European languages before Indo-European

[Octavià]

Don't forget I study substrate languages, which by definition only survive in the form of loanwords. Working with small datasets might be painful, but by no means "ignorable".

Sure. We don't know, for instance, the grammars of the languages the Old European hydronymy came from. But it seems that you, like many long-rangers, apply dictionary comparison to languages whose grammars are known, and that's problematic.

The problem is a proto-language like traditional PIE has still loanwords which must to be identified if we want to isolate the part of the lexicon truly inherited (native core).

Certainly, I don't have enough evidence to say Kartvelian (or perhaps an extinct relative of it) was a substrate/adstrate to Proto-Germanic, but the fact Armenian underwent the same shift than Germanic remain to be explained.

Yes; but when a phenomenon occurs in a language that in all likelihood had no contact with Kartvelian at any time, doesn't that speak against holding Kartvelian responsible for it? I think the matter can be resolved without bringing Kartvelian into play (except for the recent glottalization in Eastern Armenian dialects). Have you read Tropylium's post?

See my answer to it.

[WeepingElf]

I agree that Kartvelian influence in Germanic is ridiculous, but I've seen a number of folks who try to postulate an Eastern origin for Germanic to work this in…

Honestly, none of us know anything about the substrate or substrates from which Germanic emerged, so these kind of "considerations" look unscienfical to me.

Sure, none of us know about the substrata involved, but a Kartvelian substratum would be so unexpected on geographical grounds alone that it is definitely unscientific to assume it unless one manages to find regular Kartvelian cognates for a significant number of Germanic words without Indo-European etymologies. To my knowledge, such cognates have not been found.

I would say the similarity can be accounted by slightly modified Glottalic Theory and some simple phonetic universals:
0) PIE had an unstable voiced glottalic series.

"Voiced glottalic stops"? As the glottis is closed, voice is only possible if the stops are implosive, that is, the air is sucked into the mouth rather than expelled from the larynx.

I think Tropylium and Kortlandt mean pre-glottalized voiced stops, though I am not sure.

BTW, while I haven't taken any particularly close look at Uralo-Dravidian, my initial impression has been that it's about as plausible as Hungaro-Sumerian (ie. a bunch of *pućka). The comparisions have a large degree of semantic leeway and appear to be assembled by perusing the UEW side-by-side with a Tamil dictionary. I have no dout many would fall apart immediately if we had a detail'd reconstruction of proto-Dravidian (which, AFAIK, we don't.)

Wikipedia says this:

Uralo-Dravidian
The theory that the Dravidian languages display similarities with the Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of contact in the past is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and has been supported by a number of scholars, including Robert Caldwell, Thomas Burrow, Kamil Zvelebil, and Mikhail Andronov. This theory has, however, been rejected by some specialists in Uralic languages, and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian linguists such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.

Yes, the Uralic-Dravidian hypothesis has seen some serious discussion, but that does not mean that it is well-founded or even proven. If Uralic and Dravidian were related to each other, one would expect correspondences in morphology, which appear to be absent. I don't know of which quality the proposed lexical cognates are, though.

[WeepingElf]

Don't forget I study substrate languages, which by definition only survive in the form of loanwords. Working with small datasets might be painful, but by no means "ignorable".

Sure. We don't know, for instance, the grammars of the languages the Old European hydronymy came from. But it seems that you, like many long-rangers, apply dictionary comparison to languages whose grammars are known, and that's problematic.

The problem is a proto-language like traditional PIE has still loanwords which must to be identified if we want to isolate the part of the lexicon truly inherited (native core).

So how does this justify dictionary comparison?

Certainly, I don't have enough evidence to say Kartvelian (or perhaps an extinct relative of it) was a substrate/adstrate to Proto-Germanic, but the fact Armenian underwent the same shift than Germanic remain to be explained.

Yes; but when a phenomenon occurs in a language that in all likelihood had no contact with Kartvelian at any time, doesn't that speak against holding Kartvelian responsible for it? I think the matter can be resolved without bringing Kartvelian into play (except for the recent glottalization in Eastern Armenian dialects). Have you read Tropylium's post?

See my answer to it.

You argue that because the substratum is unknown, it was "unscientifical" to doubt it was Kartvelian. You have it upside-down. It is unscientific to assume it was Kartvelian because there is no evidence for a contact between Germanic and Kartvelian since the breakup of Late PIE. It may be that Late PIE (or Early PIE) was influenced by Kartvelian, but why, then, does that influence manifest only in Germanic and Armenian?

[Octavià]

Honestly, none of us know anything about the substrate or substrates from which Germanic emerged, so these kind of "considerations" look unscienfical to me.

Sure, none of us know about the substrata involved, but a Kartvelian substratum would be so unexpected on geographical grounds alone that it is definitely unscientific to assume it unless one manages to find regular Kartvelian cognates for a significant number of Germanic words without Indo-European etymologies. To my knowledge, such cognates have not been found.

Do you remember my list of substrate loanwords in Spanish and Latin with Kartvelian cognates?

