The Neolithic Hypothesis

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/6/99 11:40:17 PM, you wrote:

<<I am rather disturbed by your persistent use of "predictably" in all of
these statements.  If there is one thing that we know about language change,
it is that it is not predictable. >>

This is nothing but truisms.  And they are contradicted by the very fact that
there is a Grimm's law and there is an Indo-European language group and there
is a way the old sound laws can "predicatably" tell you if one word is
cognate with another even if they are centuries apart.  That's what
predictability means.  It means you can look at some word on a clay tablet
and make a good guess at whether they are Greek or not.  Because it follows
from prior experience. That's predictability.

It really doesn't take a lot of hard thought to figure out that languages
change.  It's not a breakthrough idea.

I remember reading about an early IEist first looking at Gothic and saying "I
thought I was reading Sanskrit."  That is the point.  If he said, "boy,
languages do change don't they?"  That would have been trite.  Or
considerably worse.

It's the continuity, not the change.  That's the science of it and from what
I've seen in the work of some people in this field, the art of it.   Where's
the pattern, not that there's no pattern.

If my you find my speaking of predictability "rather" disturbing, I can only
respond that I find you reminding me that languages change unpredictability -
well, I'll believe you if you wake up speaking Bantu tomorrow.  Otherwise
I'll find the whole idea ridiculous.

<<I hope that you are not trying to say that one can predict the
degree to which languages will diverge based on the geographical distance
between them.>>

Boy wouldn't that be silly.  Where would I get a wild idea like that?  Isn't
French just as close to Chinese as it is to Spanish?  Isn't Polish just as
close to Mayan as it is to Russian?  How could you possibly think I would
ever think that?  Never occurred to me.

Regards,
Steve Long