PIE vs. Proto-World

X99Lynx at aol.com X99Lynx at aol.com
Wed Jul 7 13:02:14 UTC 1999


Pat Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> writes:

<<Of course we have no data on the earliest human language in the same
way we have no data on IE>>

There's a slight problem here in our use of the word "data."  Data is
strictly speaking raw and awaiting interpretation.  In that sense, there is
data on both PIE and earlier languages.  The level of certainty about our
conclusions based on this data however is the real question.

Because neither PIE or early human languages are directly observable, we are
always dealing with inferences from data.  Much as with radiation or the
atom, we draw conclusions from secondary events.  These secondary events
would be the consequences of there having been a PIE or an early universal
human language (if there was one.)

The data pool in which we look for evidence of PIE is a large one - starting
with the attributes of every known IE language over thousands of years of
time.  But as large as that potential mass of data is, it is nothing compared
to the data we need to examine in pursuit of a universal human language.  How
many times as large?  Hundreds, thousands?  Maybe more?

And there is also the fact that the comparative is not available.  A
universal language excludes no past or present language, so there is no way
to differentiate x from y.  This makes the null hypothesis (there was never a
universal language) difficult to test.

Two hundred years ago it was not apparent that there had been such a thing as
PIE.  The pool of data was there, but the hypothesis of a single parent
tongue had not been made.

There is nothing inappropriate about searching for evidence of a proto-world
language.  But it should be obvious that the task is many, many times the
size of tracking PIE.

In a message dated 7/6/99 10:42:34 PM, fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw responded:

<<Although i'm not prepared to go as far as Calvert Watkins (i think it was?)
who composed a fable in PIE, i certainly do not doubt that, in principle, it
could be done with our current state of knowledge.>>

I'm beginning to suspect this isn't quite true.  There are two factors of
interference with our certainty about PIE.  One is endemic to any historical
science.  As in geology, we are dealing with strata that can overlap,
disappear or appear out of chronological context.  The relationship between
Latin and Romance languages is a good example.  A second factor is semantic
shift.  This appears to be the weak link in identifying cognition and
relationships between forms in time.

regards,
Steve Long



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