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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Roots of Lithuanian language ?
In-Reply-To: clary@sesostris.meteo.fr's message of 24 May 1995 18:20:51 GMT
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In article <3pvte3$njd@news.cict.fr> clary@sesostris.meteo.fr (CLARY Olivier)
writes:

>OK, so I understand that among the branches of living IE languages (Albanian,
>Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Romance, Slavic),
>possible groupings are: Balto-Slavic and Italo-Celtic.

It isn't only living branches, but also those in which all members are extinct,
like Anatolian and Tocharian languages.  For the Italo-Celtic question, these
are important.

The major evidence adduced for Italo-Celtic was of two kinds:  The phonetic
developments of the labiovelars, and the so-called r-passives.  The labiovelars
turn out not to be all that rare in the world, and the developments seen in
Italic and Celtic are paralleled all over the world, so they are not cogent.

The r-passive was a long-time strong point, but once the evidence from Hittite
and the Tocharian languages was interpreted correctly, it was found that the
r-passive is a relic in a number of peripheral languages, only lost in a
central innovating group that includes Greek and Indo-Iranian.

Thus, there is no good evidence for a special subgroup containing only Italic
and Celtic.

>Following my habit to learn from readers of this group I would ask:

>   - are there other wider groupings? good indications of the overall shape
	of the tree? (which branch separated earlier etc)

Well, we get into the issue of family-tree model vs. wave-of-innovation model
of development within a family.  There are good arguments for a Western Indo-
European subgroup, but on the other hand the verb system developments are very
much a matter of a central innovating group vs. peripheral groups, with members
of both sides of an East/West split represented in the central group.

Balto-Slavic, though, is late enough not to be based on potential relics.

>   - what proportion of IE specialists support this view vs. another view?

I'm not sure what you're asking, unless it was for support for a particular
subgrouping proposed in answer to your first question.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
