Recoverability

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Wed, 7 Jul 1999 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> [...]
> If we
> didn't have written or other artificially preserved examples of now-extinct
> languages, much of the PIE vocabulary we have would be completely
> unrecoverable.

> Try reconstructing PIE using _nothing_ but contemporary Albanian and English.
> You'd be hard-put to prove that such a language even existed.

But that is not what you do in cases where only modern languages are
available: You do not pick two and ignore the rest, you take all there is.
In the case of IE, you would take _all_ modern Germanic languages, if need
be with their dialects; you take all Slavic languages, you don't forget
about Lithuanian and Latvian or Modern Greek which gives quite a lot; you
add four Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish and Scottish Gaelic with
due attention to their dialects); you get most of Latin by taking all of
the Romance languages and the many learned words of Latin origin preserved
in many languages (you get much of Ancient Greek the same way); you take
Albanian in at least two varieties; Armenian likewise; and you add the
total effort of comparative linguistics applied to the countless Modern
Indic and Modern Iranian (and Nuristani) languages. This is a LOT - and
NOBODY could even thgen be in doubt that this is indeed a family of
related languages sprung from a common source. True, we would still be in
doubt or indeed ignorant about many a finer point which is only added by
languages of old texts - and of course even they do not contain
everything, so doubt will remain - but the general utline and subgrouping
of the family would stand firm even on the sole basis of modern languages.

Jens