From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Message: 57091
Date: 2008-04-09
>On 2008-04-09 11:50, Kishore patnaik wrote:For an example of phonological complexity in a "Bushman"
>
>> The contradictory proposals that IE were wandering nomads and yet were
>> held to have originated from a specific abode,
>
>Who claims the speakers of PIE were "wandering nomads"? Judging from
>their vocabulary, they had a mixed economy: some were sedentary farmers,
>others were transhumant pastoralists, and they all were probably capable
>of adjusting their mode of subsistence to various local conditions.
>Classic nomadic pastoralism (as practised by the Scythians or more
>recently by various Turkic and Mongolic ethnic groups) is a fairly late
>development.
>
>> and that they were primitive tribesmen
>
>Another straw man. What's a "primitive tribesman" and who claims that
>the IE-speakers belonged to this category?
>
>> and yet were able to formulate and utilize a
>> language as intricate and complex as Indo European is a fallacy at
>> best.
>
>People don't "formulate" their language. They simply inherit it from the
>previous generations. They don't make it complex deliberately.
>Linguistic complexity evolved spontaneously long before PIE, presumably
>scores of millennia ago. The languages of the mesolithic societies that
>have survived into modern times are as complex as anything