Re: Divergence vs. convergence (was: Witzel and Sautsutras)

At 2:54:10 PM on Saturday, October 27, 2012, Tavi wrote:

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

>>>> There is no "Paleo-IE" in the sense of a second,
>>>> unrelated protolanguage (or language family) that
>>>> underlies *all* branches of IE. In fact, there must
>>>> have been many different substratum languages, some
>>>> related to each other, others not. It is IMHO
>>>> ridiculously unlikely that the substratum the
>>>> Indo-Aryans met in India had anything to do with the
>>>> substratum the Insular Celts met in the British Isles,
>>>> for instance.

>>> The label "Paleo-IE" is meant to include all the
>>> languages which contributed to the IE lexicon other than
>>> Kurganic (i.e. "PIE").

>> That are, as Brian has pointed out, *many different*
>> languages, and a label such as "Paleo-IE" is meaningless
>> and misleading.

> Brian is clearly exaggerating. From the ancient toponymy
> and hydronymy we know at least some of these languages
> were close relatives (i.e. your "Aquan"), as shown by the
> 'water' root series: *akW-a:, *ab-/ap-, *up-/ub-, etc.

Irrelevant. I don't deny that many of the languages in that
grab-bag must have been related to one another. The fact
remains that Palæo-IE as you define it is not a language
family in any meaningful sense of the term. I repeat:

To see just how silly that is, imagine a language X
descended from English and spoken a few millennia hence:
in your terms 'Paleo-X' would have to include Arabic,
Finnish, Nahuatl, several N. American Indian languages,
several Chinese languages, Japanese, Hawai`ian, et cetera
ad absurdum.