[tied] Re: Albanian: length of time in the Balkans

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "David Webb" <djwebb2002@...> wrote:

> Is it the case that all IE languages
> in Europe borrowed from Neolithic and Palaeolithic languages that

are now

> gone and that this is the reason why PIE words are not the only

content of

> IE languages in Europe?

That would seem to be uncontrovertible.

> I am thinking of how the British and Irish
> populations have been shown to be genetically Palaeolithic by means

of Y

> chromosome correspondences with the Basque country. There must be

substrata

> beneath all the IE languages, even if we are not in a position to
> investigate this? Proto-Albanian may show a Neolithic substratum?

That is likely enough, but the problem is how to get any further. The
Neolithic way of life was brought to Thessaly by settlers from Asia
Minor not long before or after 7000 BC and appears to have expanded
from there. Even on the most simplistic scenario the time that
elapsed between the spread of this group and any borrowing of
material into, say, the Indo-European language underlying Albanian,
is daunting. But one never knows and it is gratifying that the study
of substrata has emerged from the closet. When I studied historical
linguistics back in the sixties substrata were virtually untouchable.


Willem