The Neolithic Hypothesis (Latin et al.)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

><<The unique thing about IE is the amount of data that we have.
>There's nothing unique about being able to reconstruct a
>proto-language.  Given enough data, we can do that for any group
>of languages that stem from a common ancestor.>>

>But there is no data before 1500bce.

Which means that we have 3,500 years worth of data more than we
would otherwise have had.

>When I read that "Kurylowicz
>demonstrated that Hittite preserved laryngeal-like sounds precisely in those
>positions where Sassure had theorized they had existed in PIE"  (aside from
>being amazed) I was struck by the fact that it wasn't PIE but Hittite.

Unfortunately, reality is not as nice as it's pictured to be.
Hittite fails to have laryngeals where we would expect them to
be, hence the need for H4 etc.  We can infer a lot about PIE, but
a lot of things remain obscure.  You won't find two scholars in
complete agreement about the reconstruction of PIE.  The
discovery of Hittite, apart from conforming some things, like the
laryngeal theory, has also cast doubts on other aspects of
reconstructed PIE that had previously been taken for granted.
Talking about PIE as a "standardized" language strikes me as
premature.  Every reconstruction creates its own "standard PIE"
(that's how reconstruction works), but all the reconstructions
are different.

>Please be patient with me here.  I'd ask you to temporarily suspend these
>conclusions, if only to do a small thought experiment.  If IE was a Latin, at
>an earlier, probably pre-literate time, how would that change the outcome of
>what you find starting 1500 bce?

Less subgroups, same "distances".

>Could PIE like Latin have turned something like a Gallic
>into a French?

Yes, PIE-speakers undoubtedly assimilated non-IE populations.

>Perhaps more importantly if PIE affected distantly related
>languages the way Latin affected English, would we be able to spot it?

It depends.  I don't think we know enough about PIE and its
immediate successors to be sure.

>If PIE
>was like Latin, could it have persisted like Latin did, as a language of court
>and law and international relations - and thereby have continued to influence
>its daughter languages and others long after it was the official language of a
>specific group?

PIE wasn't written, there were no "courts", no written laws, so
the comparison completely breaks down here.

>Finally, what would have prevented PIE from even being a "state" language in
>its own right, like Egyptian or Minoan or Akkadian or a Hittite?  LBK or
>Kurgan are as much unified cultural entities as we find later on in history.

But without writing.

>Why couldn't PIE represent a language preserved by kings or priest or the
>requirements of trade?

Kings and tradesmen are usually concerned with the here and now,
and all they require is a language that is flexible (and thus
changes).

Priests and poets are a different matter.  The only (remote)
possibility for PIE or any other pre-literate language to have
been preserved more or less unchanged beyond its "natural
lifespan" is if it was the vehicle of something like the Vedas or
the Homeric poems.  It cannot be excluded that something like
that happened to PIE, but it's not a necessary condition (we
DON'T NEED a "standardized" language to reconstruct a
proto-language), and I'm not aware of any evidence for it.

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