reality of PIE as dialect network

[ECOLING at aol.com]

The following comments by Larry Trask on comments by Peter Gray
reveal yet again that the use of absolutely discrete categories
yes-or-no may be a model not fitting the facts, and attempts to force
such a terminological usage on us may be counterproductive,
by rendering such a model incapable of application to messy reality.

[PG commenting on someone else]

>>> No.  Relationship is an absolute.  ....
>>> Genetically related languages were once the same language.

>> Sorry, Bob, I can't agree, and I suspect you're in a minority these
>> days (though I may be wrong!).

[LT, with clarifying inserts [ ] in the first sentence]

>You [PG] are [wrong], I'm afraid.  The statement above is true not just
>because all linguists believe it: it is true by definition.  Languages which
>do not descend from a common ancestor are not genetically related.

Not so, the matter is not so simple.
Sufficiently massive borrowing *does* constitute a kind of
genetic relation, and the more sophisticated researchers today
do recognize that all of these kinds of genetic relation do occur
simultaneously, in various different combinations and mixtures.
That does not mean we cannot distinguish the kinds.
And with careful work and also some luck, we can also use the manifest
results of language cross-breedings to conclude something about
the circumstances of the language contacts and social contacts
which led to them.

If two language clusters are in intimate contact
(whether ultimately descending from some proto-world or not)
long enough that their interaction creates a complex dialect
network, then that dialect network *is real*
(referring here to Trask's phrase that PIE is real,
which Peter Gray did not in any way deny),
yet it may be impossible in the time frame of that dialect net
or in any time frame somewhat preceding it
to say that there is a single point uniform ancestor,
from which all descendants evolved.

The same may be true of a single language having spread
across an area with a number of other languages which
become substrates of different parts of the proto-language cluster.

It simply may be a more useful model to think in terms of
an ancestor with some regional variations which do *not*
go back to a common origin, in either of the real sorts of situations
just mentioned (and others).

This in no way denies that there should *also* be single origins
for some common elements in such situations, nor does it deny
that much significant IE morphology *does* go back to a common
singular origin in PIE.

Nor, more importantly than either of the above, which are conclusions,
does it deny that it is useful to try to lead various attested forms back
to common origins in PIE, to discover more cognate forms and
structures than are known at any given time.

All of these models and techniques can operate simultaneously,
with more benefit that if we limit ourselves to only one,
as long as we keep in mind the limited capabilities of each
technique we use, that *every* technique is biased towards
certain sorts of answers rather than others, biases which may
be more harmful or helpful depending on the particular nature
of the context being investigated.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington, DC 20003