the Wheel and Dating PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/31/00 8:40:36 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<it makes it overwhelmingly probable. Linguistics is
not an experimental science; it deals in probabilities, not definitives.  You
are, to be frank, resisting the probabilities for reasons external to
linguistics.>>

I think if you consider it further you'll recall that experimental science
often deals with probabilities, but of course in the lab there is more
opporyunities for 'controls' - testing things different ways to see if the
probabilities change.

If I seem to be resisting probabilities, it is first of all because I am not
sure how they are being calculated.  I was not sure for example that there
wasn't a linguistic principle that would take care of the cushion period
between PIE unity date and the specific sound change date.  And it becomes
important to be insistent on that kind of question, because they can
sometimes be minimized.  But because I know about calculating probabilities,
I can tell you they should not.

As far as my purposes:  my purposes have to do with understanding why there
should be a conflict - if in fact there truly is one - between different
views of what happened back then.  I don't know that anything that you've
written on this matter is incorrect - but asking why you believe would not
seem to be inconsistent with honest scholarship.  In case you think that I
have some nefarious purpose in mind,  I can forward you messages I've sent to
archaeologists where I've brought up linguistic arguments I learned here to
challenge their statements.

I don't think it is fair to say that the evidence we have been discussing is
inconsistent with linguistics or that external information has not been used
in reaching some of the conclusions we've discussed here.

(If you really want to see something 'external to linguistics' take a look at
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/Indo2.html (watch the wrap) where you'll
find an article (co-authored by an environmental scientist at the Oak Ridge
National Labs) reprinted from Current Anthropology that proposes to settle
the supposed 'irreconcilable conflict between Renfrew and paleolinguistics'
by hypothesizing that IE spread through Europe at the end of the Ice Age.
It's called 'Did Indo-European Languages spread before farming?' and it
offers dates of roughly 10,000BC.  I believe that this sort of hypothesis
gains credibility only because of that alleged 'irreconcilabilty' line.  And
I don't think that the conflict would stand up and give credibility to this
sort of thing if experts like yourself were involved in an improved dialogue
between one another - a better dialogue than I can hope to supply .  I can't
believe that linguistics and archaeology can not  take different paths but
ultimately end up at the same destination.)

Regards,
Steve Long