glen gordon wrote:
> Me:
>> "It's the same thing as particle-wave duality in
>> physics. [...]
>
> M. Kelkar:
>> If the IE-Homeland is akin to the particle wave
>> duality then there is no possibility of ever
>> locating it with any kind of precision.
>
> Yes, **with any kind of "precision"**. Obviously 80%
> precision is better than no precision at all,
> regardless of whether we can attain absolute
> precision (ie 100%) or not.
>
> Weren't you taught electron 'probability density' in
> highschool physics class? I guess not.
Highschool? Hmmm, I always knew it... Polish pupils learn about the
probability density in middle schools called lyceas, in the age of 16 or
so... thus it is not highschool physic but basics (chemistry by the way)...
And some decidents say we have low level of teaching... And perhaps because
of such a "low level" Poles, as a rule, do not doubt biological evolution,
some historic linguistic processes etc., and nobody believes in the
Palaeolithic Indo-Europeans or even in Renfrew's pseudotheories.
Nevertheless, as I said, the analogy with the wave-corpuscular nature of the
electron is too much distant from the PIE problem, and gives birth to other
problems, too far from Anatolian, Indo-European and even from linguistic at
all.
Well, here's
> the link:
>
> http://www.physchem.co.za/Atomic/Electron%20Configuration.htm
>
> Even despite the Uncertainty Principle, physicists
> still have a thing called probability density, a
> region in which electrons are *most likely* to
> occur around the nucleus.
>
> IE has a "probability density" too... in Eastern
> Europe. Homeland, probability density, same thing.
>
> So you can let go of your self-defeatist attitude :)
>
>
> = gLeN
The analogy with the probability density is far better. Indeed, there are
many views on where PIE homeland was. But this fact gives no base for
claiming that there was not any homeland at all. And all this telling of
everlasting polydialectal character of PIE is simply confusing. One should
distinguish slight, sub-dialectal or idiolectal differences from more
serious differences between languages. I think that the best definition of
the language is "a set of mutually intelligible dialects". Mutual
intelligibility means practically no troubles while communicating. I know
that this definition is not the strictest one (what does "intelligible"
mean? what is "practically"?) but many other definitions work in the same
way (a species in biology is a set of all individuals which can beget
offspring - but what if the ability to procreation is possible but
limited?). Nevertheless, they function in practice.
I assume that if PIE was such a set of similar dialects (so, it was just a
language). However, for a number of reasons I prefer emphasizing the
homogenous character of this language. First of all, it is quite probable
that only one of those dialects was the ancestoral dialect of all PIE
languages (as I wrote in previous posts). Besides, such a formulation allows
to avoid needless discussion on PIE homeland (was it or was it not).
Grzegorz J.
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