--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <smykelkar@...> wrote:
> <http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~garrett/IEConvergence.pdf>
> "I will suggest an alternative model: the familiar branches arose not
> by the differentiation of earlier higher order subgroups-from
> "Italo-Celtic" to Italic and Celtic and so on-but by converegence
> among neighbouring dialects in a continuum."
>
> "Convergence together with loss of intermediate dialects in the
> pre-historic continnum has created the historical mirage of a branchy
> IE family its many distinctive subgroups."
>
> A very strange article indeed. It seems like Garret is criticizing IEL
> for constructing a proto-language and then imagining its hypothetical
> speakers taking it all over the place while it branches into real
> languages. The dialects come first; families later. If I understand
> this correctly, the Nichols/Garret model requires much fewer
> invasions/migrations than the traditional family tree model.
His first point is that the wave-model is much more appropriate than a
branching model. That idea has been around for a very long time.
However, the wave-model is more difficult to speak about because
naming groups immediately suggests a branching model.
A problem with reconstruction is that shared changes are very easily
projected back. For example, one might reconstruct Proto-Romance
*tabbaccus 'tobacco', a massive anachronism, from French _tabac_ and
Spanish _tabaco_. A notorious example is Dempwolff's use of Sanskrit
loanwords to support his reconstruction of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian -
however, he *did* recognise them as Sanskrit loanwords.
The dating of Grassman's law proposed in the paper is suspect. The
author gives the example of a Mycenean past participle _hehraphmena:_
'sewn' (how's that spelt?) and compares it with Classical Greek
_tethramménos_ 'having been nourished' (from _trepho:_) to deduce that
Grassman's law is post-Mycenean. However, the application of sound
changes is often out of historical sequence in word derivation; an
example in point is the Classical Sanskrit future tense _bHotsyati_ of
_budH_ (allomorph _bHut_), whereas historically the assimilatory
despiration -dhs- > -ts- follows Grassman's law. In fact, the older
Vedic form is _botsyati_, showing the historical derivation - see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13301 for further details.
*kWekWlos 'wheel' is a difficult word. The Indo-European, Semitic
(stem _glgl_) and Sumerian (_gi(r)gir_) words for 'wheel' are very
similar and all feel like native formations rather than loanwords.
However there similarity seems to be an outrageous coincidence.
Presumably at most one is truly native, and the others reflect
nativising folk etymology.
Richard.