Dating the final IE unity

[Stanley Friesen]

At 03:50 AM 2/22/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:
>sarima at friesen.net wrote:
><<Indeed, in some ways PIE could be *defined* as the most recent common
>ancestor of those three languages (which is why the Indo-Hittite hypothesis
>often is considered to exclude Anatolian from the IE family proper).>>

>I think that is the other way around.  The I-H hypothesis I believe has
>Hittite < PIE.

Not at all.  In fact the very *form* of the word implies exclusion of
Anatolian from IE proper (unless you want to suggest it means that Hittite
is more closely related to Indic than to other branches of IE :-)

The way the names of proto-languages are formed pretty much requires PIE to
be derived from PIH.

>  In fact I believe there's still an open question whether
>Anatolian was the innovator or 'narrow PIE' was.

Actually, it is clear that *both* must have innovated in some respects
(assuming such a branch sequence).

>Which means yes you would still have to account for the Anatolian differences
>in dating PIE, accepting the I-H hypothesis.

Well, actually I do anyhow, since I reject the Indo-Hittite hypothesis!

But the differences in form of the actual cognates are very minor.  In fact
the retention of some laryngeals is very telling.  It significantly limits
the date of divergence.

>sarima at friesen.net replied:
><<Nope, not even close!  It is about 500 years more differentiated, plus or
>minus a few years.  Phonologically, and (with some exceptions)
>grammatically, it is quite archaic.  The only reason it *seems* so
>different is the relatively few inherited IE words it retains.>>

>Really, 500 years.  Kind of Italian (1500AD) to Italian (2000AD) - except of
>course for the lack of gender in Hittite - and some other small matters like
>that.  Nothing important.

It is rather interesting: gender has virtually disappeared in some IE
languages in rather less time than that.  English lost grammatical gender
between 900 AD and 1200 AD, if I remember correctly.  It actually *is* a
minor matter.

[Though I have some doubts about reconstructing a full fledged grammatical
gender system for PIE].

>And I see that the rate of loss of "inherited IE words" also does not enter
>into the time equation.

It has some bearing, but rates of borrowing vary greatly, and so this is
not very illuminating (glottochronology notwithstanding).

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