Re: Old European-contact conlang

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> quoting Benct Philip Jonsson:
>
>> I've never tried an a-posteriori histlang with such a
>> long timeframe, mostly because I'm deeply sceptical
>> about such 'deep' reconstructions -- essentially
>> secondary reconstructions from already reconstructed
>> languages -- and hence am concerned about realism.
>
> Yes: reconstructions are always shaky, thus a reconstruction
> based on reconstructions is doubly shaky.  Our model of PIE
> probably contains elements that never existed at the same
> time, and with internal reconstruction, this problem is
> aggravated.  As a conlanger, however, you can use such a
> reconstruction, as long as it makes sense and looks like a
> plausible language, to develop a conlang from it.
I'm sceptical, too. But nevertheless I am somewhat attracted to this
kind of reconstructions. They won't ever be able to reconstruct any
of the proto-languages they are aiming for with any degree of
exactness, probably, but it seems to be possible to arrive at some
kind of approximation, which can form a basis for further refinement.
Anyway it's better than not making the attempt at all.

> Right.  Krahe produced, among other valuable contributions
> to IE historical linguistics, a widely used handbook of PIE,
> but later jeopardized his reputation with his speculations
> on "Old European".  As I pointed out earlier in this thread,
> while his etymologies seem to make sense, the names do not
> show the expected sound correspondences (especially the
> vowels are very odd) and must therefore be borrowed from
> an unknown language rather than inherited from PIE (and
> Krahe's conclusion that PIE was spoken in western Europe
> is groundless).  It is a similar story as with Greenberg,
> who won a great reputation with his brilliant typological
> work, and lost it again with his speculations on "Eurasiatic"
> and "Amerind".
I like that. My kind of guys. Reputation is overrated.

LEF