No single ancestor - breath of fresh air

[ECOLING at aol.com]

The message today by Peter Gray is really a breath of fresh air.
I quote only the final paragraph below.

Once we recognize that the facts of reality are more complex than
any of our simple models, we can more easily investigate the facts,
and spend less time in terminological disputes.

That said, it is still the case that various of our techniques,
*even* ones whose assumptions require a much simpler world,
such as single-rooted family trees instead of dialect networks,
can still be useful in challenging us to see just how far they can be
pushed, because such results themselves tell us something about the
facts we are trying to analyze.

The conclusions should whenever possible include a measure of
"strain" on the model, so that the position of Germanic within IE
clearly indicates that one can impose the simple model of the single-rooted
family tree with no converging branches and no overlapping dialect
networks only at the cost of considerable strain
(strain means mismatch with the facts).

Is there a better model, which captures all of the virtues of the family-tree
model without limiting us to that model when it is clearly not applicable?
Perhaps dialect-network and family-tree superimposed in some way
(perhaps what was referred to in another recent communication)?

Best wishes,
Lloyd Anderson

In a message dated 2/8/2000 2:54:37 PM, petegray at btinternet.com writes:

>(b) The idea that there must be a single language progenitor of daughter
>languages is widely disputed.   Some people accept the idea that a
>collection of interrelated languages might never have had a single ancestor,
>but as far back as you care to go were simply a collection of inter-related
>languages.  The language/dialect issue comes up here.   We talk of IE
>"dialects" within PIE, but this is simply terminology.   The point is that
>there is no need whatever for there to have been a single unified PIE
>language.

>Peter