You argue that because the substratum is unknown, it was "unscientifical" to doubt it was Kartvelian. You have it upside-down. It is unscientific to assume it was Kartvelian because there is no evidence for a contact between Germanic and Kartvelian since the breakup of Late PIE.

No, no, no. It's unscientific to discard Kartvelian ONLY for that reason. Absence of evidence can't be the proof of non-existence. This is a logical principle too often forgot.

I think Tropylium and Kortlandt mean pre-glottalized voiced stops, though I am not sure.

This still sounds me weird. I still prefer the view that Germanic and Armenian kept the Eurasiatic/Nostratic system while PIE changed it.

Yes, the Uralic-Dravidian hypothesis has seen some serious discussion, but that does not mean that it is well-founded or even proven. If Uralic and Dravidian were related to each other, one would expect correspondences in morphology, which appear to be absent. I don't know of which quality the proposed lexical cognates are, though.

I still disagree with the role you assign to morphology in macro-comparative work, for the reasons I've stated before.

[WeepingElf]

Honestly, none of us know anything about the substrate or substrates from which Germanic emerged, so these kind of "considerations" look unscienfical to me.

Sure, none of us know about the substrata involved, but a Kartvelian substratum would be so unexpected on geographical grounds alone that it is definitely unscientific to assume it unless one manages to find regular Kartvelian cognates for a significant number of Germanic words without Indo-European etymologies. To my knowledge, such cognates have not been found.

Do you remember my list of substrate loanwords in Spanish and Latin with Kartvelian cognates?

Spanish and Latin aren't Germanic languages. Attributing Grimm's Law to a Kartvelian substratum only makes sense if you can show a specific Kartvelian influence on Germanic. Latin words resembling Kartvelian words have nothing to say here.

You argue that because the substratum is unknown, it was "unscientifical" to doubt it was Kartvelian. You have it upside-down. It is unscientific to assume it was Kartvelian because there is no evidence for a contact between Germanic and Kartvelian since the breakup of Late PIE.

No, no, no. It's unscientific to discard Kartvelian ONLY on that reason. Absence of evidence can't be the proof of non-existence. This is a logical principle too often forgot.

Sure. I don't say that Kartvelian cannot have anything to do with Grimm's Law, but I maintain that it is so unlikely that drawing a connection between Grimm's Law and Kartvelian is utterly random and non sequitur and thus unscientific.

I think Tropylium and Kortlandt mean pre-glottalized voiced stops, though I am not sure.

This still sounds me weird. I still prefer the view that Germanic and Armenian kept the Eurasiatic/Nostratic system while PIE changed it.

This is Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's view, but most Indo-Europeanists remain sceptical. Replacing the standard model of Late PIE by the one proposed by G & I makes things easier with Germanic and Armenian, but it adds more complications to the developments of all other branches. That's a poor trade-off.

Yes, the Uralic-Dravidian hypothesis has seen some serious discussion, but that does not mean that it is well-founded or even proven. If Uralic and Dravidian were related to each other, one would expect correspondences in morphology, which appear to be absent. I don't know of which quality the proposed lexical cognates are, though.

I still disagree with the role you assign to morphology in macro-comparative work, for the reasons I've stated before.

You disagree with the role I assign to morphology because you don't want to leave your cozy dictionary comparison hobbit hole behind.

[Octavià]

Do you remember my list of substrate loanwords in Spanish and Latin with Kartvelian cognates?

Spanish and Latin aren't Germanic languages. Attributing Grimm's Law to a Kartvelian substratum only makes sense if you can show a specific Kartvelian influence on Germanic. Latin words resembling Kartvelian words have nothing to say here.

My point was about "geographical implausiblity", not Germanic. These loanwords are evidence of a Kartvelian-like substrate in Western Europe.

As I said earlier, I no longer pretend that Grimm's Law could have anything to do with Kartvelian.

I still prefer the view that Germanic and Armenian kept the Eurasiatic/Nostratic system while PIE changed it.

This is Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's view, but most Indo-Europeanists remain sceptical. Replacing the standard model of Late PIE by the one proposed by G & I makes things easier with Germanic and Armenian, but it adds more complications to the developments of all other branches. That's a poor trade-off.

I'm affraid you didn't understand me well. My point is that Germanic and Armenian inherited their system independently of PIE. This is possible in my model but not in the traditional one.

[WeepingElf]

Do you remember my list of substrate loanwords in Spanish and Latin with Kartvelian cognates?

Spanish and Latin aren't Germanic languages. Attributing Grimm's Law to a Kartvelian substratum only makes sense if you can show a specific Kartvelian influence on Germanic. Latin words resembling Kartvelian words have nothing to say here.

My point was about your "geographical implausiblity" argument, not Germanic. These loanwords are evidence of a Kartvelian-like substrate in Western Europe.

As I said earlier, I no longer pretend that Grimm's Law could have anything to do with Kartvelian.

Oh, then I have misunderstood you. Sorry. It is indeed possible that the branch of IE that would eventually become Germanic met a language group related to Kartvelian, but that requires solid evidence within Germanic itself; Kartvelian-looking words in Italic and the parallelism of the Germanic and Armenian sound shifts is not helpful here.

