From: Tavi
Message: 69201
Date: 2012-04-02
>F.
> > The problem is that a the lexicon of a given language is
> > typically made up of several strata (multi-layer) due to
> > language replacement and contact processes, and it isn't
> > always easy to tell which is the "inherited" part.
>
> This is a commonplace. It's also of limited relevance to
> reconstruction of proto-languages. If F is a linguistic
> taxon, proto-F is simply the most recent common ancestor
> of F; its own history is largely irrelevant to its
> comparative reconstruction from F. For that history we
> must resort to internal reconstruction, and perhaps
> eventually to comparative reconstruction of a bigger
> taxon at a deeper historical level.
>
> > This is a description of the classical geneaological tree
> > model,
>
> No, it isn't. It's the standard definition of proto-F for any family
>I disagree.
> > which IMHO is fairly inadequate to represent the IEBut Anatolian (and probably also Tocharian) is clearly "ancestral to
> > family, which is a rather exceptional case, because it
> > combines a very long time of evolution since the Upper
> > Palaeolithic with a quick dialectal fragmentation into the
> > historical attested languages in the Bronze Age.
>
> You really just don't get it, do you? PIE is by definition
> the stage immediately prior to that fragmentation. Anything
> earlier is not PIE. Anything ancestral to that stage is
> something else.
>
> > Quoted from F. Villar et al.: Lenguas, genes y culturas en<http://books.google.es/books?id=BAwzUADajUwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es&\
> > la prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental
> >
> > source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false> .old.
> > Universidad de Salamanca, 2011., chapter 3 (my own
> > translation):
>
> > The history related to us by the languages of Europe and
> > SW Asia, both today's and the ones spoken in their
> > territory of which there exists written attestations,
> > doesn't reach to a deep chronology.
>
> Which is a straightforward acknowledgement that PIE is not extremely
>But this "PIE" is only a comparatively small part of the whole business,
> > In contrast with the interest in the genealogical trees<http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Adrados%20PIE.jpg\
> > intented for explaining the dialectal processes between
> > common IE and the historical languages [see for example
> > the one by F. Rodríguez Adrados
> >
>But "these other branches" doesn't survive anymore (because they've
> > in Nuevos estudios de linguística indoeuropea. CSIC, 1988,
> > p. 38], the IE-ists never have been interested the
> > ancestor genealogical tree of which this common language
> > was only a branch coming from an older common phylum.
>
> Say rather that they've generally recognized that there's
> not much that can be said about it, at least until (a) some
> likely other branches have been identified, and (b) adequate
> reconstruction has been done in these branches, including
> IE. And obviously the first order of business for any
> sensible Indo-Europeanist is to work on setting his own
> house in order.
>
> Similarly, it's entirely to be expected that a GermanistFollowing this kind of logic, "PIE" would be also a conjecture, although
> will be concerned primarily with the Germanic branch; the
> difference is that in this case we actually know what the
> sister families are and something about how they're related
> and how they descend from PIE, their nearest common
> ancestor. Despite some conjectures, some of them even quite
> plausible, we *don't* know what IE's sister families are,
> let alone what their common ancestor looked like.
>