--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@>
> wrote:
> >
> > We spoke about this earlier on the list --satemization
> > seems to be a spontaneous phenomenon.
>
> I recall it differently. Piotr argued that the Satem group
> represents a proper genetic grouping, for which see
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/17078 ,
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/19177 ,
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/27876 ,
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13075 ,
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/13057 ,
> and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/messages/
> 44678?threaded=1&m=e&var=1&tidx=1 .
Yes, but look at the Gray and Atkinson trees. West European (Celtic,
Italic* and Germanic) is embedded with the bulk of the Satem
languages, with Balto-Slavonic as their closest relative. Armenian is
the outlier of the Satem group, and Greek is either a sister to the
group of Satem and West European or is most closely related to Armenian.
*Italic is only represented by Romance.
I don't know how much this is due simply to Germanic fouling up the
tree analysis. My feeling is that dialect continuums have simply
rendered tree analyses inappropriate. Dialect continuums certainly
seem to have defeated some of the traditional subgroupings. For
example, in Gray and Atkinson's tree, the Anglo-Frisian group is
nowhere to be seen, and West Slavic does not show up either.
Going back to the issue of whether Satem is a genetic grouping, note
that the first Satem divergence is dated to 7,300BP and the West
European - Balto-Slavonic divergence is dated to 6,500 BP. This again
makes me suspect that a branching model may be an inapropriate
oversimplification.
Now, if Satem dialects had simply spread out from India, obliterating
most intervening IE dialects as far as Central Europe, I would expect
to see stronger evidence that the Satem dialects formed a genetic
group. An Eastward Indo-Iranian expansion is just so much simpler.
Is there any sense to the notion that Hittite, Tocharian and perhaps
Greek were always Centum, while West European IE (and perhaps Greek)
desatemised? Recall that Albanian preserves the three-way split of
'palatal', 'plain velar' and labiovelar, so a Proto-Satem was
potentially desatemisable.
Richard.