--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> The archaeological evidence of what? In what way is
> the supposed east-to-west progress of
> Indo-Europeanisation (I mean the spread of a
> _language_, not of a cultural package or the like)
*****GK: The Indo-European problem is not simply a
linguistic problem. It is a "total package" deal.
Languages don't function in a theoretically convenient
vacuum. They are intimately bound up with a host of
other things, things about which other sciences
(archaeology, genetics, ethnography, history etc.
etc.) can tell us a great deal. We have to try to put
it all together, if we can. It is indeed a tricky
business, and we may have to reboot any number of
times before we're done. Anyway I'll present the
archaeological evidence (which I find interesting and
more persuasive than alternatives possibilities) and
then you can try to demonstrate, if you can, that it
is linguistically implausible, or less plausible.*****
>(Piotr) less speculative and more "visible"? How did
is
> produce the observed distribution and
> differentiation of the ten or so branches that don't
> happen to be located in the steppes? An answer to
> that should be provided independently of all
> archaeological evidence.
*****GK: I think it is high time that people working
in different areas stop thinking that their science
can provide an answer to the puzzle of Indo-European
origins "independently" of what other sciences have to
say. The idea is to integrate information. Otherwise
you're left with very partial and unverifiable
conclusions.*****
(Piotr)Note that I have accepted
> the Danubian model because it fares way better than
> the competition on linguistic grounds;
*****GK: And I have problems with it on other
grounds.*****
(Piotr) among other
> things, it offers a sufficient time-depth for a
> plausible scenario of the initial growth and
> _gradual fragmentation_ of the IE family (rather
> than a relatively recent IE "big bang").
*****GK: In my opinion a "fragmentation" into the
families we know is just as difficult to explain on
purely linguistic grounds (even to my limited
knowledge thereof) whether you begin the process in
5000 BC or in ca. 4200 BC*****
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