From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20043
Date: 2003-03-18
----- Original Message -----
From: <lookwhoscross-eyednow@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 7:01 PM
Subject: Re:Re: [tied] Veneti
> But Piotr, I thought that Centum/Satem wasn't a crucial dividing line? I thought there were other Isoglosses to go by as well.
There's no Centum/Satem division, but arguably there is a Satem taxon within IE. Since it isn't a primary subfamily, its existence doesn't entail the establishment of "non-Satem", i.e. "Centum" as a valid genetic unit. That would make as little sense as positing "non-Iranian" versus Iranian.
In other words, Satem is a valid taxonomic unit defined by a set of common innovations while Centum has no such status. This is very different from the nineteenth-century idea of a primary West/East division, which resembled those old-fashioned biological classifications dividing all animals into vertebrates and invertebrates. "Centum" is the linguistic analogue of "Invertebrata".
Piotr