--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ... Which may simply mean that Greek, Hittite, and
> Indo-Aryan had diverged
> considerably more than 2000 years before their
> earliest attestation.
*****GK: Concretely speaking then. Flash back from ca,
1500 BC to 4500 BC (? another 1000 years would fit
"considerably more" or is that too much or too
little?). Now in 4500 BC we supposedly have
"divergences" significant enough to make the "proto"
versions mutually unintelligible. Now what could these
have been? If I remember your theory Indo-Aryan would
not yet have "diverged" into a distinct group: that
supposedly happened "only" 500-1000 years prior to the
earliest attestation. What could have prompted the
earlier "divergence" of Anatolian from all other
groups (yet undifferentiated to the point of mutual
intelligibility?). Is it simply a necessary
assumption? I.e. since the groups were so different by
the time of their attestation they HAD to diverge at
some point, preferably further back in time (time
covers up many sins (:=)) I agree. I am not clear as
to the reasons for the divergences. I find it doubtful
in the extreme that very closely related dialects,
contiguously located, and living the same "way of
life" would have diverged as considerably as these
groups did were it not for the operation of some
factors independent of internal linguistic momentum.
Interaction with strong non-IE substrates seems to me
a good explanation.*****
>(Piotr) course there is no universal "genetic clock"
for
> languages, but I find it
> intuitively clear that we need a sufficient time
> depth to account for the
> degree of differentiation visible already in the mid
> second millennium BC,
> which is one of the reasons why I like the early
> neolithic spread scenario.
> By the way, PIE did not _disappear_.
*****GK: Really? Finish your argument. PIE didn't
disappear. It..... (what?)******
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/