Re[2]: [tied] beyond langauges

At 3:07:09 AM on Saturday, April 26, 2008, kishore patnaik
wrote:

>> Anything Indo-Aryan is, by definition, also Indo-Iranian.
>> Indo-Iranian is an overarching category that encompasses
>> Indo-Aryan and Iranian both.

> That is your definition.

That is a matter of linguistic fact.

> My arguement is there is no Ilr at all. Cf my
> arguements to Rchard above.

If you mean the post in which you begin 'I am not denying
the Aryan element ...', it is so confused that I hesitate to
call any of it an argument at all. In any case nothing in
it addresses the existence of the IIr family of languages,
which is simply a linguistic fact. You may argue about how
this fact is to be interpreted in historical terms, but
denying its existence is merely foolish.

[...]

>> If we found evidence for Sanskrit nowhere else besides
>> the Planet Mars, and evidence for Avestan nowhere besides
>> Venus, we would still conclude that they'd split from a
>> common ancestor, we would _have_ to say so, because that
>> is what the languages themselves tell us. It has nothing
>> at all to do with geography and it never has.

> Exactly. The languages could be similar because of
> borrowing also, right?

No: Avestan and Sanskrit are clearly closely related
branches of a common parent.

[...]

>>> However, the last point (no 4) is interesting The IA
>>> were autochthonous to the entire subcontinent including
>>> Iran.

>> The subcontinent doesn't include Iran,

> lolz. That is the reason I have included it specifically!

You can't say it that way in English: 'the entire
subcontinent including Iran' says that Iran is part of the
subcontinent. Apparently you meant 'autochthonous to the
entire subcontinent and to Iran as well'.

[...]

>>> Rajesh Kochchar gets confused

>> You haven't proven that Kochchar was confused, have you?

> there are elaborate discussions on RK already. cf Elst.

Elst is a polemicist, not a scientist.

[...]

>>> 1. The Iranians talk of an Original Home land. The Indic
>>> aryans have no such concept . For all practical
>>> purposes, they are autochthonous to the subcontinent.
>>> Hence, the Iranians are immigrants whereas the Indo
>>> Aryans are not. The similarities are mostly borrowings.

>> You're not qualified to say to what the similarities are
>> due, Kishore, and they most definitely cannot be due to
>> borrowing. They go right down, in fact, to the "bones"
>> of the languages, including their pronouns, inflectional
>> endings and paradigms, including which roots belong to
>> which paradigm, phonological systems, etc., which are the
>> last features to be borrowed by one language from another.
>> The first features to be borrowed are usually nouns, and
>> naturally just those names of new items for which the
>> borrowers don't already have words of their own, and the
>> number of words that can be shown to have been borrowed
>> by Indo-Aryan from Iranian, or vice versa, isn't all that
>> large, so there's just no justification to claim as you do.

> I am not qualified to condermn you but Patrick will
> certainly have something to say.

If he says anything substantially different, he's simply
wrong.

Brian