---
x99lynx@... wrote:
The
> "fragmentation" of IE is NOT difficult to explain on
> linguistic grounds. And
> it may be ONLY your "limited knowledge" that tells
> you it is.
****GK: Thank you for your helpful comment Steve. As
usual it contributes a lot to a solution of these
issues.It would be even more helpful if you
demonstrated on purely linguistic grounds how it was
possible for so many IE families to arise in the first
let's say 2500 years of the saga, and why we haven't
seen anything similar occur in the last 2500 years.
Something went wrong with "purely linguistic"
dynamics?****
>
>(Steve) The whole concept of an "Indo-European family
of
> languages" is STRICTLY a
> linguistic concept - it has no other existence. The
> relatedness between the
> Irish, Italian, Hittite and Sanskrit is 0% an
> archaeological or ethnographic
> concept and 100% a linguistic concept. Linguistics
> created the concept of
> the common ancestry of IE languages and without it
> there is nothing to look
> for, NO "IE problem" to solve. The fragmentation is
> just fragmentation and
> nothing else.
*****GK: Well of course if you put it that way, if you
forbid any other interpretation of "Indo-Europeanism"
except a strictly linguistic one then you really are
living in a vacuum. To me "Indo-Europeans" are all
those populations which historically have spoken
languages basically classifiable as Indo-European. But
I am interested in the total concrete cultural
realities represented by these peoples, not just in
their formal or abstract linguistic identities. And
even these identities are not strictly "Indo-European"
in all respects are they? To me a contemporary
Englishman is not simply someone who happens to speak
a kind of "English", but someone with an enormous and
impressive accompanying cultural baggage. I happen to
believe that a great deal of this baggage has nothing
to do with the operation of abstract linguistic
dynamics. And just in passing, let me say, belatedly,
that PIE became extinct a long long time ago. No one
except highly trained specialists would be able to
understand something written in that reconstructed
language. To say that it evolved and is still around
today is shall we term it "somewhat disingenuous"? To
use a polite turn. What exists today of course, is
not PIE, but many mutually incomprehensible great
great etc etc etc granddaughter languages and
dialects. And the cultural baggage acquired over the
millenia has made the population which speak them very
diverse indeed. You don't have to see it that way of
course. But I do.**** >
>(Steve) In fact, the "fragmentation" of IE is NOT
ONLY
> explained on linguistic
> grounds, that fragmentation also supplies the very
> basis of the idea of IE
> languages. It's out of those fragmented languages
> that earlier pre-written
> "IE" languages can EVEN be premised to have existed.
>
>
> So if your archaeological evidence is going to be
> saying anything about
> pre-written IE, and you have some new idea about how
> those languages
> "fragmented", you might as well get to that first.
> Because linguistics is the
> the one and only source of what you are talking
> about.
*****GK: With all due respect Steve I'll proceed as I
see fit in a discussion of the Indo-European question.
The very fact that at least five major hypotheses (all
propounded by distinguished scholars) are possible
with respect to the localization in time and space of
the abstract schemes of linguists should tell you
something.******
>
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