PIE vs. Proto-World (Proto-Language)

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

RS:

>> Well, I would love to see morphological paradigms reconstructable on the
>> basis of English, Italian and Hindi ...

AH:

>I was not claiming that we could reconstruct PIE morphological paradigms
>_only_ on the basis of these three very innovative languages. But
>reconstructing the morphology of a proto-language spoken 5000 or more
>years ago on the basis of modern languages is of course possible -
>that is what linguists do every day, reconstructing Proto-Austronesian,
>Proto-Uralic, Proto-Oto-Manguean etc.

True enough. But this is possible because the morphological systems of
these languages are still transparent enough to do this. Or maybe
conservative enough. Or maybe even "young" enough not to have been exposed
to erosion processes like those which have befallen English, Italian and
Hindi. It's in the data.

St.G,

Stefan Georg
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