reality of PIE

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

Someone wrote:
>Genetically related languages were once the same language.

Just want to point out that there is one very big difference betwen languages
and other things that are genetically related.

An animal species is basically made up of a bunch of animals all of the same
basic genotype.  Each individual chicken is supposed to be more or less
genetically like all the other chickens in terms of genetic relatedness.

But languages are made up of a bunch of different parts.  Individual words in
the vocabulary of a language can carry different 'genes'.  Sprachbund affects
grammar.  Morphological features may be traceable to different sources.  And
of course innovations should bring brand new 'genes' into the picture.

(Words and specific morphologies are different.  They DO act like other
things we call genetically related.  But languages don't.)

I'm not saying that some fundamental aspects of a language doesn't come from
a single parent.  Rather that - unlike a biological species - one part of a
language does not carry the whole defining genetic profile.  Languages aren't
made up of individual parts that all have the same genes.

Unlike biological relatedness, the individual parts do not carry the genes
that would faithfully reproduce (clone) the language somewhere else.  The
nouns won't tell you what the verbs are like.  The pure cognate vocabulary
won't give you proper syntax.  In fact, the pure cognate vocabulary may not
even give you a very good vocabulary to work with - if you were hoping for a
working language.

And if you put all those pure genetic parts together, you may not have much
of a language left.

Poul Anderson I think gave us that example of a science essay in English
without using Greek or Latin loans and of course it doesn't look like English
at all.  Or not as we know it.

And maybe that is the problem some of us feel with "genetic relatedness" in
language.  It does not necessarily describe the essence of the language.

Someone wrote earlier of certain Germanic dialects being so "contaminated"
that you couldn't make out their immediate genetics.

And there are those of us who think, as a practical matter, the more
contaminated the better.  Ghurkas, moccasins, brewskis and living la vita.
It all comes in handy.

Larry Trask writes in another post of "variation" as maybe being part of his
definition of a language.

And maybe there's also a characterization that can capture a language's
ability to assimilate or borrow what it needs.  Something like platform free
compatibility in computing.  The degree of "openess" or something like that.
Something that goes beyond mere variation in describing the range of
diversity of genetics within a language or that a language is capable of.

Regards,
Steve Long