Re: Existence of PIE (was: Nostratic language family)

> 2. It may well be that Indo-European languages derive form
> recombinations of dialects, and that there is no single ancestral
> dialect that could be identified as 'PIE'.

Possibly, but we simplify reconstruction by assuming a proto-language
with little or no dialect variation, then we see if our
reconstruction explains many of the observed phenomena in the
attested IE languages. It does, so it's a reasonable model, but of
course it IS a model, and we accept that.

> I'll happily accept Hittite as Indo-Hittite. Whether or not it is
> Indo-European is a terminological convention.

I think that the majority view now is that 'Indo-Hittite' isn't a
necessary model, we can just accept Hittite as Indo-European.

>
> While there is indeed general agreement over what is Indo-European,
> there are disagreements of varying degrees of apparent crankiness.
> Etruscan is sometimes claimed as Indo-European,

Etruscan studies sadly seems to attract cranks. Etruscan isn't
recognised as Indo-European by the majority of scholars today, but I
have seen more distant groupings proposed by respected scholars.

>
> Some claims are just plain wrong - Estonian often gets listed as an
> Indo-European language!

Not by experts.

>
> For some languages only known from fragments, there is genuine

doubt.

> Pictish immediately comes to mind. That, however, comes from the
> poorness of our knowledge of Pictish, rather than from any lack of
> understanding of Indo-European.

Recent work done on Pictish has demonstrated that it is Celtic. I
believe that the majority of Celticists accept this hypothesis.

>
> However, are there not some genuinely doubtful members of the

family?

> (You may fairly regard this as nit-picking.) Are Tok Pisin and
> Sranan Germanic languages? I presume Afrikaans is a pukka Germanic
> language.

I think the history of these languages is well-known. The debate is
around the details of the creolisation processes (and in the case of
Afrikaans whether it is or is not a creole), not which 'language
family' these languages belong to.

>
> Richard.
>