connected text in PIE; Proto-World language

[Anthony Appleyard]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

  Steven Schaufele <fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw> wrote (Subject:      PIE vs.
Proto-World):-

> ... everything we have on PIE has to be starred because it's reconstructed,
> ergo hypothetical. ... 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.  Whereas I regard `Proto-World' as little
> more than an entertaining fantasy.

  (1) When neural-net computers get advanced enough for people to
simulate better than now human brain processes including language, it
would be interesting to simulate language evolution and see over how
many centuries and by what steps a language changes so much that all
trace of common ancestry vanishes behind the `noise' of accidental
resemblances.

  (2) What is the source of that fable in PIE? Has anyone made a good
collection of PIE grammar and accidence and vocabulary, enough to learn
the language from, to write connected text in it? I once heard of
someone writing a fable not in PIE but in `Aryan', i.e. the common
ancestor of Iranian and Sanskrit, with such special regional features as
turning PIE `e' and `o' into `a'. Who else has had a go at writing
connected text in PIE?

[ Moderator's response:
  August Schleicher.  Details have been noted in other answers to the original
  posting.
  --rma ]