Re: Witzel and Sautsutras (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
wrote:

>
> Sanskrit is one of the most conservative IE languages to be sure,
> but its conservatism should not be overrated, and the history of
> the standard model of PIE is a history of emancipation from the
> Sanskrit model - more and more features of Sanskrit were recognized
> as innovations of the Indic branch. And now it turns out that we
> have to posit a quite different Early PIE to account for the
> divergent features of Anatolian.
>

Not only "earlier" (in diachronical terms) but also "diverse" (in
diatopical terms). Thus we've got (al least) two different "PIE"s. In my
own model, the IE family is the result of the superimposition of several
(proto-)languages due to contact and replacement processes over
millenia. The classical genealogical tree model is simply inadequate.