[tied] Re: Proto Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian) Lang

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > What is wrong with Mario Alinei's Paleolithic Continuity Theory? It if
> > after all one linguist's view. Surely, many IEL linguists have many
> > views.
>
> True, but the differences concern debatable details, not the whole
> conceptual frame. The foundations of the PIE reconstruction are pretty
> solid (and have always been so since the 1870s).

The reconstructed PIE and the currently accepted language tree are
certainly elegant and a great intellectual achievement. But doubts
have been cast on the *historiocity* of them. Please refer to:

sections 5.1 and 9.7 of proto vedic continuity theory.doc in the files
section.

M. kelkar


Alinei's theory is an

> eccentric case, definitely outside the area of consensus. At the same
> time, it's too naive and too deficient in sound linguistic scholarship
> to be regarded as a bold paradigm shift. As Bohr said to Pauli, "Your
> theory is crazy. Sadly, it's not crazy enough to be believed." We have
> discussed "palaeolithic continuity" both here and elsewhere and I'm not
> going to waste any more time on it.
>
> > How does IEL decide upon who is on the right and who is on the
> > wrong track?
>
> Come on, who is to know that if not the specialists? Of course they are
> only human and their collective wisdom, though based on a long line of
> past scholarship and their own experience or serious research, is not
> absolutely infallible, but it's obviously superior to the opinion of

lay

> people or of individual dissenters with an idée fixe.
>
> > This is the precise question posed in the monograph; is
> > IEL an ideology or what, for example, assuming invasions everywhere to
> > explain language change?
>
> Misrepresenting the linguists' view, as usual. Language change happens
> everywhere all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with
> invasions or other historical events. Sorry, but it isn't the linguists
> who have this ideological obsession with invasionism and

anti-invasionism.

>
> > Is this the only model to view language
> > evolution?
> >
> > S. Kalyanaraman
>
> IE linguistics is not a universal model of language evolution. It is

the

> historical study of _just one_ language family, using the methods of
> general historical linguistics. I've repeated this ad nauseam in my
> numerous discussions with S.K., but apparently to no avail.
>
> Piotr
>