>And again, how would linguistics alone help Renfrew -- or anyone for that
>matter -- in deciding whether an ancestor of PIE was in Anatolia in 7500
BC?
>Or even how French got to Canada, for that matter.
Linguistics can show us the points of contact between language groups. One
of the most devastating disproves of the so-called "Doric invasion" of
Greece is linguist evidence from Attic, which must have had contact with a
Doric group before the so-called "invasion". Similarly, the toponyms
through the middle east are good evidence against the "out-of-India"
hypothesis.
If PIE is indigenous to Anatolia, there are major problems in finding a
plausible scenario to explain some of these contacts.
French and Canada is fun. What are the particular characteristics of
Canadian French that mark it out from Parisian? Independent development in
the two dialects can give hints of a date of separation; inherited
characteristics in Canadian French may give good evidence of regional
origin; and there may also be influences from indigenous languages that
give evidence for the place of original contact and route of spread. Shame
I know nothing about the details - but I would be surprised if nothing could
be reconstructed of the history of the language from pure linguistics. We
don't bother to do it that way with Canadian French, because we know the
history; but in contexts where we have little other choice, (such as PIE),
we'd be silly not to use the evidence it offers.
Peter