Re: Non-moving Indo-Aryans, organically cohesive Vedic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman wrote:

> I had posted earlier a note on Preservation Principle enunciated
> by Kazanas in the context of autochthonous Indo-Aryans.
>
> I am citing from Kazanas' article in the Journal of
> Indo-European Studies, Vol. 30, Number 3 and 4, Fall/Winter,
> 2002, p. 27:
>
> [quote] [...]
> Nobody, as far as I know, has even attempted to dispute this
> and the presence of dialectal variants and innovations or
> erosions and losses in Vedic (and Sanskrit) does not invalidate
> Burrow's judgement. Vedic is superior also [...]

Superior to what exactly?! My feeling is the word "superior"
does not apply. Especially when Kazanas suggests that being more
conservative means "superiority" (the hint word is "also").

> [...] This organic cohesion of Sanskrit is another example of
> the Preservation Principle, confirming that the Indo-Aryans
> moved very little or not at all.[unquote]

I didn't get the point: if linguistical "distance" between PIE
and some ancient language X (be it Vedic, Sanskrit or whatever)
is less than to other languages Y from the same family, for what
reason should one infer that geographical distance between PIE
area and X area must follow the same pattern?!

> Can Vedic be accepted as one of the more archaic forms of PIE?

Vedic is not PIE. Vedic is one of the IE languages.

Regards,
Marius Iacomi