Latin versus *Proto-Romance

PIOTR WROTE:
<<The differences are quite revealing, but don't necessarily have much
bearing for the actual/reconstructed PIE question, apart for the trivial
observation that all comparative reconstruction is of necessity partial and
very incomplete.>>

Well, in a world where certain historical linguists (present company not
included) are claiming to know quite a bit about what happened in pre-history
based on such 'partial and incomplete data', the observation seems to lose
its triviality. (One of my favorite positions is Witzel's statement that
'Harappan' could not be 'Vedic' because 'Harappan' did not have the horse --
which seems like saying that 'cowboys' were not 'American' because 'cowboys'
did not use automobiles.)

PIOTR ALSO WROTE:
<<Classical Latin is not the direct ancestor of Romance, so by comparing it
with Proto-Romance we don't actually test the reconstruction.>>

Piotr, do you mean Latin is not the 'immediate' ancestor of Romance? In all
the descriptions I've seen of the development of Romance, it seems as if the
analysis seems to be saying Classical Latin > Vulgar Latin > Romance. How
would the nominative > accusative shift, for example, make any sense if
Classical Latin were not being treated as ancestral?

PIOTR ALSO WROTE:
<<Instead, we learn more about Latin and its internal differentiation. The
PIE counterpart of Classical Latin may have never existed, for all we know.>>

Well, this seems important. If, just for the moment, we posit that the PIE
counterpart of Classical Latin never existed, what would that say about what
we are reconstructing or about what additional explantions we might need for
the existence of the IE languages?


Regards,
Steve Long