Re: Origin of Sanskrit (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...

From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 70160
Date: 2012-10-10

It isn't a problem insofar it is a necessary choice: one has to postulate something, either a great number of completely lost families (purely theoretical families) or enormous extensions of non-IE families or a medium-size extension for both PIE and other known families or an enormous extension for PIE Urheimat. These are the four possibilities with regard to PIE (the second and the fourth one are very similar except for the role of PIE). I know none who prefers the fourth one, in itself higlhly improbable as any hypothesis which operates with very very large dimensions (the second hypothesis included); the first and the third one are normal size as to territorial dimensions, the first one is expensive in terms of postulated families, the third one in terms of conservativeness through time. Different prices, but nevertheless prices

2012/10/10 Brian M. Scott <bm.brian@...>
 

At 8:10:27 AM on Wednesday, October 10, 2012,


Bhrihskwobhloukstroy wrote:

> I should have written "or even a Urheimat or more for
> completely non-attested language families (the larger the
> Urheimat the smaller is the number of the language
> families; in case of a small Urheimat for each single
> family, the number of these possible but hypothetical
> families grows very high)". That's what I meant, sorry for
> shortness.

In that case I agree; I just don't see anything at all
problematic about it.

Brian