--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:
>
>
> Not to speak of the fact that Arabic expansions are well-documented
> historically -- in fact, they can be traced in great geographical
> and chronological detail -- and, unlike the tribal migrations of
the
> type hypothesized for the prehistoric Indo-Aryans, were state-led
> expansions. The same is true for the Spanish expansions that were
> anachronistically evoked by Koenraad as a supposed term of
> comparison for prehistoric Indo-Aryan expansions. In both cases, it
> is like to compare apple and oranges.
>
In this case, *all* comparisons must necessarily be anachronistic.
IE expansion is a pretty exceptional case. We know it took place,
recently enough for us to have a real chance at fully reconstructing
it in the near future, but nonetheless on the border between history
and prehistory, largely a matter of approximations, suppositions and
asterisks. The expansion of Arabic and Spanish came too late for
that. Yes, we have far more detailed documentation on them, I never
said we didn't. Fact remains that the end result of their expansion
was unidirectional, which doesn't prove that the same must have
happened in the case of IE, but which does disprove the cavalier
assumption that a language (such as PIE) cannot expand in just one
direction.
None of that affects by position that IE expanded the way it did
because contingent historical circumstances (ilitary, geographical,
demographic etc.) caused it to happen that way. And these factors
are naturally different from those surrounding the Arabic and Spanish
(and Bantu, and Austronesian etc.) cases. In different
circumstances, the Mongolian conquests might have led to a linguistic
mongolization of nearly the whole Eurasian continent; only that's not
what happened. Why? Because it didn't. There is no fixed pattern
for such expansions, and anything you may know about the Arabic etc.
case need not have any implications for the IE case.
Best regards,
KE