Re: Indo-Hittite (was "Wife" (was: Homosexuality etc.)

Roger Mills scripsit:

> But as I understand it, that _is_ the current view; it just isn't called
> Indo-Hittite anymore.  Hittite is recognized as clearly divergent from all
> other IE; IIRC it lacks/has lost the feminine gender; lacks/has lost some of
> the verbal system; plus it retains traces of two of the laryngeals
> (transliterated "-h-" and "-hh-") that show up in all other IE only by their
> affects on surrounding V or C.
Poking around on the net indicates that some people do think Hittite
broke away earlier, but other people don't think so, and attribute its
deviancy to the influence of non-IE languages.  Celtic after all is
the only VSO branch, and nobody thinks that there is a high-level split
between Celtic and non-Celtic.

AFAIK the only absolutely uncontroversial node in the tree between the
standard branches and IE itself is Indo-Iranian.  Some people accept
Balto-Slavic and others reject it; almost nobody thinks there's an
Italic-Celtic or Italic-Celtic-Germanic node any more.
What's worse, the evidence about grouping based on phonology absolutely
contradicts that based on morphology.

> I don't think so.........but we'll find out....maybe  To paraphrase, "Ask
> two IE-ists, you'll get three opinions."
Ask three Austronesianists, you'll get five opinions!

--
In politics, obedience and support      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
are the same thing.  --Hannah Arendt    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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