Dating the final IE unity

[Ross Clark]

I believe you may be replying to the incomplete version of my post, sent by
accident. (This would account for my apparently signing with your Footer.) In
the complete version, I mentioned that Dixon makes the very point you are
making with respect to Wargamay -- he cannot decide whether its fairly high
cognate percentage with Dyirbal is due to a close genetic relationship or to a
long period of contact and convergence.

It's no longer clear to me what you are claiming about Pama-Nyungan. I thought
your point was that their genealogical relationship is very remote, yet they
are very similar. My reply was that the former is not certain, and the latter
(from the Dyirbal example) clearly untrue. However, since you used the phrase
"very closely related", do you mean this in the genealogical sense -- that
their proto-language is quite recent? In which case, what is the relevance of
the 50,000 year figure?

Ross Clark

>>> Hans Holm <Hans_Holm at h2.maus.de> 02/08 3:44 AM >>>
RC>very closely related" is extremely misleading. They could be considered
RC>closely related only by contrast to the highly diverse (lexically and
RC>typologically) other families of the north and west of Australia.
RC>Consider just the immediate neighbours of Dyirbal, as described by
RC>Dixon: Yidin (27% shared vocabulary), Mbabaram (18%), Warungu (47%),
RC>Wargamay (60%)

.. misleading are such percentages, if taken as representing proportional
genealogical relationship. Direct genealogical relationship means that two
daughter-languages directly stem from the same mother language.
Replacements, even severe and/or quite different ones, taking place after
that split, have no influence on the notice. Thus, two languages with a
smaller number of retained common lexemes may be related closer than
others with higher percentages. I shall try to make this clearer in the
near future.

(BTW, you signed with my Footer.)

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