Dating the final IE unity

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/28/2000 11:09:16 AM, Rich Anderson wrote:

>Full bibliographical citation, s'il vous plai^t.  Only Thracian data I know of
>is some small inscriptions (personal names and the like) and glosses in Greek
>texts.

>Full texts in Thracian would excite entire generations of Indo-Europeanists.
>So please, where are these to be found?

Fighting sarcasm with sarcasm, I'm sure some IEists would be more excited
about at least two of the text if 'agnis/ignis' were found in them, but
unfortunately it appears there's more cognate and common morphology written
over the starter in my late model automobile ('ignitio/ignition') then there
is in those Thracian text.  But the lack of obvious - jump off the page -
reflex doesn't mean that Thracian wasn't IE.  But it might mean that it is
very old IE.

Of course, somehow the question of time of separation keeps on getting
reduced to Indoeuropean-ness, which of course is not the question at all.

Going back to what all this was supposed to prove, what is supposedly
"leaping off the page" is NOT IEness.  What is supposed (according to the
original premise in this thread) to "leap off the page" is the time of
separation.  No one argues that Thracian is not Indoeuropean.  The problem is
not indoeuropean cognates or morphology.  The problem is that what little we
have can't be read.  I'm sure that might be of interest to some IEists.

You are quite correct, they are Thracian "inscriptions", but hardly 'personal
names and such.'  And they certainly appear to be complete if small "texts".

I only have my old notes with me from an old post that's in the archive on
Thracian (I think related to ancient Balkan languages.)  But of course I had
to answer this before it became too old:

"The Ezero inscription was found in a Thracian burial mound with all the
context and res gestae to identify it as Thracian. It made up of [either 61
or 81 - I can't read it] Greek charcters engraved on a golden ring.  The
reading of the letters poses no difficulties but division of the text into
words is uncertain. Up to now there appeared more than 20 translations of
this text [See D. Detschew, Die thrakischen Sprachreste, Wien, 1957,
pp.567-582], none of them being commonly accepted.

The Kjolmen inscription was carved on a stone tablet found in another
Thracian grave.  It is also written with Greek characters but in
bustrophedon: a line written from right to the left and the next from left to
the right. (a practice found in Greek in the 6th century BC) It contains 51
characters and no acceptible translation has been made.  Note is made that
the arrangement of the characters in these inscriptions often match
identically thsoe found on the more numerous fragements at Samothrace and
elsewhere, so that the fact that they actually represent Thracian has not
been in dispute."

"There are several more smaller inscriptions mentionrd by Duridanov in The
Thracian Language and duNays in Origins of Romanian. ."   The above was
extracted from Duridanov (1985) and duNays, which I don't have date for right
now - but which is excerpted on the web and the URL should be in the archives.

I actually have a jpg of a close-up on the Ezero inscription and a separate
gif of the text on this harddrive and would send these if that would be okay
on the list.  These shots are from a web page on a tour of US museums a few
years ago it went on along with pottery fragments with writing on them.  The
text accompanying the pottery say that "the phrases" on them "make no sense
in the ancient Greek language."

If Thracian is ever deciphered, many IE reflexes will no doubt "leap off the
page."  But these my not genuinely yield any more absolute date than
"ignitio/ignition"

Regards,
Steve Long

by ARA