Post by a***@hotmail.comPost by DuÂan VukoticPost by a***@hotmail.comThese emotinal responses don't show you guys in a good light. What I
am denying is his claim of refutations of my postings. It is true
that some data and elementary principles have been posted but those I
can get myself but it is patently obvious that nobody really wants to
hear what I am trying to say.
Would you mind telling us what exactly are you trying to say?
(1) traditional comparative/historical linguistics points to Indo-
european linguistics as its crowning achievement.
One suspects that you represent it that way just so you can pretend to
have knocked off that crown.
Post by a***@hotmail.comThat French and Italian are genetically related is a "ho-hum"
conclusion that nobody would bother disputing. The most interesting
claim in this field is the relationship of Sankrit with Greek, Latin
and Germanic.
It is interesting how when you decide you can't deny certain facts,
you nevertheless try to minimize their importance by referring to them
as "ho-hum", "childish", etc.
That the relatedness of French and Italian is obvious is irrelevant.
Its significance is that it provides a historically well documented
instance of the formation of a language family -- proto-language,
regular sound correspondences and all. This is an answer to people who
would otherwise be arguing that the PIE hypothesis was based on
completely imaginary processes of language history.
Post by a***@hotmail.com(2) Although non-racist, non-nationalistic non-religious purely
academic methods as practiced today (any number of present day indian
scholars probably accept the orthodoxy) claim to prove this genetic
relationship - the relationship was already claimed for racist,
imperialistic reasons by William Jones.
Actually you have not established even that. In the celebrated
paragraph, Jones refers solely to linguistic evidence. Since you
refuse to believe in the existence of this evidence, you fill up the
vacuum with your own inferences based on your minimal historical
knowledge of Jones.
In fact this whole argument -- though it's clearly in the back of many
people's minds -- has never made much sense to me. If comparative
linguistics, or Indo-European, had been invented purely as a
superstructure for "racist, imperialistic" views, why would such
racist imperialists have wanted to claim any kinship whatever between
their European languages and those of India? And why would they have
included some Indian languages, but not others? Any attempt to explain
this fails to make any sense unless there is actual linguistic
evidence.
Post by a***@hotmail.com"That which you desire will come to pass, for as you seek
so shall you find"
Where is the evidence that the earlier non-racist scholars looked at
the data ab initio - everything points to them merely wishing to
confirm what the zeigeist of the European colonial era had already
declared.
Actually this "everything" is entirely in your imagination. You know
nothing of any of the early scholars, "non-racist" or otherwise.
Post by a***@hotmail.comIndians never had a say in the profanation of Sanskrit that was busily
carried out by European scholars in the 19th century when white racism
and Christian denigration of Hinduism were as pervasive as the air
people breathed.
I have no idea what you consider "profanation", and I doubt that you
know anything much about the activity of European scholars in the 19th
century. (Excuse me for being a bit repetitive here, but your manner
of pretending to know a whole lot about this subject is founded on
such utter falsity that it needs to be pointed out again and again.)
In any case this has nothing to do with comparative linguistics and
Indo-European.
Post by a***@hotmail.com(3) William Jones had already announced that Sanskrit came to India
from conquerors. A lot of comparative linguists today want to
distance themselves from the various AITs (soft, hard, waves) - but
the fact remains that there would be no AIT of any kind without the
alleged linguistic evidence.
It's only you who thinks that "AIT" (for which we can read -- any sort
of migration hypothesis other than out-of-India) is an undesirable or
embarrassing consequence. The linguistic evidence requires that the
speakers of various IE languages have got to where they are (at
earliest historical attestation) somehow.
Post by a***@hotmail.comIf Vedic Sanskrit = PIE that solves many problems but apparently thats
not the orthodox position. If Sanskrit is not PIE then AITs become
inevitable - and purely comparative linguistic scholars have to deal
with it and not merely pull the sheet over their head and pretend AITs
are not still being proposed by historical linguists.
Vedic = PIE creates insoluble linguistic problems, as was realized as
early as 1870. As I pointed out above, only Indocentric ideologues
consider migration theories from outside India an intolerable
consequence. The only thing real comparative linguists object to is
the hostile caricature embodied in the continued use of the term
"AIT".
