--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: george knysh
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 3:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Agriculture and IE
>
> *****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?*****
>
> The ancestors of Anatolian, Tocharian and Greek may already have
been drifting away from the rest for some time. The bulk of the
family would have formed two loose dialectal clusters: something that
could be termed pre-proto-Satem (perhaps not "satemised" yet) in the
east and proto-Western IE (ancestral to Germanic, Italic, Celtic +
two or three minor branches) in the west.
>
The term "satemised" would seem to imply that the satem group split
from the centum group.
I would be interested to know what theories there are presently as to
how the centum/satem split might have occured, as there seems to be
no obvious connection ? I have seen the suggestion elsewhere that the
PIE word might have started with ksh as in kshatriya - the centum
group then dropping the sh, and the satem group dropping the k.
There is a case of the sh being dropped where many people in present
day Punjab would say Khatti rather than Kshatriya.
Any thoughts on this would be interesting.
> ***** 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.*****
>
> Indo-Aryan and Iranian (+ some "basal" Indo-Iranian dialects like
Nuristani) were in all likelihood different (if similar) languages at
the beginning of the second millennium BC, and since the whole branch
is rather close-knit (there are a large number of shared
innovations), there must have been a fairly long period of common
Indo-Iranian development -- perhaps some 500 years, give or take.
That's why I suggest ca. 2700/2500-2000 BC as the formative stage of
Indo-Iranian.
>
> ***** 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.*****
>
> Anatolian represents the part of IE that was _not_ contiguously
located with respect to the rest. It remained in or close to the
source area of the early Neolithic Danubian cultures and became
geographically separated from the groups that had ventured into the
North European Plain. There were doubtless many such stay-at-home
groups -- perhaps a whole southern subfamily of IE, but Anatolian is
the only branch of which we have any records. Migratory movements to
and fro did not cease abruptly, there were trade networks etc., but
the contacts were sufficiently tenuous to make differentation
inevitable. I don't want to speculate now about the possible
connection of those groups with later cultures such as Baden and
C^ernavoda/Ezero or their identification with (part of) the pre-Greek
substrate of the Balkans. The (pre-)Proto-Anatolians would have
interacted with the non-IE groups of the southern Balkans. The entry
of the first IEs into Asia Minor would then have been from the
Balkans, perhaps during the middle Bronze Age, ca. 2600 BC.
>
> >(Piotr) By the way, PIE did not _disappear_.
>
> *****GK: Really? Finish your argument. PIE didn't disappear.
It..... (what?)******
>
> I just mean we still speak it. It has evolved and changed a bit,
but hasn't gone extinct.
>
> Piotr