At 5:21 pm -0800 1/4/00, Acadon wrote:
>The effort to reconstruct texts in a long gone
>language that left no samples of such is a daunting
>prospect. But there are those who try.
[...]
>~~~~~~~~~ Begin Quote # 1 ~~~~~~~~~~
>
>There is no good reason to believe that PIE was a
>homogeneous language. It may have been more like a continuum of
>dialects, where innovations can spread in waves (compare the early
>history of the Germanic languages for a similar example). Dialect
>variations can also contribute to the previous pitfalls.
I am very much in agreement with the quote.
>So one might
>have to settle for some sort of "consensus" dialect.
But that is an IMHO an anachronism. A 'consensus' dialect arises only when
a language starts to have an official use, almost always with an
accompanying literary form, for a whole community speaking differing
colloquial dialects. There is no evidence at all that there was any such
movement among speakers of PIE. Therefore IMHO any long continuous text of
'PIE prose' (or verse) is an example conlanging.
It may be interesting, amusing or whatever - but one should IMO not treat
it as reconstruction of an form actually ever used.
As for Nostratic.........- I'd better keep quiet :)
[snip]
>palhV IE pelH- / phelH- Greek: polis, "city"
But in early Greek we find also 'ptolis'. This surely points to an earlier
*pjoli- ?
Ray.
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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