PIE vs. Proto-World

[Steven Schaufele]

Pat Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> writes:

>> Of course we have no data on the earliest human language in the same
>> way we have no data on IE

To which JoatSimeon at aol.com responds:

> -- this statement is incorrect.  PIE was spoken 5000 years ago and the
> earliest written examples of IE languages date to the 2nd millenium
> BCE.

> There is a gap of no more than a few millenia.

> The earliest human languages were spoken -- using a minimal estimate --
> at least 50,000 years ago.  Probably considerably more.

> This is several iterations more temporal distance than between us and
> PIE.

I think this misses the point of what Pat was saying.  At least, it
misses the point *i read into* what hann was saying.  What i understood
in Pat's statement was that we have no overt, explicit,
readily-available data on `the earliest human language'; but then, we
don't have any such data on PIE, either; everything we have on PIE has
to be starred because it's reconstructed, ergo hypothetical.

Which is certainly true.  There is no PIE corpus any more than there is
a Proto-World corpus.

I would, however, reject any suggestion that our knowledge of PIE is
ipso facto on a par with our knowledge (or lack thereof) of
`Proto-World'.  Though i admit frankly to being little more than an
amateur at this game, i am quite confident of *most* of what we claim to
know about PIE.  Although i'm not prepared to go as far as Calvert
Watkins (i think it was?) who composed a fable in PIE, i certainly do
not doubt that, in principle, it could be done with our current state of
knowledge.  Whereas i regard `Proto-World' as little more than an
entertaining fantasy.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
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