Northwest IE attributes

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<<Satem is still a very good way to separate I-Ir from the western group.  (I
believe the current stance is that satem may have been ADOPTED by
Balto-Slavic.)

In a message dated 1/11/00 1:09:56 AM, Sean Crist wrote:
<<From the early days of comparative work in the Indo-European languages, it
has been universally observed and accepted that both Indo-Iranian and
Balto-Slavic underwent the satem consonant shift.  Saying that this is the
"current stance" suggests that there's been controversy on the matter.>>

You miss my point.  *IF* satem was innovated among I-Ir speakers and then
only later 'adopted' by Balto-Slavic speakers, then we can still keep B-S out
of the "original" satem group and in the original NW group - since satem
would have been only adopted in B-S after the NW split-off.  (I'm sure you
are aware of the old East-West IE distinction that is now called dubious.  I
believe there was some controversy there at one time. :))

Sean Crist writes:
<<If we exclude Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, and Balto-Slavic, this leaves
Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Greek, Armenian, Tocharian, and the poorly
attested branches such as Phrygian.  Did you really mean to include Greek,
Armenian, and Tocharian in your "NW IE" grouping?>>

Yes and no.  Exclude only Anatolian and I-Ir.  Greece is certainly northwest
of Anatolia and east of the Caucasus.  Consider Armenian a border territory
of the NW group on the edge of Anatolian and I-Ir.  Tocharian obviously the
result of a radical migration needs a separate categories as do the largely
unknown groups.

Sean Crist writes:
<<This strikes me as a rather odd grouping, and I doubt it's what you meant.>>

Actually I think it sort of matches the UPenn tree - with the possible
exception of IIr - but maybe not.  Group Two goes NW and forms the NW branch.
 Group Three goes east and forms the I-Ir group.  And Group One stays in
Anatolia.

Sean Crist writes:
<<Suppose we construe "NW IE" to mean Italic, Celtic, and Germanic.  It is
quite true that these three branches share a number of lexical items not
found in the other IE languages, and on those grounds, we might be tempted
to group them.  However, there are morphological items which would lead us
to group the languages otherwise: for example, Italic and Celtic have an
unusual superlative suffix not found in Germanic or in the other IE
branches>>

I hope you see here that you have not negated an NW IE in any way here.  All
you are pointing to is an innovation in "I-C" that did not occur in Germanic.
 This does not prove they were not once one group, but only that they split
at some point and innovated separately.  PS - B-S could be included.

I wrote:
<<ON THE OTHER HAND:  No one to my knowledge has posted a list of the "shared
attributes" that the UPenn tree is based on.  The best I saw was the few you
posted on the list and the few posted on the web.>>

Sean Crist replied:
<<The most I can say is to point you to the articles which have already been
published (I'm sure the references are on the web site), and to tell you
again that the team is working on a monograph which will give every bit of
information about their work.  This is work in progress, and getting
everything published takes time.>>

I believe you've already said there is no published complete list and none is
mentioned on the web.  But I will promise not to bring the matter up again,
so long as the tree is not used to "prove" anything.

Regards,
Steve Long