--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> On 2006-06-19 18:10, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > This has important implications for Indo-Euroepan linguists (or should
> > we say Indo-Hittite linguists?).
>
> It's probably the majority view today that the Anatolian/non-Anatolian
> split is the earliest reconstructible division within IE. Most of the
> knowledgeable Cybalist members, for that matter, would subscribe to
such
> a view, I presume. The question is whether the division is so deep that
> it's reasonable to reserve the label "Indo-European" for the group
> called so already in the 19th century (but what about Tocharian?) and
> name the maximal family "Indo-Hittite".
The geographic reality of Tocharian is not captured by the term IE any
more than it is by IH. If fact according to the following quote it is
the decipherment of Tocharian texts that makes the name IH all the
more compelling.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1674658
"The Tocharians themselves are the first Indo-Europeans to appear in
the recorded history of the Near East--and the lexicon of PIE supports
this contention, as evidenced by the many words for high mountains,
mountain lakes, and rapid rivers flowing from mountain sources--very
much unlike the steppes north of the Black Sea."
>I think it's more prudent to
> continue using the term "IE" in the maximally inclusive sense, just in
> case our views about the status of Anatolian change in the future. It's
> a terminological dispute anyway. Nothing really important is at stake.
I beg to differ once again. Why use an old term in a "maximally
inclusive" sense when an actually maximally inclusive term
Indo-Hittite is available? The matter is more than just semantics. If
one accepts Ivanov's (2001) proposal of dividing Anatolian dialects
into Northern and Southern groups it would affect the timeline and the
homeland question. And then there is the controversy about the Carian
langauge.
"As recently as ten years ago Masson summarized the situation as follows:
Since the script has not yet been completely deciphered, the Carian
language itself remains an enigma. In theory there are two possible
solutions: either Carian unlike Lydian and Lycian is truly an Asianic
, relatively autochthonous and not Indo-European, or else it is an
ancient Anatolian language Indo-European origin, like the languages
mentioned earlier.
The second solution, if we substitute "Indo-Hittite" for
"Indo-European" is now in the ascendancy, thanks to the unexpected
illumination from Egypt. Some fifty funerary inscriptions, many of
them Carian-Egyptian bilinguals, were found in Saqqara in 1968 (Drews
2001, p. 257)."
Drews, Robert (2001), "Greater Anatolia, Proto-Anatolian,
Proto-Indo-Hittite, and Beyond," in Greater Anatolia and the
Indo-Hittite Language Family, Robert Drews (ed.), Journal of
Indo-European Studies Monograph Number 38.
M. Kelkar