Post by a***@hotmail.com(4) If PIE is proposed as a purely formal construct without claiming
that it (in any of its variant forms proposed by scholars) was ever
spoken by any people - that would be one thing. But if by genetic
relationship it is meant that there was a time in history when PIE was
actually spoken by some people and that later it was gone and that
this happened because the original PIE speakers split into groups that
lost contact with each other and naturally occurring sound changes
eventually made one language split into many - thats saying a lot.
I don't mind saying a lot.
The "purely formal construct" idea seems to me just an evasion. The
"realist" option is a historical hypothesis which explains the
observed facts.
Post by a***@hotmail.comIf it is claimed that PIE was spoken at a specific location at a
specific time - then a homeland becomes mandatory.
That is no more than stating what we mean by "homeland".
The present sorry
Post by a***@hotmail.comstate of affairs with respect to the homeland tells us a story.
Really? Why is it sorry, and what story does it tell us?
Sound
Post by a***@hotmail.comcorrespondences are purely formal without the time element
Since you have repeatedly refused to learn the distinction between
sound correspondences and sound changes, this is either a truism or
nonsense.
(time
Post by a***@hotmail.comenters indirectly because only the earliest occurring word for a
specific meaning should be used to infer genetic relationship)
No idea what this is supposed to mean.
but an
Post by a***@hotmail.comactual time and place where PIE was spoken has to reconcile evidence
from many areas - archeology, stages of human technological
development, geography etc.
Of course. The same is true for any proto-language.
Post by a***@hotmail.com(5) All said and done what constitutes proof of genetic relationship
is only an assumption and is stated vaguely
Apart from mathematics, there are not many fields -- especially
historical fields -- where what constitutes proof can be stated with
precision.
Post by a***@hotmail.comHistorical and comparative linguistcs by Raimo Anttila says
"Multiple agreement in the basic and rather unborrowable vocabulary
with sound correspondeces
considerable and frequent agreement in grammatical formants (endings
prefixes, auxiliaries) and sound correspondences"
provide evidence for genetic relationship, but
"agreements in the principles of syntax, morphology and sound system"
do not.
Tamil and Sanskrit have had enormous influence on each other and this
artificial divide obscures this relationship.
Nonsense. In fact it helps to clarify the nature and history of this
relationship.
Post by a***@hotmail.com(6) I have proposed a more scientific way of looking for sound
correspondences - compare "meaning plexuses" and not words. For
example, "new" and "nine" showing sound corespondences across
languages in more than one meaning plexus seems really weird and all
these examples should be unearthed and analyzed.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. You have come up with
a new nostrum every couple of weeks since you started, from "data
mining" to "mass comparison" to "areal diffusion" to "Nostratic" and
more, which you said would be a more "scientific" way of going about
comparative linguistics. You have not succeeded in explaining what you
would do with any of these, let alone showing how it would improve
upon our present understanding. They seem to be no more than phrases
you have picked up somewhere on the internet and thrown in just to
give the impression that you had some actual ideas to offer.
Post by a***@hotmail.comFor that matter I want to see a cognate word list for Sanskrit/Latin/
Greek/Germanic to be listed in one place in a reader-friendly format.
Any other requests? Continental breakfast?
Post by a***@hotmail.comIt almost looks like the proponents of PIE are pretty coy about the
evidence -
Complete crap. You have been told repeatedly where you can find this
information.
in fact one Indian researcher alleges (IIRC) that Mallory
Post by a***@hotmail.comout and out misrepresented the number of cognates found for Swadesh's
100 word list.
There is hardly any limit to what Indian "researchers" will allege.
Unless you can present some actual evidence, comments like this are of
negative value.
Post by a***@hotmail.com(7) The tree model may be wrong (especially with respect to
Sanskrit). At any rate, the contact/genetic distinction is arbitrary
and a far more nuanced realtionship diagram should replace the
traditional tree diagram.
The distinction is not arbitrary.
As for "tree model does not fully represent historical reality",
probably a suitable Google search would net you 50,000 linguists
saying the same thing, over the past century or more. Ho hum. But the
"far more nuanced relationships", which you would find if you ever
decided to read some linguistics, go beyond what can readily be
expressed in diagrams. The family tree is still useful, once you
understand its limitations.
Ross Clark