>Trubetzkoy (1939). ...suggested ..a pidgin origin for Proto-Indo-European.
>To what characteristics and from which languages would Trubetzkoy have been
referring? >How valid is this suggestion?
It has very little support these days, partly because we now understand
pidgins much better, and PIE lacks many of the characteristics of them.
The early suggestions were an attempt to explain the perceived similarities
between PIE and Proto-Semitic on the one hand, and PIE and Proto-Uralic on
the other. It was suggested that PIE could have developed as a trading
language between those two groups. But since (amongst other problems):
(a) one of these perceived similarities is details of morphology, and
(b) pidgins show simplified morphology, removing details,
it is difficult to claim a pidgin origin for PIE today.
Peter