Dating the final IE unity

[Stanley Friesen]

At 10:44 PM 1/31/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/31/00 10:20:09 PM, sarima at friesen.net wrote:

><<It is not explicit, but rather implicit in the claim that the words for
>things like 'wheel' were borrowed into IE *after* it spread throughout
>Europe - by over a thousand years!>>

>The question you are addressing has to do with whether Renfrew ever said that
>Celtic or pre-Celtic migrated to western Europe before 4000BC.  My
>understanding is that he was simply saying that an early indo-european
>language did, not that anything identifiably Celtic did.  Let me ask you how
>your comment is relevant?

Because unless the Celtic speakers arrived *much* *later*, by that very
migration process that Renfrew tries to avoid, this widespread IE language
*must* be a predecessor of Proto-Celtic, as there is no other possible
candidate.   I am simply making the logical conclusion from Renfrew's basic
"party line" that no significant migrations have occurred in the right time
frame to spread IE languages.  If this is so, then Proto-Celtic cannot have
spread by late occurring migrations either.  Ergo, that widespread IE
language he talks about is effectively pre-Proto-Celtic.

>PS - You wrote 'the claim that the words for things like 'wheel' were
>borrowed into IE *after* it spread throughout Europe - by over a thousand
>years.'

>But actually if we give a generous 4000BC date to wheeled-transport (as
>opposed to wheels in general or just plain round objects) and remember that
>in Hittite the word for wheel is different

I seem to remember somebody posting a Hittite cognate with a reasonably
similar meaning.

> - we can squeeze in a time spread
>for the word that matches Renfrew's 4000BC date for western Europe to a 't' -
>presumably before of course the specific sound changes observed in e.g.,
>'*kweklo' occurred in the attested IE daughters.  Since those SPECIFIC
>changes could have happened a bit later (I believe) - there wouldn't be
>anything amazing about this, would there?

Not THAT much later.  So you've cut it down from 3000 years to a "mere"
1000 years.  Big deal!   No widespread language has *ever* maintained unity
that long!

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com