Northwest IE attributes

[petegray]

As I understand the debate about NW attributes, it has reduced to an
either-or which I believe is misleading.   People appear to be arguing
either that the NW group split off early, in which case satemisation is a
problem, or that the language groups concerned remained in contact with I-I,
in which case we cannot say there is a NW group.

I think, on the contrary, that we can talk of a group even within a
spectrum.   We can talk of the three colours at the red end of the rainbow
as a "group" in a meaningful sense (they are the "warm" colours, etc);  we
can talk of the three "blue" colours at the other end as another group.
Likewise, I see no problem in talking of a group within a spectrum of
languages.  Within the Romance spectrum from Portugal to the toe of Italy,
we could talk meaningfully of a group from Catalan to Piedmont, or a
Galician-portuguese group, or a Southern Italian group.

Therefore I think the debate is misguided.   To talk of  a "NW group" does
not imply that these languages must have split off early from the other IE
dialects.   The boundaries can also remain fuzzy:   Celtic and Germanic can
be seen as central to the group, with Baltic and Slavonic on the one hand,
and Italic on the other, sharing some characteristics but not others.

Peter