Re: Indo-Hittite

JS Bangs wrote:

> John Cowan sikyal:
>
> > They used the oldest available actual (not reconstructed)
> > representatives of each branch, though not necessarily the oldest texts
> > of those languages.  Therefore: Hittite, Toch B, Latin, Old Irish,
> > (Homeric?) Greek, (modern?) Armenian, modern Albanian, Skt, Avestan,
> > Old English, Old Church Slavonic, modern Lithuanian.
>
> Old English is older than Gothic? Methought it were the opposite.
Methought so too.  IIRC this was one of the objections raised on Cybalist.
Do the UPenn people justify their choice??

 As William H. Bennett (who taught at Michigan for a long time and is surely
deceased-- not to be confused with the current Culture Warrior Wm. Bennett)
writes in his grammar:

"Gothic is known [from the] Biblical translation ascribed to Wulfila (c.311-
c.383)....Among the early Germanic literary records, which also include
Norse, English, Frisian, Saxon, Low Franconian and High German documents,
the Gothic tests are by far the oldest; the first comparable writings in
[the others] are four to nine centuries later. More significant from a
linguistic point ot view...is the fact that Gothic is the most generally
archaic representative of the Germanic group to appear in extensive
specimens; the only prior records of Germanic are the first few runic
inscriptions, which are very brief...."

The only problem may be that the surviving mss. date from much later, IIRC.
(I think Wright may give the dates of the various codices; Mr. B. discussed
them in class, but not in his book).  But this may be true of the surviving
OE materials too???

The other problem could be that Gothic had no descendants..but then neither
do Hittite or Tocharian.