The Neolithic Hypothesis

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>Assuming that these differences in verb tense structure do reflect real
>differences in time, is there a logical way to explain how such differences
>came about?  This would seem to be a clear way of tracking both time and
>location.  For example, was the aorist/perfective aspect a borrowing?  I'm
>totally unaware of its history in other language groups.  Was it sui generis?

The categories perfective/imperfective are quite common in verbal
systems all over the world.  But the distinctions between present
and aorist stem in IE are absolutely "sui generis", and it's out
of the question that they were borrowings.

>I have some reason to believe that a simple change in locale and neighbors can
>account for the lexical or basic phonological differences between Greek and
>Sanskrit in a relatively short time (much shorter than the 2000-3000 years
>you've estimated.)  Ancient German and Latin traveled a much shorter distance
>to become modern English and French in a much shorter time.

What has distance traveled to do with it?  The dialect of Lazio
didn't travel at all, and it's still very different from Latin.
I don't think you need external causes at all to account for
language change.  It just happens.  The distance, or rather the
amount of mutual contact, only determines whether two dialects
will change in the same direction or not.

>Is there a historical or geographical correlation that you've made that
>accounts for the differences you mention?  And how do you arrive at a number
>like 2000 to 3000 years to account for the differences?

Just an informed guess.  Greek and Sanskrit are not mutually
intelligible, and neither are Mycenaean and Vedic of a millennium
earlier.  Looking at everything, lexicon, grammar, phonology,
syntax, I just "know", holistically, that the separation must be
greater than a thousand years.  The Slavic lgs. split up some
1500 years ago, and the differences between Greek and Sanskrit
and even Mycenaean/Vedic are bigger than that (now Vedic-Avestan
does feel like somewhere in the 500-1500 year range).  Two
millennia is more like it: something like French and Romanian.
Maybe a bit more: German and Swedish.  Greek-Hittite is more
difficult, because it feels like more than German-Swedish, but I
have no other known time ranges to compare it with.  Russian and
Latvian?  Persian and Hindi?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam