No surviving IE language is so close
to the common ancestor of the family as to justify ignoring the evidence
obtained from other descendants of PIE. The job of reconstructing the
"IE core" in Sanskrit, Greek, Albanian, Lithuanian, Welsh or Hittite involves,
among other things, isolating the areal influences that have affected the
lineages in question during their separate existence. No need to argue that it's
"more appropriate" (than what?), since everybody knows that it should be done.
But why "first"? The first logical step in studying linguistic relationships is
the search for systematic sound correspondences in lexicon and morphology. The
identification of external influences is a by-product of rigorous
comparison.
Example: you have recently suggested
that <ks.am-> could have something to do with OTam. ukam. This is the
purest guess, unsupported by anything apart from a certain vague resemblance
(which means nothing by itself). By contrast, there is a formally satisfactory
explanation of Skt. ks.am- (plus its whole paradigm and derivatives) as related
to Gk. kHtHo:n, Hitt. tekan, Toch.A tkaM, Lith. z^eme., etc. (plus, less
directly, to Lat. homo/homin-, Lith. z^mon-, OE guman- 'man') via
independently reconstructed sound changes and morphological processes (_not_
because of mere phonetic similarity).
Of course Sanskrit (or any other language)
can be studied on its own, or only in a local context. But if you chose to do
that, you can't say anything meaningful about its prehistory and
external relationships. I teach selected elements of IE linguistics and PIE
grammar to students of English as part of a "History of English" course because
PIE _is_ part of the history of English (indeed, its starting point as far as we
can reconstruct with confidence). Why would you like to deprive students of
Sanskrit of this wider context?
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 3:46 AM
Subject: [pieml] (unknown)
How essential is knowledge of Vedic Sanskrit for PIE
studies?
If Vedic Sanskrit is very distant from PIE because of adstratum,
substratum influences of languages such as Munda, Dravidian, and even
the so-called Pra_kr.ts (however, loosely defined) isn't it more
appropriate first to isolate such influences to arrive at the core
PIE
in Vedic Sanskrit?
It appears that study of PIE is not essential to study
Sanskrit
linguistics. Sanskrit may have to be evaluated in reference to the
languages of India. PIE studies may help evaluate the extent to which
Sanskrit is related to IE languages. If so, why should Sanskrit
scholars
be asked to study PIE linguistics?