The Indo-European Hypothesis [was Re: The Neolithic Hypothesis]

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Ray Hendon wrote:

> My question is this: is there disagreement among linguists about IE as an
> hypothesis? Are their linguists who dispute the IE model and posit some
> alternative model of language development? If so, are the alternative
> hypotheses credible? Or, is the IE model universally accepted as the only
> possible explanation for how IE languages developed?

I would go a little further than our esteemed moderator and would venture
the opinion that the Indo-European "hypothesis" is probably the only thing
that linguists don't argue about.  In fact, as the quotes I placed around
"hypothesis" show, the only reason we still call it a hypothesis is because
of the small detail that we've never actually found a scrap of written
Proto-Indo-European or heard a recording of it.

John McLaughlin
Utah State University