--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
I am not being evasive. Any specialist can tell
> you how to derive the Sanskrit or Greek phonological
> system, inflectional endings, etc. from a common
> prototype.
*****GK: I would think that the "etc." is significant
with respect to the issue broached ("which of the
known language families /or individual languages
therein/ is clser/closest to PIE")if it involves ALL
aspects of a given language, including those
components (lexical or other)which aren't or may not
be IE.******
(PG)The changes involved can be enumerated
> and clearly defined. You can count them if you like,
> but it's an idle pastime.
*****GK: That's a value judgement I do not share,
unless I misunderstand what you're referring to (but I
am assuming that you are discussing the broached
problem of the similarity or dissimilarity of language
family A,B,C, etc. to PIE). If one can adequately list
and count the various constituent components of a
language family (or individual language) and conclude
that as a total system A is closer to PIE than B, or B
is closer than C, I would find this very interesting
and helpful.*****
(PG)What has evolved in either
> case is a multi-level _system_.
*****GK: Presumably PIE was also such a system.****
(PG)Quite simply, a
> language is an immensely complex object, and it is
> far from evident that an objective "similarity
> metric" can be defined for such objects.
*****GK: It seems to me even less evident that it
can't. The danger here is this: taking later, evolved,
"deeply modified" forms of the putative original as
starting points for retrospective reconstruction, and
accepting that these forms are indeed "immensely
complex objects", one risks reconstructing something
that is totally unreal, an "immensely complex" PIE
hypothesis that only exists in the imagination of
admirably qualified (but perhaps totally mistaken)
linguists. The same logic holds whether you are moving
in one direction or the other. The same difficulties
which prevent (or render idle) an adequate response to
the broached issue, should lead to the conclusion that
PIE is an artificial construct of a totally different
order than the real and attested language families
that we know. In that case, I would agree that the
issue is idle, since we are comparing real languages
with something that cannot be demonstrated to have had
a real existence. If PIE is a kind of retroactively
constructed Platonic Form, I would consider comparison
of Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek etc. to it as a completely
futile exercise in terms of historical relevance. But
if it is assumed that PIE as a total system is a truly
historical linguistic phenomenon, and if one is
confident about its "reconstruction" then the broached
issue ("which language/linguistic family is
closer/closest as a total system to this original")
becomes relevant and interesting, difficulties
notwithstanding.******
(PG)What
> matters is not just how far Sanskrit or Greek have
> diverged from PIE (in quantifiable terms), but by
> what particular steps they have evolved out of it,
> and how the PIE reconstruction itself is arrived at.
******GK: I have no objection at all to such a
research programme. But I still think that the
broached issue would be an allowable and productive
historical exercise.*****
(PG) What I'm trying to say is that it is only
> the notion of global "similarity" that is hard to
> define for large and complex structures, and which
> has no real heuristic value in historical
> linguistics.
******GK: In that case, perhaps we need another
sub-discipline to complement historical
linguistics.*****
(PG) In comparing related languages we look
> for systematic correspondencies, which may or may
> not produce "similarities" (very often they don't).
> Comparative method is precisely what allows us to
> move beyond intuitive opinion and replace
> "similarity" with something that is objectively
> verifiable.
****GK: I see no reason why a methodology could not be
evolved to answer the question which prompted this
discussion.******
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