[tied] Re: Convergence in the formation of IE subgroups

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

>
> as stratic has been proved.
>
> You may repeat it ad nauseam, but what difference does your mantra
> make to the sceptics?
>
> > This is the opposite of the now prevalent view that linguistic

change

> > is the norm; and that time-periods of relative stability are the
> > exception rather than the rule.
>
> Ballester does not support this expectation with any real-world

evidence

> -- all he offers is armchair speculation. I have already mentioned

some

> _counterevidence_ to the claim that the environmental and social
> cally indefensible. It asserts effect
>
> At least one cause of language change is _always_ there: imperfect
> transmission of language from generation to generation. It's a
> universally occurring driving force of linguistic evolution, like
> mutations in biology.
>
> Piotr

Ballester could have used the Rig Veda as an example. The people of
the Indian subcontinent have achieved the impossible. A text has been
preserved like a tape recording for at least 3500 (6500 really)
years.

For people who consider development of writing, literacy, and iron
tools as great "achievments", this fact is quite impossible to
comprehend. All invasionist models,which have now been redressed in
politically correct terminology, involve presumed superiority of one
people over another based on tools and weapons. The success of
European colonist after 1492 and the massive destruction of native
cultures and languages all over the world has completely brainwashed
most Western scholars into thinking that *such has always been the
case.* Exceptions like Blaut (1992) are very very few.

We need a radical new view, quite opposite to the Western view of
what constitutes "development, and what exactly is meant
by "civilization."

M. Kelkar