Quote from Doyen, Kruskal, Black (1992)

"It is important to realize, however, that the failure to find the
Indoiranian
group is not due to the lexicostatistical method as such, but is due
rather to
the self-imposed restriction to CONTEMPORARY word lists (Dyen,
Kruskal, Black
1992, p. 48, emphasis in the original). "

Perhaps the explanation for the discrepancy lies in the fact that the
entire
Indoiranian area, particularly the Iranian area, was increasingly
subject to
invasion and domination by nonnative groups from the end of the first
millennium
B.C., the Iranian area by speakers of Arabic among others, and the
north Indian
area by Iranian speakers led by Mongol rulers. These conquests could
have led
to intimate borrowing on a sufficiently large scale to have considerably
deflated the percentages between Indoaryan and Iranian (Dyen, Kruskal,
Black
1992, p. 49)."


Dyen, I., Kruskal, J. and Black, P. (1992). An Indoeuropean
classification: a
lexicostatistical experiment. Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, 82 (5), Independence Square, Philadelphia.

posted by M. Kelkar