From: David Steel
Message: 29108
Date: 2004-01-05
My question may be a poor one I think, since on reinspection Ruhlen is talking about loanwords while Mallory is talking about full on language relation. Here's the bit from Ruhlen ("The Origin of Language" page 187):
"Probably the strongest argument for an Anatolian homeland is to be found in the evidence of loanwords... Of all the families that might have been in contact with Proto-Indo-European - depending on the various proposed homelands - Dolgopolsky found evidence of borrowing only from Proto-Semitic and Proto-Kartvelian, both of which would have been virtually contiguous with a Proto-Indo-European homeland in eastern Anatolia. Notable also is the complete absence of any borrowings between Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European, in either direction..."
As I recall Mallory shows that some grammatical forms of PIE relate to some in Proto-Uralic. I'm not sure what to make of this debate, but it seems important given the bearing it has on probably the two most popular theories of Indo-European origins (Renfrew's hypothesis and Gimbutas' kurgan solution).
David