At 3:59:18 AM on Friday, October 10, 2008, kishore patnaik
wrote:
> Brian wrote:
> " This is obvious nonsense. The fact that *dye:us is very
> widely attested clearly shows that it must have been
> present in PIE. If you assume OIT, then this word must
> have started in India and spread throughout the IE world.
> If <Varuna> is an equally old word, why should it not have
> done the same? Why did *dye:us '[have] business to be
> present' outside of India and not (the ancestral form of)
> <Varuna>?"
> It is not obvious and it is not nonsense.
It is nonsense, and it is obviously nonsense.
> This is mere shouting down.
I could have expanded on the explanation, but you exhausted
my patience and good will long ago. If you don't understand
why it's obviously nonsense, then you lack the knowledge to
discuss the subject meaningfully. (And that's the generous
interpretation.)
> Dyus will be present in PIE, IF PIE IS THE TRUTH. How do
> you account for it, if your instinct and belief that PIE
> is belied?
I don't have to: the existence of an IE family of languages
having a common ancestor that resembled reconstructed PIE is
well-established. Nothing else can account for the
demonstrable relationships amongst IE languages spread
across Europe and parts of Asia. That something like
*dye:us existed in that language is clear from the
comparative method; no other hypothesis comes close to
accounting for the facts.
Your question is like asking a biologist how he accounts for
the obvious family relationships amongst species if
evolutionary theory is false. He won't waste his time:
evolutionary theory is as well-established as anything in
science.
I fully expect you to dismiss this as a non-answer. From
your point of view it *is* a non-answer, but that's because
you have refused to learn even the most basic elements of
historical linguistics; thus it's largely your own fault
that you don't understand the answers that you get.