Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/5/2000 7:44:49 PM, stevegus at aye.net writes:

<<Perhaps what you'd need to look for is a vocabulary --- especially a
vocabulary referring to local features, arts, or cultural practises --- that
is still recognizably IE, but which has been subjected to a radically
different set of sound changes.>>

I think that in Cavalli-Sforza's scenario (PIE in the Ukraine replaces Pre-IE
in the Danube, etc.) you have a situation where the sound changes might
become opaque.  The time span would be about 1500-1000 years between the
first Danubian expansion into  the middle Ukraine (yielding Sredni Stog) and
the earliest appearance of Corded Ware.  If that is in fact the location of
*PIE (rather than among the early PitGrave culture over by the Caucasus and
the Caspian sea), than there was pretty much constant contact during that
time.   In its mildest form, it might be analogous to the difference between
British and American cultures, multiplied by about four times as many years.

A Spanish substrate in American English would seem to reflect two long of a
time difference - as between a Romance language and English.

On the other hand, if they had as little information as we have about the
Neolithic language, wouldn't it look like American English had a Latin
substrate?  Or adstrate?  Or even Norman-style Latin conquerors?

<< The proto-Germans apparently respected these folks, and their arts and
culture, enough to borrow both the cultural practices and the vocabulary
that went with. >>

Unless of course it was "the proto-Germans" who borrowed the language and
some practices, but pretty much stayed where they were.  There is basic
cultural continuity from the neolithic and really right from the mesolithic.

Even the Cavalli-Sforza genetic evidence, which I do not put an awful lot of
stock by, suggests that post-neolithic incursions from the south and east
barely affected southern Scandinavia and Denmark.  And only a bit more the
southern rim of the Baltic.

Regards,
Steve Long