On Sun, 5 Sep 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 9/2/99 11:39:20 PM, kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu wrote:
> <<Dates of attestation were not taken into consideration at all when
> producing the unrooted phylogeny. It was produced strictly on the basis
> of the characteristics of the languages without regard to dating.>>
> But then you write:
> <<It's simply an accident of history that the branchings happened in such a
> way that the tree is a bit lopsided in its branchings.>>
> You can't have it both ways. If you're saying that the branchings are based
> on some kind of historical analysis, ...
No, I never said that. The first was a statement about the methodology by
which the relations among the IE languages were deduced. The second was a
statement that if the events (migrations, battles, etc.) of prehistory had
happened differently, the family tree for IE might have chanced to look
more like A than B:
A /\ B /\
/ \ /\
/\ /\ /\
I'm saying it's just an accident of human events that the tree for the IE
family looks more like B. If it _did_ look like A, it would be clearer
that there is no main stem. That's all I'm saying.
> Well, I don't know what version we saw here on the list, but I don't need to
> tell you that dates of attestation are no way of giving dates to
> "innovations" that all allegedly happened before any of the languages were
> attested.
Well, yes and no. The innovations characterizing a language can't have
happened later than it's earliest attestation. If we accept c. 4000
B.C.E. as the latest date of PIE unity prior to the first branching, and
given that Sanskrit and Hittite are both attested by the second millenium
B.C.E., we're left with a _range_ of dates within which these branchings
must have happened. We can also tell in what order the branchings
happened. We don't know the absolute dates for the branchings, however.
I'd expect that there will be attempts to match up the branchings in this
tree with the archaeological evidence (subject, of course, to the long
litany of caveats which I need not repeat). For example, it's been
previously argued that the apparent invasion of the Carpithian basin
(Hungary) around the beginning of the third millenium B.C.E. represents an
invasion of Indo-European speakers. We might very, very, very tentatively
identify this with the branching off of the Italo-Celtic group. The point
is that one can at least imagine knowing more detailed dates for some of
the branchings.
> That is the way this tree is set up. Whatever is "innovating" gets a node
> and a name. But there is always a non-innovating language left over, for the
> next node to innovate way from.
No, no, no. The claim is that there are innovations on both sides. The
other language is not "non-innovating". Each innovates on some matters
and retains on others.
> (Otherwise, Graeco-Armenian is innovating away from Italo-Celtic.) So,
> node after node, there is a language that does not innovate.
That is absolutely not the claim which is being made. This is a serious
misunderstanding of what the tree is intended to represent.
> The only node on that tree that represents a non-innovating language is
> marked PIE. And this tree also posits a group of speakers who are always
> non-innovators, node after node. And because they are not the innovators,
> they remain PIE. Right down to the last node. Unless of course they are the
> last node.
The claim is that there are no non-innovators.
> Plus, how would you know
> what "innovations" are unless you knew the opposing condition?
Let me give an example here. The Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic branches
underwent a phonological rule known as RUKI retraction, by which *s is
retracted after *r, *u, *k, *i. Take a look at the tree and see how this
relates; given the geometry of the tree, this can only be an innovation.
> You MUST
> assume a comparison to identify innovations. You can't have innovating
> without having non-innovating alongside it, in this tree.
It's true that you can imagine cases where you can't tell which is the
innovation; there could even be cases where both branches innovate, and
the original form is retained in neither branch. But that's OK, since
what we're doing is showing relatedness on the basis of shared
characteristics.
This won't always work, as in the case where the innovation is an
irreversible phonological merger; the branch with the merger has
innovated. But for lexical characters, for example, there can certainly be
cases where you can't tell who innovated.
> You write:
> <<When we're talking about genetic innovations, it doesn't matter what order
> the innovations happened in; and there's always the possibility of
> back-mutation, etc.>>
> This is inaccurate. The order in which traits change is always critical.
> And 'back-mutation' is extraordinary event. But more analogously, the
> re-appearance of recessive traits occurs under only the most orderly of
> conditions.
Let me explain more precisely what I mean. Suppose we have two biological
species which are are comparing, A and B. Suppose that we are comparing
their DNA, and we note that 7% of their DNA differs. Let's say that the
differences are scattered all over the chromosomes, so that these
differences must be the product of many mutations. Let's also say that
there are no surviving intermediate relatives which might help us work out
the chronology of mutations on the basis of shared innovations. What I'm
saying is that we can't tell what order the mutations happened in.
(I'm not a biologist, but this is how a computational biologist explained
it to me.)
Human language, as I noted, is different; you often can tell that the
changes must have happened in one order and not the other. I answered
many of your other points in great detail elsewhere, so I won't repeat
them here.
> It's not the nodes, it's those dotted lines between them. Every time that
> you claim that there is a node representing an the innovations of an actual
> posited prehistoric language, you are necessarily claiming there was a
> second, contemporary "actual posited prehistoric language" - that DID NOT
> INNOVATE.
As I've already emphasized, the part about "DID NOT INNOVATE" is in no way
a part of the claim. I don't know where you got that idea.
> <<The point where I object is in calling any particular line of descent the
> "stem". No line of descent has any special status in the tree.>>
> There is a line of descent that would be most "special" indeed on this tree.
> It's the one that - each and every time a node apears - is always the one
> that doesn't innovate. It has to continue to exist for the next node to
> emerge from. But the language named at the node is always the one
> innovating. (Disregard the apparent simultaeneous 3-way split at the end.)
> That line of decent in this tree, the one that is always the non-innovator,
> would be most special indeed. Because that one MUST be our best picture of
> what PIE was like. Precisely, because it never innovated, according to the
> Stammbaum.
Once again, that last sentence is simply an erroneous interpretation of
the tree. It appears that both of these paragraphs depend entirely on
that misinterpretation.
\/ __ __ _\_ --Sean Crist (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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