--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
> Yawn... No offence, but we've already discussed it
> ad nauseam. Burrow's remark, whatever the author's
> stature, is questionable and indeed has been
> question (also on this forum, more than once).
> Kazanas is misrepresenting the common opinion of
> IEists, perhaps without intending to do so, since he
> isn't a linguist. Vedic is archaic in many respects
> but innovative in others. It isn't "less altered"
> with respect to PIE than other stratigraphically
> comparable languages, such as Avestan, Ancient Greek
> or even Latin. It owns its conservative features to
> its early attestation (it had less time to lose them
> than modern German or Albanian), not to its
> privileged position in the IE family tree.
*****GK: Early attestation. That is indeed a key
element here. Speaking as a non-linguist, I would say
that Vedic (and any other early attested IE language,
such as those of Anatolia and of Greece) have at least
this "superiority" over PIE: they are demonstrably
"real" languages in some sense. PIE on the other hand
is an artificial reconstruction. While logically
unimpeachable, and based on painstakingly verified
rules, we still have no way of knowing whether there
ever was such a language (as reconstructed) in the
real world, or a people (with an empirically existing
homeland) which spoke it, in all of its reconstructed
details. There are too many potential missing elements
for us to be sure. This of course in no way derogates
from the usefulness of the reconstructive
exercises.*******
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