Richard Wordingham 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.
Do you think that when (and if) the Nostratic idea will be accepled by
practically all linguists we start calling this unity the Nostratic family,
and therefore - the IE group, the Germanic subgroup etc? I doubt.
If I'm not mistaken, historically the Semitic unity was called the Semitic
family and only later when the affinity with other AA languages became
obvious it was renamed as the Semitic group in the framework of the
Semito-Hamitic family. Something forced the scientific comminity to do so.
Potentially there was an alternative variant - the Semitic family and the
Hamitic family which have some relation, like the IE family and the Uralic
family.
I guess the degree of closeness of Semitic and other AA forced to do so as
it was done. Semitic appeared to be closer to Berberic than IE to Uralic.
Why then should we think than the former pair parted much earlier
(8,000-10,000 BC accordind to John's model) then the latter (about 6,000
BC)?
Alexander