Re: PIE's closest relatives

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 29713
Date: 2004-01-17

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Alexander Stolbov" <astolbov@...>
wrote:
> If Semitic was much older than IE, why do linguists classify the
former as
> just a linguistic group and the latter as a linguistic family, a
taxon of a
> higher rank?

Because Afro-Asiatic is accepted as a group, whereas there is not
general acceptance of a larger group including IE. The age of a
family is how long since its attested members diverged. For a
palaeontological equivalent, think of animals without hard parts.
By these standards, the Rhyncocephalians
( http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Lepidosauromorpha ) would be a young
group if one only considered Cenozoic branching, for they now
consist of a single species, the tuatara.

Richard.