The Neolithic Hypothesis

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/19/99 2:14:58 AM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:

<<Given the enormous variations in rate of change, that's not easy
to answer.  We have Mycenaean Greek, Vedic Sanskrit and Hittite
attested c. 1500 BC, and comparing those three, one doesn't get
the impression that the split had been very recent.  Even Greek
and Sanskrit, which are reasonably close to each other within the
whole of IE, are more divergent than any Romance or Slavic
language, maybe roughly comparable to West Germanic and North
Germanic now, so somewhere between 2000 and 3000 years of
separation would be a fair guesstimate. >>

The issue then once again comes down to how one turns the difference in
language into a separation in time.  When you've discussed this in the past,
an important difference you've often noted is verb tense systems, particularly
the way these languages handle the aorist/perfective aspect (although you
mention others.)  A breakdown you once gave went:

<<1) no -s or *-s is a 3rd.p.sg. personal marker: Hittite, Tocharian, Germanic.
3) *-(i)sk-: Armenian.
4) s-preterite: Italic, Celtic, Albanian.
5) s-aorist: Greek, Indo-Iranian, Slavic(-Baltic).>>

I'm impressed by this method of dividing IE languages because it strikes me as
the kind of changes that clearly take a bit of time and work.  One doesn't
transfer a perceptual system of time-stream and events into language
overnight.  The serious problems created by semantics and borrowings and
dialects are considerably reduced.  (In contrast, lexical comparisons seem
unacceptibly unreliable in separating IE languages through time.  The
glottochronological approach, for example, really suffers from the fact that
differences in vocabulary are just not regular or predicatible or transparent
when it comes to either borrowings or lost meanings or small changes in
sounds.  The similarity or dissimilarity between basic words just involve too
many factors to justify many conclusions about time of separation.  And the
true downfall is the "semantic" shifts which make our modern references to
ancient entities demonstrably unreliable. E.g., there was no word for color in
Homer.)

Assuming that these differences in verb tense structure do reflect real
differences in time, is there a logical way to explain how such differences
came about?  This would seem to be a clear way of tracking both time and
location.  For example, was the aorist/perfective aspect a borrowing?  I'm
totally unaware of its history in other language groups.  Was it sui generis?

You mention <<both Germanic and Armenian show some striking archaisms in
their verbal systems, which might be seen as approximating Germanic
to Hittite (simple two tense verbal system, no aorist/perfective
aspect), and Armenian to Tocharian (e.g. imperfect  = optative).>>

I have some reason to believe that a simple change in locale and neighbors can
account for the lexical or basic phonological differences between Greek and
Sanskrit in a relatively short time (much shorter than the 2000-3000 years
you've estimated.)  Ancient German and Latin traveled a much shorter distance
to become modern English and French in a much shorter time.  But subtleties
like the aorist do ask for a change in thinking that must always take more
time.

Is there a historical or geographical correlation that you've made that
accounts for the differences you mention?  And how do you arrive at a number
like 2000 to 3000 years to account for the differences?  Could this whole
aspect thing have developed and travelled (in wagons or on horseback) as late
as 2500-2000 bce?

And finally is it possible that the archaism of German/Hittite actually
reflects an innovation?  Could it be a more modern simplification to make the
language easier to assimilate among non-speakers?  Like possibly the loss of
inflection?

Regards,
Steve Long