reality of PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/25/2000 4:33:08 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk wrote:

>But nobody is claiming that our reconstruction contains every detail of the
>speech of the PIE-speakers.  That's out of the question.  What we *do* claim
>is that we can reconstruct a great deal of PIE.

I cannot think of stronger, more compelling evidence in favor of the actual
existence of PIE than what Ante Aikio presented in his list of PIE borrowings
in Uralic.

The claim that PIE can be reconstructed accurately is always going to be
confirmed by internal evidence, after all that is what the reconstruction is
made of.  There's really no way to disprove it internally, because by
definition it was created to be consistent with the evidence.

But to see it confirmed in Uralic is very, very impressive.  That's
predictability.

It is very hard to be cynical about the actual existence of *PIE when you
have that kind of external evidence.  I wonder if the full impact of that
work has been appreciated.

Regards,
Steve Long