On 2006-05-10 02:18, Patrick Ryan wrote:
> But the idea of semi-constant language change sufficient to
> obliterate any traces to a very early ancestor of PIE and PAA was
> advanced on this list not too long ago, was it not?
The main point is that language change inescapably affects _any_
ordinary spoken language. This is a natural consequence of the way in
which language is handed down consecutive generations. The rate of
change may vary almost chaotically, but is, and has always been,
significally greater than zero. How far into the past we can reach using
the comparative method and internal reconstruction can only be
determined empirically, not by imposing arbitrary limitations in
advance. So far, the methods currently regarded as valid have been
spectacularly successful when applied to the IE languages (and some
other groupings), moderately successful when applied to Afroasiatic
(mainly because the historical evidence for several of the proposed
subfamilies is nonexistent or scanty, while Semitic and Egyptian can
boast an almost 5 ky diachronic record), and hardly successful at all as
regards more encompassing hypothetical groupings (e.g. Nostratic). It
isn't because some authority has decided that Nostratic is too old: the
methods have been tried and haven't yielded much, which may mean that
the Nostratic model is flawed, or that we are indeed dealing with too
deep chronologies. Or that we should go back to square one, reconsider
our data and try again.
Piotr