Indo-Hittite

Here's a reply to my query to Cybalist:
(I might mention too, that they discussed the upenn cladistic survey some
time back and were not impressed-- IIRC because of the language(s) selected
to represent the various families.  I'll try to find it in their archive)

Message: 10
   Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 07:38:36 -0000
   From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
Subject: Re:Status of Hittite

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Roger Mills" <romilly@e...> wrote:

> Is it a separate branch, coordinate with all other IE (a "sister" of
IE)--the "Indo-Hittite" hypothesis, which seems not to be mentioned
much these days?

People don't like the name (most linguists are of the opinion that the
name "Indo-European" for the family that _includes_ Anatolian is
perfectly suitable, especially because its acceptability does not
depend on the position of Anatolian.

> Or is it simply another branch, coordinate with Germanic, Italic,
Indo-Iranian et al., hence merely another "daughter" language?
As a side issue, can the other Anatolian IE languages, attested so
much later than Hittite, be viewed as descendants of Hittite, or not,
or is this question unanswerable for lack of sufficient data??

Old Luwian was documented not much later than Hittite. Palaic is also
old. The "neo-Anatolian" languages that continued to be used
throughout the first millennium BC are usualy taken to be descendants
of Luwian regional dialects. Anatolian, at any rate, seems to be a
"branch" in the sense that the reconstructible Proto-Anatolian
language is not ancestral to any other IE languages (in particular, it
is not identical with PIE). My opinion is that it is coordinate with
"the rest" of IE, and that the structure of the IE family tree is not
as flat as used to be thought; the notion "branch" should therefore be
used with some care.

> Or will this be a case of "ask two experts, get three opinions??" :-)
Sometimes you can get three opinions from a single expert, especially
one who realises that authoritative-sounding answers may create the
wrong impression :-))

> (A similar problem-- the status of the Formosan languages-- led to a
redefinition of "Proto Austronesian", to the extent that a form, no
matter how widely attested, cannot be considered PAN unless there is
also a Formosan witness.  I don't think IE studies have adopted such a
strict rule.)

It would be a good thing if it were consistently adopted. There are
some practical obstacles, however. The Formosan branches of AN have
extant members and can be studied much more closely than Anatolian
will ever be because of obvious philological limitations. I'd argue
that _both_ Anatolian and Tocharian stand outside the "core IE"
cluster. I wish somebody came up with a catchy name for that central
"crown clade" (to borrow a term from biology) that includes all the
living IE languages. There's no such handy name as yet, so people
label many reconstructions "PIE" for lack of a more suitable term.

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