On 2008-01-27 06:37, mkelkar2003 wrote:
> Six specific structural features have to be present for a language to
> be classified as "Indo-European." I do not know what they are.
The list is well known (see one of the links below), but that's not the
point. Trubetzkoy was wrong in that he insisted on a typological
definition of IE. It's like (mis)defining mammals as terrestrial beasts
walking on all fours and having hair. Even an apparently more "correct"
definition like "warm-blooded animals feeding their young with milk" is
problematic, since any such feature may in theory develop convergently
in some other group (even if it hasn't yet, but note that birds are also
warm-blooded). The only valid definition that depends on the history of
the living world, but not on our arbitrary choice of historically
acquired features, is one that defines mammals as a group demonstrably
sharing a common ancestor (including that ancestor and all its
desendants). If that common ancestor had certain traits later found in
the vast majority od the descendent taxa (such as hair, quadrupedality,
five digits, mammary glands, endothermy), it's hardly surprising. But
even these ancestral traits may have been affected by further evolution
(bats don't walk, whales have no legs at all and no hair, the number of
digits has been reduced in several lineages). What connects all mammals
is historical continuity and common descent, not typological similarity.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/28755
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/28764
Piotr