the Wheel and Dating PIE or NW-IE

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

>frank at uiowa.edu writes:

>Could someone spell out in more detail what these 'archaic characteristics'
>are? Or at least the most salient ones. >>

-- with respect to the Baltic languages, particularly the declension of the
noun and adjective, with seven cases, singular and plural, and preseveration
of the dual as well in some dialects.  This is almost completely unchanged
from PIE.

The Baltic verbal system is more innovative, but the PIE present tense is
well-preserved, and the future represents a PIE disiderative formation
revalued as a simple future.

There PIE lexicon is preserved to a really startling degree:  eg, *dubus ==>
dubus (deep), *gwous ==> guovs (cow), *h(1)rudh ==> rudas (red), etc.

The most archaic Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Old Prussian) are about as
close to PIE as some of the very first attested IE languages.  Conservatism
of a mind-boggling degree.