25-06-03 08:41, Michael J Smith wrote:
> What does anyone think of the possibility of Thracian, Dacian, Phrygian,
> Armenian and possibly Cimmerian all coming from a common source, a branch
> of IE that then seperated into 2 branches, one branching into Thracian,
> Dacian and Cimmerian, the other into Phrygian and Armenian?
>
> If not, how are these languages in relation to one another?
What use is it to posit such a grouping without giving reasons to
justify it in the first place (shared innovations, preferably)? I don't
know anything concrete about "Cimmerian" (nor does anyone), so I prefer
to remain agnostic about its position. Phrygian doesn't even seem to be
a Satem language, and my tentative opinion (based on frustratingly
limited evidence) is that it's closer to Greek than to anything else.
Thracian is Satem, but I have yet to see the demonstration that it's
particularly close to Armenian (or to Dacian, for that matter, except in
geographical terms). We may never be able to arrive at a detailed
classification, given the fragmentariness of available evidence.
Piotr