the Wheel and Dating PIE

JoatSimeon at aol.com JoatSimeon at aol.com
Fri Mar 3 06:39:36 UTC 2000


>mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>(Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

-- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
conservative.

Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
-- show that this is an exceptional case.

As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
_exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
Greek-Indo-Iranian.

So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.



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