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

--- In mailto:cybalist%40yahoogroups.com, "shivkhokra" <shivkhokra@...> wrote:

> 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?

No. Caligula had a German bodyguard, and Tacitus's Germania was completed at the end of the 1st century A.D. Caesar wrote a bit about them in the 1st 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?

***R Weren't some of the Germanic tribes and/or topos documented by the anceint Greek "geographers"?

There was plenty of room for unattested languages, especially as the Greeks and Romans weren't interested in foreign languages.

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

By observing that it doesn't fit. This can be tricky - Slavic may turn out to be a branch of Baltic!

***R One of the researchers of Thracian seemed to think that. He felt that Dacian and Thracian were closer to Baltic than to Slavic. And there's the question of how close Germanic is to Slavic and Baltic

Richard.