Dating the final IE unity

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

fX99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>Are you sure it works in your favor?

-- of course it does; and note that pretty well every linguist agrees with me.

>Following Renfrew, roughly 4000 years separates non-Anatolian PIE

-- rather more, actually.  More like 6000.

>from Mycenaean (1200BC), Sanskrit (1000BC?) and Latin (500BC).  How
>'differentiated' are those three languages?  On a scale of 1 to 10?

-- around 2.  About as different from each other as the Romance languages
today -- in a stage where the similarities leap off the page and where some
words and phrases are still mutually comprehensible.

 Which is to say, with separation somewhere in the 1000 to 2000 years range.
The dialects leading to Sanskrit and Greek would have separated sometime in
the mid 3rd millenium BCE, with Latin a bit earlier.

Try this:  the word for "fire" in Sanskrit and Latin:

Nom. sing.      agnis           ignis
acc. sing.      agnim           ignem
dative          agnibhyas       ignibus

Latin and Greek still used nearly the same term for their principle god:
Juppiter/Zeus Pater.

The examples can be multiplied without end.  The similarities between, say,
Ancient Irish and Latin are also striking -- the Irish of the Ogham
inscriptions is an orthodox IE inflected language, without any of the odd
features that developed over the next couple of centuries.

>And you say there is too little differentiation for Renfrew's scenario to be
>true?

-- far too little.  Enormously too little.

>But once again, based on any objective standard at all, what is the measure
>of differentiation and how do you apply it against the ancient IE languages
>so you know what date is too much and what is just enough? A very specific
>question!

-- and one which would require you to study the languages concerned for
several years before you could understand it.  That's the problem when you
try to 'reinvent the wheel' in an unfamiliar field without an adequate
knowledge base.

Short form, even if ALL the IE languages changed as slowly as the MOST
conservative IE language known (Lithuanian) Renfrew's date would still be
utterly out of the question.  And to so suppose is grossly improbable.

The basic principle of science is uniformitarianism; in this specific
instance, we must assume that linguistic behavior in prehistory covered
roughly the same range as it does in historic times.  That, of course, is
precisely the principle that Renfrew violates.