Re: Genetic Studies and Aryan Migrations

> > > "Thus a language family can be the product of divergence,
> > > convergence or a combination of the two (with emphasis on
> > > either).
> >
> > There are historically attested cases of language families
> > which are products of divergence. Can you provide any attested
> > case of a family resulting from convergence?
>
> How about the "Hellenic" family. Please see below.

That's not about divergence.

> http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~garrett/BLS1999.pdf
>
> http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Egarrett/IEConvergence.pdf
>
> Garrett's main point is the discovery of Mycenaean Greek should
> force IEL to rethink their subgroupings of larger "families" such
> as Italic, Celtic and Indo-Iranian. "On the one hand because
> Mycenaen Greek shows innovations that are found only in some
> Greek dialects, it cannot be viewed as proto Greek; it is just
> an early dialect. On the other hand many innovations are found
> in every Greek dialect EXCEPT Mycenaean (Garett 1999, p. 3,
> emphasis in the original).

OK. Mycenean is not proto-Greek.

> These facts make the construction of a "proto-Greek" language
> logically impossible.

The fact that we've found an early dialect of Greek makes the
construction of a "proto-Greek" language logically impossible?
Why?

> A chance discovery of the Linear B script has lead to this
> realization.

Mr. Garett went looking for his grandfather. Mr. Garett found
his grandfather's brother. Mr. Garett concludes he never had a
grandfather.

Garett makes the erroneous assumption that Proto-Greek, being
Greek, should be reconstructed in Greece. But it is well-known
that to each major Greek dialect group there was an invasion
from elsewhere, presumably from somewhere near the Black Sea.
That's where we would expect proto-Greek to have been spoken.

> But what about the cases where such
> written evidence does not exist and is never likely to be found;
> for example "Indo-Iranian".

In those cases we make reconstructions and put asterisks before them.

> According to Garrett what is known to be true of Greek has also
> happened in other cases.

That we have found earlier dialects?

> "If we apply what we learn from cases where there is evidence to the
> cases where there is none, it follows that the Indo-European family
> tree with a dozen independent, highly distinctive branches is
> nothing more than a historical mirage (Garrett 1999, p.9)."

There is a flood. Out of the water you see sticking a number of
similar branches, at angles that seem to make them join under
the surface. Under the water you suddenly see yet another branch
similar to the others. Therefore, the idea you are seeing a
flooded tree is a mirage?

> "If the formation of Greek was a local event facilitated by local
> interaction patterns and ethnic identity,

What on earth does that mean? The Finns were under the Swedes for
hundreds of years. There is no mixed language there. The Celtic Irish
were under the English for hundreds of years. No mixed language there.

> it is also relevant that
> IE branches like Indo-Iranian, Slavic, Celtic, and even the poorly
> attested Venetic show evidence of a collective ethnic identity.

What evidence?

> In such cases as Nichols (1998, 240) puts it `a complext native
> theory of ethnicity and a strong sense of ethnic identity can be
> reconstructed, and both the theory and the identity were based on
> language,'" (Garrett n.d., p.6)."

Yes, that's reconstructed PIE.


Torsten