Re: [tied] Re: Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

----- Original Message -----

From: mkelkar2003

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 7:25 PM

Subject: [Courrier indésirable] [tied] Re: Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

--- In cybalist@... s.com, Octavià Alexandre <oalexandre@ ...> wrote:

>
> The American linguist Johanna Nichols has made a lot of research about
> North-East Caucasian (NEC) languages. She has reconstructed (indepently
> of Starostin and Nikolaiev, who made their own in 1994: North Caucasian
> Etymological Dictionary) the basic proto-lexicon of this family, which
> shows it was an agricultural society.
> *akWa/apa isn't IE but Vasco-Caucasian.
>

http://popgen. well.ox.ac. uk/eurasia/ htdocs/nichols/ nichols.html

http://www.pnas. org/cgi/content/ full/94/13/ 6585

"The subgroups Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are strongly supported,
as is the subgrouping together of these two subgroups to comprise the
Satem Core; however, these subgroupings had already been suggested by
traditional methods and have generally not been argued about by the
historical linguistic community. On the other hand, many hotly
contested subgroupings are supported by this analysis to various
degrees. The Indo-Hittite hypothesis is supported by only one
character, but it is difficult to impugn that character. Should that
character be impugned, a subgrouping of Hittite and Tocharian is
possible, but moving the root below the Italo-Celtic subgroup seems
less likely than the present rooting due to geographic constraints.
Tocharian can move only slightly within the tree without causing a
significant decrease in the compatibility score; hence it is
reasonable to consider its placement to be relatively well
constrained. The Italo-Celtic subgroup was supported by three
characters, indicating relatively strong support. The Greco-Armenian
subgroup was supported by five characters, and thus is strongly
supported by the data. Each of these three subgroupings had been
debated significantly over the past many decades, and the strong
support of some of these subgroups through this analysis was
surprising. The only features that remained somewhat unclear through
this analysis were the exact placement of Tocharian within the tree
(which, as we noted, was nevertheless fairly constrained) , the exact
placement of the root (Proto-Indo- European) , and where Albanian fits
in the tree. These questions require further data before a definitive
answer can be obtained."

Kelkar: IE is a tree only if Germanic is removed.

"he major point of our research is the model of language evolution,
which seems to be well supported by the data (as evidenced by the
existence of a perfect phylogeny when Germanic is removed)."

M. Kelkar