Re: another language reconstruction question

En réponse à Florian Rivoal <florian@...>:

>         It seems that the language diversity of the world was far
> greater long ago that it is now. Territories having language unity today
> had often much more languages before, as atested by regions we know
> well, like europe, or USA, or to what we can see when we look at the
> languages people use primitive civilisations (aborigens for example).
Indeed. And this language diversity has disappeared because languages have
disappeared.

>         So what is the meaning in finding the common root of IE words as
> they were spoken in proto IE, since proto IE was probably a collection
> of hundred times more languages than the IE family has today.
No it was not. PIE was *one* language. It had a lot of dialectical variation,
which finally broke it into different languages (which themselves originated
languages families), but it was definitely *one* language.

 I dont
> understand how the accurate reconstruction of "the original PIE root",
> can be accurate at all, since it probably refers to hundred or thousands
> of maybe related, yet different words.
It doesn't. You're taking the problem in a completely wrong way. Look back at
your comparison with America. The language diversity there is disappearing
because many languages are disappearing: their speakers die or stop using them.
Why should it be different in PIE times? PIE does refer to one language, but it
doesn't mean it was alone! There were plenty of other languages around
(especially in Europe, were we have some very small ideas of what the pre-Indo-
European languages were), but those disappeared without a trace when PIE people
appeared and 'invaded' Europe. It's easy when writing doesn't exist yet. So
when we talk about PIE, we do talk about a single language. It doesn't mean
that it was the only one around in Europe and Asia at that time. It just means
that it's nearly the only one which survived until today! (broken into hundreds
of languages of course) Language death as we know it now has always existed. A
lot of Pre-IE languages of Europe like Etruscan have disappeared, and most were
not lucky enough to have had a writing system or people around able to write to
report about their existence.

>         PIE is not so far back in time and it already seems strange to
> me, but what about attemps on reconstructing languages much older, like
> Nostratic, or Eurasiatic? It seems nonsense to me.
>
It's not nonsense, it's hypothetical. Also remember that the farther back in
time, the less people there are on Earth. Back in times where human population
could be counted in millions rather than billions, even with smaller
communities it just seems logical that the count brings fewer languages than
now!

One thing you have to realise is that reconstruction only allows us to
reconstruct the "winners", i.e. the languages that managed to survive (into new
forms) until now. All the "losers" (and we have indices that there must have
been plenty of them) have just vanished without a trace, when the population
speaking them were assimilated to the "winners" or exterminated. You see it
happen everyday here, and you even referred to it. Why should have it been
different in the past?

In short, PIE is one single language (with dialectical variations like any
language). Reconstructing it doesn't mean that there was only one language
around at PIE times in Eurasia. It just means that the other languages
disappeared without a trace. Without writing, it's very easy to happen.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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