[tied] Re: Grimm's Law is about to expire (Collinge 1985, p. 267, T

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

>
> On 2007-03-16 07:23, mkelkar2003 wrote:
>
> > "Additionally, Graeco-Aryan isoglosses seem suggestive that Greek and
> > Indo-Iranian may have shared a common homeland for awhile after the
> > splitting of the other IE branches. Such a homeland could be
> > northwestern India (which is preferred by proponents of the OIT)"
>
> Isoglosses may look "suggestive" but aren't probative. Lots of
> "isoglosses" common to Greek and Indo-Iranian are shared retentions and
> therefore have no value as evidence of a close relationship. Others
> (such as Grassmann's Law in Indic and Greek) are independent
> developments. What shared _innovations_ support this Graeco-Iranian
> grouping?

I will treat this as a rhetorical question; meaning as a trained IEL
you already know that there are no such innovations. So I am not
going to bother searching.

But let me ask you, is this criterion uniformely applied to group
languages in families i.e they must have shared innovations and are
all langauges that have shared innovations ALWAYS classified into one
family. If so, why is Albanian hanging out like that?

M. Kelkar


At the very best, there may have been an areal connection

> between Indo-Iranian and Greek, but why involving NW India, of all

places?

>
> Piotr
>