Grzegorz:
> My imagination has little to do with strict
> boundaries, the tree and the wave models, and other
> suspections, but more with known facts.
Well, imagination helps interpret those facts
properly. Computers don't have imagination and they
are lifeless. Einstein valued imagination very much
and was very much alive. Take your pick. People
either choose to be robots or geniuses. In my view,
the Global Factory is manufacturing too many robots ;)
> So, I imagine that what we call the Proto-Indo-
> Europaean was ONE language once, with
> some closely related dialects (or even so uniform
> as Latin must have been once), used within a
> small area.
The diffusion of IE likely started from a small area,
yes. However, what filled the surrounding areas before
its expansion?
Para-IE dialects most likely. In other words, as
the Core IE expanded, it would have supplanted all
of the previous "almost-IE" dialects. The substrate
influence may in part be responsible for some of
the idiosyncratic features of some dialects (or
groups of neighbouring dialects) later on. So as I
always say, IE was always fragmented into dialects.
> The model according to which that one, relatively
> uniform PIE language split into many many dialects,
> equally related with each other, and which finally
> formed nothing but historic attested languages, is
> incorrect.
YES!!! Ironically that's one of the things that I'm
trying to get across!
> We know with absolute certainty that e.g. Spanish
> and Portuguese do not come from two different IE
> dialects but from one homogenous language which was
> Latin of Rome.
I see your problem. You don't understand that
"homogenous" is really in the eye of the beholder.
Even my own personal "English" differs in some
respects from the general speech here in Canada.
I notice I like to monophthongize a little (teehee),
for example.
Canadian English isn't homogenous. Manitoban English
isn't homogenous. Winnipeg English isn't homogenous.
Even an individual's use of a language will change
over the course of his lifetime and mine will too.
I'm **not** saying that IE is un-reconstructable
because of this. What I'm saying is that IE always
had dialectal variation of some kind, even in its
pre-history, just like any language. The roots and
stems that are reconstructed are still valid but they
are a _generalization_ of IE as it was at that time.
Latin or Greek are not reconstructed. We know what
the various dialects sound like because there were
attentive authors recording them at the time. IEists
don't have that luxury. We can only reconstruct
the generalized reconstructions for now.
In the future, we may figure out more exact details
of IE dialects at various stages like 4000 BCE, 4500
BCE, etc. but that requires the full understanding
that there is no such thing as a "homogenous
language" in the strictest sense.
> The wave theory suggest that some linguistic
> features may expand through language boundaries
> (or: despite of limits of mutual
> incomprehensilility of areally neighbouring
> dialects). So, the isogloss map need not be a map
> of original IE dialects.
?? Non sequitur. Even if some features go beyond the
boundaries of IE itself, that fact has no bearing on
whether it details the boundaries of IE dialects
within. It won't tell you what is north and what is
south but it gives a map of interrelationship that
can indeed help us locate where IE dialects were
positioned in relation to others. (Aka: a dialect
network.)
If this isogloss network extends into other language
families, that only makes are task of geographic
mapping that much easier.
However, I can actually agree with you if indeed you
were refering to the history of the dialects
shown in such an isogloss map themselves. If we take
a trip backwards in time, we might see both dialect
mergers and splits going on.
So for all we know, BaltoSlavic, for example, could
be the product of a merger of two originally seperate
pre-IE dialects.
> Not exactly. Languages and dialects are not just a
> sum of idiolects with fluid boundaries. They are
> discrete [...]
Only in more recent, nationalistic times. Have you
not studied Inuit dialects? Inuits don't have a
"nation". Their distribution shows this fluidity
that would have been prevalent in the neolithic.
Did you not notice that even French has dialects?
Many dialects. Even within France. Some dialects blur
into other languages actually. I'm still amazed that
I can read Occitan very well even though I speak
French. It strikes me as a French-Spanish stew when I
look at it. So much for even your nation-induced,
linguistic "homogeneity"!
Likewise IE, especially once spread out into dialects,
did NOT operate in any way, shape or form like
"ONE" language because its speakers could not
have understood the concept of "nation", "country" or
"empire" at that time. But what language does operate
as a single language really, even in modern times?
IE speakers may have realized in general that they
shared a linguistic commonality but that's about it
because the archaeology of the North Pontic shows a
fair amount of variation in physical types and
materials.
= gLeN
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