Re: Stacking up on standard works

At 9:33:29 AM on Monday, April 2, 2012, Tavi wrote:

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

>> Just how out of date is your picture of PIE, anyway?

> In my understanding, the majority *opinion* among IE-ists
> is that PIE was a real language spoken not earlier than
> the Chalcolithic, and this chronology also includes
> Anatolian.

None of which has much to do with your erroneous belief that
you're raising issues that are ignored by people actually
working in the field. *That* is what prompted my question.

No one thinks that PIE as we reconstruct it is an entirely
accurate description of any language actually spoken, even
as far as it goes; it is simply the best approximation yet
produced to the most recent common ancestor of the IE
languages, which was indeed a real language. Questions
of absolute chronology and homeland are to a very
considerable extent independent of the linguistic
reconstruction.

> I've throughly read Mallory and Anthony, Brian.

That's nice for an overview of the archaeological evidence,
but my question was about the *language*.

>>> 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?

> That it can't be "inherited" from "PIE" in the same way
> than the rest.

I have no idea by what strange mental contortions you
persuade yourself that such an inference makes sense. It
obviously makes no difference to the descendants of a
language L when a lexical item in L entered L's ancestry.

[...]

>> You don't appear to [study substrates in IE languages].
>> 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.

> These specialists (to which you should add Villar)

No, I shouldn't: I'm not familiar with his work, so I don't
know whether it does the sort of thing that I was
describing.

> have their own method and I've got mine.

Which appears to have very little to do with linguistics and
a great deal to do with getting the conclusions that you've
already decided that you want. Despite explicit invitations
to do so, you've yet to offer any evidence of a principled
method underlying your comparisons.

[...]