Dating the final IE unity

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2000, Steve Long wrote in response to S. M. Stirling:

> Do the similarities between Latin and Hittite 'leap off the page" as you say?
> (Please recall how long it took for relationship to even be detected.)

Knudtson published the Tell-el-Amarna letters in 1902, as I remember, and put
forth the claim that Hittite was Indo-European at that time.  Hrozny' demon-
strated the IE-ness of Hittite in his 1917 monograph to the satisfaction of the
general IEist populace.  How long did you think it took?

> And what does Hittite (for starters) add to the total 'differentiation'
> between the first attested PIE languages?  If 2000 years separates Latin and
> Sanskrit, Hittite should certainly add another 2000 years, wouldn't you say?

Absolutely not.  Hittite looks IE enough that I'd say less than 1000 years,
maybe less than 500, separate it from the Neogrammarian core--which was always
too close to the classical languages and did not pay enough attention to the
outliers.

>That would put you at (1000BC minus 2000 minus 2000 more) 5000BC.

No, more like 1000 - 2000 - 500 => 3500BCE or so.

> Or do all these languages decline <fire> with only a change in the initial
> vowel and do they all have the same name for their principle god - thus
> justifying a 2000 year separation between all of them.

> JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:
> <<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

Not sure what you mean to say by "only a change in the initial vowel":  In
Indo-Iranian, PIE *e *o *a all > PII *a, while in Latin e > i/_[+nasal stop].
Knowing that, we can take one look at the words for "fire" in these two
languages and *immediately*, without further ado, see them for the cognates
they are.

On the other hand, there were two words for "fire", the active *egni- and the
inactive/neuter *pur-, and the different dialects reflect different choices.

The cognate phrase _dyauh. pitar_ of course occurs in the Veda, and the
Germanic god Tiw/Tyr/Zio is another reflex; in _How to Kill a Dragon_, Watkins
mentions, as I recall, a Hittite reflex _s^ius^_ as well.  So if that's what
you are looking for, it's there.

								Rich Alderson