Re: [tied] Re: Dating PIE

On Fri, 19 Oct 2001 16:33:59 -0000, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>
>> Przepraszam, Piotr, I don't. Don't you mean "So, on the whole, a
>PIE
>word would be LESS likely to survive only in Anatolian..."?
>
>No, I mean that since Anatolian is coordinate with the whole non-
>Anatolian subfamily, it is more likely for an isolated survival to
>occur in Anatolian than in a _single_ non-Anatolian branch (as the
>latter requires a more complex sequence of events).

OK, I see what you mean now. It would be interesting, but way beyond
my mathematical capabilities, to develop a more exact model for this
(if such a thing hasn't been done already).

>Of course
>isolated survivals are by their very nature impossible to identify as
>such, but one consequence of the existence of such "dark matter" is a
>higher proportion of unetymologisable words in Anatolian.

We know the Hittites were in contact with Assyrians, Hurrians and
Hattic-speakers, but when reading a Hittite text, one seldom
encounters a word which has been positively identified as a Semitic,
Hurrian or Hattic borrowing. In part this may be because of our poor
unerstanding of Hattic and to a lesser degree Hurrian, but if you know
the language a bit, the notion as it's sometimes presented of Hittite
as a thoroughly "Asianised" tongue just feels plain wrong.