--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> The differences were far less "enormous" than you
> probably imagine. Hittite was more apart, but Greek
> and Indo-Aryan shared a lot of structure, including
> similar inflections, lots of cognate stems, etc.,
> even some shared poetic formulae.
******GK: Why not? After all they all were IE
languages. So all sorts of similarities would be
expected. But to someone who doesn't live all day (and
night) in the fabulous mansions of professional
linguistics (hence to most ordinary mortals) the
differences WOULD be enormous.****
>your arguments remind me of the mode of thinking
> which negates evolution because no-one has seen a
> new species emerge in historical times. Well,
> 'istorical times ain't long enough.
*****GK: Yes there's always something quaint about
someone who decides to draw the "Hitler" or
"evolution" stuff into what seemed to be a
conversation. I would assume that the original PIE
spread quickly and widely, and that the carriers
thereof mixed with a great many non-IE populations.
Which might explain the many abrupt divergences which
arose in the earlier millenia compared to the latter
ones. The early PIE carriers don't seem to have been
chauvinisticabout their speech either, which
helped*****
> For your information, the common (Proto-)Slavic
> period extends rather long _after_ year zero.
*****GK: Gee thanks Piotr. I didn't know that (:=)) I
don't believe it is a requirement for a proto- speech
to start differentating immediately.***
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more
http://games.yahoo.com/