Hi Torsten:
> Maybe I should clarify. If a population changes to a new language
> (let's call language A), they might keep some words from their old
> language (call it language B). But we still say that the population
> speaks language A (although they may modify it, speaking with an
> accent etc).In the example you mention, Germanic is a IE-language.
I'm fully aware that germanic is *called* an IE-language, and I also
knew the reasons for it before. So You really wouldn't have to
enlighten me about that.
But isn't there a (hypothetical) point in the above scenario , or
variants of it where the phonetics, lexical items, grammar in the
language in question only are 50% IE- and 50% non-IE. Perhaps this
scenario is impossibe when a people speaking 100% non-IE has to learn
to speak a language which is 100% IE. But what happens if a people
speaking a language A which is lets say 15% IE ( An example here
could be e g hebrew, phoenician and other semitic lanuages which
didn't have a v-sound (and probably not p either), which according to
a theory I read had to have come to know and utter these sounds from
the hittites via the Invations of the peoples of the sea and
phoenician speaking people.)is going to have to learn a language B
which is 60%-IE (please forgive me for my so faulty use of the term,
but I think you understand what I mean). What if "only" 20-25% of the
words and other characteristics in language A were transferred while
learning the new language B. So that language B ( or C?) eventually
came to consist of 50% IE features and 50% non-IE features. What
would we call that language?
Perhaps the above is absolutely wrong reasoning. And the question of
NAMING a language IE or not is perhaps not the most important.
But I'm really questioning the method of builing up a tree with proto-
IE being the trunk and all the other language families just branching
out of it naturally. I don't think that can explain everything.
BTW is Grimm's law just what we would expect of a normal deveopment
from IE to Germanic?
Isn't it possible that these sound shifts could have occured from the
process when a people speaking a non-IE language wich lacks e. g. a p-
sound ( like the above mentioned Hebrew), is forced to learn a new
IE -featured language?
So are Grimm's Law IE? I'm just asking.
> But about 30% of the words of the Germanic languages cannot be
found
> in other IE languages. Therefore it is assumed (by some) that those
> words are from the language the (now) Germanic-speaking peoples
> spoke, before they changed to speak (proto-)Germanic.
Torsten, I knew also this before, but I asked what You thought!
Skål
Anders