--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Howey"
<andyandmae_howey@...> wrote:
[...] pidgin-like origin for a proto-language [...] Trubetzkoy
(1939). [...]
>
> To what characteristics and from which languages would Trubetzkoy
> have been referring?
He said IE lgs. shared 6 features *with* which any language would be
classified as IE and *without all* of which no language could be IE.
By that definition a lg could become IE or cease to be so. And by
piecing together some traits of Semitic, Caucasian and Finno-Ugric
Trub. could set up a scenario whereby all IE lgs. could have
crystallized out of fragments of the neighbors.
> How valid is this suggestion?
Zero percent. IE is defined by its past, and the past does not
change.
> Was this an attempt at a counter-argument against including PIE in
> a macro-family such as Nostratic.
No, it was rather an attempt to compromise the belief in "Aryan"
supremacy.
It is silly, though, for IF languages are not to be classified by
their substance, why did Trubetzkoy go looking for a set of
typlological features that would unite the *same* languages under
the heading Indo-European as were already classified as such? If the
classification was so wrong, why should its results not be changed?
Jens