Dating the final IE unity (was: Re: GREEK PREHISTORY AND LANGUAGE)

[Wolfgang Schulze]

Stanley Friesen schrieb:

> At 11:28 AM 10/13/99 -0400, Sean Crist wrote:
>> -Renfrew proposes that Anatolia is the homeland of the Indo-Europeans.  If
>> so, it is very odd the Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic existed in the midst of
>> languages (Hattic and Hurrian) which are not only not Indo-European but
>> which bear no typological resemblance to Indo-European.

> Indeed a strong case can be made for them being related to (part of) the
> North Caucasian Family.

As far as I remember the IE list already had a lengthy discussion of a
possible affiliation of Hattic, Hurrian etc. to 'North Caucasian'. So I
won't pick all the whole matter but will restrict myself to some basic
(and rather trivial) claims:

1) [in re Sean Crist]: 'Typological resemblance' can NEVER be a
criterion to support a hypothesis concerning language affiliation. This
is common sense in the linguistic community, I think. Obviously,
however, it cannot be repeated often enough. 

2) [in re Stanley Friesen] NOBODY can make "a strong case for Hattic,
Hurrian etc. to be related to (part of) the North Caucasian family":
First, the notion 'North Caucasian' is a rather suggestive term that
does not find linguistic support [except by a certain school from
Moscow]. All we have is a rather strong evidence for 'West Caucasian'
(Abkhaz, Abaza; Ubyx, Adyghej, Kabarda) and a NOT SO STRONG evidence for
what is called East Caucasian (29 languages, if we neglect the position
of certain dialects of Dargwa etc.). Neither Proto-WC nor Proto-EC have
ever been reconstructed as more or less 'complete' language systems,
hence it is rather difficult to tell, HOW they really looked like
[believe me, I have been working in this domain since more than 25 years
and very often got desparated when trying to say more about these
assumed proto-languages than standard trivialities]. To posit that
Hattic and Hurrian etc. are related to (parts) of 'North Caucasian'
cannot reflect more than a pre-scientific 'on-dit', just because we
still do not have enough scientific evidence for the history of both WC
and EC. Only if we can tell HOW the systems of WC and EC looked alike
say 5000 years ago (we generally calculate that EC has split up 3000 -
2500 BC and we need an additional time gap (say 2000 years) to
accomodate for the high degree of 'divergencies', Hattic, Hurrian etc.
show) AND only if we are able to reconstruct earlier forms of Hattic,
Hurrian etc. via internal reconstruction than we might get a point of
reference that would allow us to judge any possible affinity of any
language of Ancient Asia Minor to those that are (at present!) spoken in
the Caucasus. The desastrous 'results' of an ad hoc comparison between
the languages in question can be easily checked with the help of D.
Diakonoff/ S.A. Starostin 1986. Hurro-Urartian as an East Caucasian
Language. München (Kitzinger) (see my review in Kratylos
1987:154-59).

W.S.
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