Re: Stacking up on standard works

At 5:14:50 AM on Monday, April 2, 2012, Tavi wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>>>>> 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 F.

> I disagree.

Be as silly as you like: it's no skin off my nose.

>>> which IMHO is fairly inadequate to represent the IE
>>> 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.

> But Anatolian (and probably also Tocharian) is clearly
> "ancestral to that stage", so an older "PIE" would be
> needed as a common ancestor of Anatolian and "traditional
> PIE". This is more or less which Adrados proposes with
> their IE II and IE III. No, the traditional model is a
> *clumsy* oversimplification.

Are you really unaware that these issues are very familiar
within the field? Just how out of date is your picture of
PIE, anyway?

>>> Quoted from F. Villar et al.: Lenguas, genes y culturas
>>> en la prehistoria de Europa y Asia suroccidental, [...]
>>> 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 old.

> But this "PIE" is only a comparatively small part of the
> whole business, as a large part of the IE lexicon actually
> predates it.

Of course. And a large part of the PGmc. lexicon predates
PGmc.; so what?

>>> In contrast with the interest in the genealogical trees
>>> intented for explaining the dialectal processes between
>>> common IE and the historical languages [...], 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.

> But "these other branches" doesn't survive anymore
> (because they've being long replaced) but in the form of
> *substrates* in IE languages, as well as in fossilized
> toponymy and hydronymy.

Which means that we may never know much about them, because
the evidence is too skimpy and buried under too much noise.

> And while Villar studies the latter, I study the former.

You don't appear to do so. I've seen nothing in your posts
like the various works identifying the characteristics of
Old European hydronymy, or the work of Kuiper and Schrijver
on characterizing specific substrates in (at least)
Germanic. You go about it ass-backwards: instead of trying
to identify a coherent substrate in an IE language or
branch, you start with a source language, and one whose
existence is doubtful at that, and then dig through the IE
lexicon in search of words that possibly be borrowed from
this source.

Nor is there any reason to assume a priori that these
substrates are detectably related to IE.

>> Similarly, it's entirely to be expected that a Germanist
>> 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.

> Following this kind of logic, "PIE" would be also a
> conjecture, although a bit more plausible.

Of course, though it's considerably more than just 'a bit'
more plausible. In broad outline it's an extremely
well-supported conjecture, because the work required to
support it exists. The same cannot be said for any of the
hyper-taxa, macro-families, or whatever you want to call
them.

Brian