Re: [tied] Re: On Non-Linguistic IE Languages

----- Original Message -----

From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2002 1:41 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: On Non-Linguistic IE Languages

******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.****

You surely realise how subjective such evaluation is. So how do you propose to make it part of a scholarly argument?

> 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.*****

 

Did I really say "Hitler"? No offence, I certainly didn't intend to accuse you of anything reactionary. With this reservation, I don't retract the analogy. If you don't like the possible ideological associations, replace "evolution" with something more neutral like continental drift or anything that takes a lot of time.

 

**** 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*****

 

Where is the evidence for that quick spread and such massive "mixing" as opposed to the ordinary course of differentiation?

*****GK: Gee thanks Piotr. ... I don't believe it is a requirement for a proto- speech to start differentating immediately.***

Well it is if you reconstruct the protolanguage of a group on a strictly comparative basis. Proto-Slavic in the narrow sense is defined as the _most recent_ common ancestor of the Slavic languages. Whatever precedes it is pre-Slavic. Likewise, PGmc. is something that already shows the operation of Grimm's and Verner's Laws, not any remoter historical stage (which we would call pre-Germanic).

 

Piotr