Re: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "shivkhokra" <shivkhokra@> wrote:
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> > > ps: The main result is the phylogeography: First branch, Anatolian; second branch, Tocharo-Armenian; third branch, Indo-Iranian + Greco-Albanian; 4th branch, Balto-Slavic, and last branches, Germanic, Italic and Celtic. I'd like to see you comments..
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> > What were the Germanic and Italic speakers speaking before their language became a branch?
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> Call it 'Proto-Western-IE' if you need a specific name. However, language boundaries can only be perceived very dimly at this depth. A huge dialect continuum containing Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Italic and Celtic is probably a better model than a branching tree. Albanian probably belongs there, while Greek and Armenian may well be peripheral members.
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> Tocharo-Armenian is probably a result of trying to take geography into account and not having any IE spread north of the Caspian.
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> Richard.
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Thanks Richard. I still have some questions/confusion:
a) German is attested in runic inscriptions from 2nd century A.D. Is it true that nobody knew or interacted with German speakers prior to 2nd century A.D?

b) We hear of Proto Germanic being the ancestor of Germanic. Won't it be a better possibility that Germanic descended from an existing language prior to 2nd century A.D rather than being a branch in itself?

c) How is it determined that a language is a separate branch?

Shivraj