Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew

X99Lynx at aol.com X99Lynx at aol.com
Sat Apr 14 05:17:33 UTC 2001


I wrote:
<<Well if the Anatolian IE languages arose as an "isolate"....
> ... then Pre-PIE and Anatolian were just instances of those isolates.  Every
> one of those "thousands, of distinct languages covering very small areas"
> would look "intrusive" compared to every other one.  Like Minoan, Pre-Pie
> would be indigenous.  But, unlike Minoan, Pre-PIE would yield a great many
> ancestors.

In a message dated 4/13/2001 6:35:15 AM, alderson+mail at panix.com writes:
<<I'm sorry.  I can't make any of this parse.  The Anatolian languages (in
the sense of IE languages spoken in Anatolia) are by definition not an
isolate, since they have known relatives (the rest of the IE family).

I think by "pre-PIE" you mean "non-Anatolian IE in a view that has Anatolian
branching off first", but I'm not sure where you mean to make it indigenous,
and I certainly don't understand what you mean by "would yield a great many
ancestors".  "Descendants", perhaps? >>

Yes.  Thank you.  Bad case of cross-wiring.

As to the above, what I was hoping to say was... that if you assume the
analogy to New Guinea's "1000's of distinct languages" could be correct, then
PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) could have been one of those "distinct
languages" in Anatolia.

(On this list the term "isolate" has been used to refer to PIE, with regard
its apparent lack of evidence of sister or parent languages.  A search of the
archives will pull up a thread starting with Roz Frank's note of 31 Jan 2000
and a good number of replies re-quoting her statement, "PIE... was a
linguistic isolate..." without objection. Technically in the broad sense, of
course, PIE has relatives.  But it seems that every one pretty much knew what
Roz meant.)

AND, if PIE or Pre-PIE (take your choice) is assumed to have been one of
those distinct languages or "isolates", then it would be no surprise that
daughter Anatolian IE languages would appear to be isolated (if not
technically an "isolate") and dissimilar from its neighbors.

My original point was of course that, under those circumstances, there would
be plenty of good reason to expect Anatolian IE to "look intrusive", but not
actually be intrusive.

By "indigenous" I meant that Anatolian IE would not have arrived in Anatolia
in that form, but rather developed there from a previous IE ancestor.

Regards,
Steve Long



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