten:
The sea is a "natural barrier" to the Polynesians? A-hm!
Because of my wild claims of Sundaland I've had to read some of the
Proto-Austronesian reconstruction stuff, and they all seem to agree
that it is impossible to construct neat family trees for Austronesian
such as are known from Indo-European studies.
Torsten