I still prefer the view that Germanic and Armenian kept the Eurasiatic/Nostratic system while PIE changed it.

This is Gamkrelidze's and Ivanov's view, but most Indo-Europeanists remain sceptical. Replacing the standard model of Late PIE by the one proposed by G & I makes things easier with Germanic and Armenian, but it adds more complications to the developments of all other branches. That's a poor trade-off.

I'm affraid you didn't understand me well. My point is that Germanic and Armenian inherited their system independently of PIE. This is possible in my model but not in the traditional one.

"Independently of PIE"? What do you mean by that? That Germanic and Armenian broke off at a particularly early stage, before the other IE languages parted way from each other? I'm sorry, but no Indo-Europeanist worth his stripes believes in that. You should indeed learn to be more respectful towards academic scholarship.

[Octavià]

Oh, then I have misunderstood you. Sorry. It is indeed possible that the branch of IE that would eventually become Germanic met a language group related to Kartvelian, but that requires solid evidence within Germanic itself; Kartvelian-looking words in Italic and the parallelism of the Germanic and Armenian sound shifts is not helpful here.

I'm actually interested in the substrate revelled by those words. Remember the thread's title!

My point is that Germanic and Armenian inherited their system independently of PIE. This is possible in my model but not in the traditional one.

"Independently of PIE"? What do you mean by that? That Germanic and Armenian broke off at a particularly early stage, before the other IE languages parted way from each other?

I've already stated my position: the assumption ALL IE languages are descendents of a single ancestor is simply false.

I'm sorry, but no Indo-Europeanist worth his stripes believes in that. You should indeed learn to be more respectful towards academic scholarship.

And you should learn to refute other people's arguments without appealing to authority.

[Tropylium]

I would say the similarity can be accounted by slightly modified Glottalic Theory and some simple phonetic universals:
0) PIE had an unstable voiced glottalic series.

"Voiced glottalic stops"? As the glottis is closed, voice is only possible if the stops are implosive, that is, the air is sucked into the mouth rather than expelled from the larynx.

I think Tropylium and Kortlandt mean pre-glottalized voiced stops, though I am not sure.

Approximately so, though implosivity and preglottalization commonly vary freely (see eg. Vietnamese). Another option (which I consider marginally, but not decisivly worse) is an opposition of normal vs. tense or creaky ("laryngealized") voice, as mention'd eg. in the IE monograph recently posted by Dewrad. (Glen "Paleoglot" Gordon calls this the "Hybrid Theory", perhaps not a bad moov considering all the unnecessary baggage associated with the term "Glottalic Theory".)

Wikipedia says this:

Uralo-Dravidian
The theory that the Dravidian languages display similarities with the Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of contact in the past is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and has been supported by a number of scholars, including Robert Caldwell, Thomas Burrow, Kamil Zvelebil, and Mikhail Andronov. This theory has, however, been rejected by some specialists in Uralic languages, and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian linguists such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti.

"Some specialists" wins the title of "Understatement of the Day"; there are small handfuls of Uralic specialists that support Uralo-Altaic, Indo-Uralic or Uralo-Siberian (my own impression is that the latter two are still promising if difficult; while the former, if not dead, at least smells very funny by now) but AFAIK no Uralist takes Uralo-Dravidian seriously. First off, there's the obvious problem that Uralic originates in NE Europe while Dravidian originates in S~SW Asia. Many of the connections have also been included as part of Nostratic. So a particularly close relationship of U and D does not seem likely, even if they may be link'd via a larger grouping (by inheritance or adstratal contacts; there seems to not be agreement on if Dravidian should be included in Nostratic at all).

[WeepingElf]

Oh, then I have misunderstood you. Sorry. It is indeed possible that the branch of IE that would eventually become Germanic met a language group related to Kartvelian, but that requires solid evidence within Germanic itself; Kartvelian-looking words in Italic and the parallelism of the Germanic and Armenian sound shifts is not helpful here.

I'm actually interested in the substrate revelled but those words. Remember the thread's title!

So am I! It is just that I am careful with assumptions about the relationships of the substrata before sufficient evidence has been found. I have to admit that I have not yet sought for Kartvelian cognates in the Germanic words without good IE etymologies I have found. But then, I don't have the leisure to compare those words with whatever language that may be spoken several thousand kilometres away. What is it that singles out Kartvelian as an especially likely relative of the European substratum languages?

My point is that Germanic and Armenian inherited their system independently of PIE. This is possible in my model but not in the traditional one.

"Independently of PIE"? What do you mean by that? That Germanic and Armenian broke off at a particularly early stage, before the other IE languages parted way from each other?

I've already stated my position: the assumption ALL IE languages are descendents of a single ancestor is simply false.

So the Indo-Europeanists have followed a wrong trail for two hundred years? All of them? You are funny.

I'm sorry, but no Indo-Europeanist worth his stripes believes in that. You should indeed learn to be more respectful towards academic scholarship.

And you should learn to refute other people's arguments without appealing to authority.

Of course, "authority" could be wrong. Hence, you should always try to follow their argumentation - which is what I do! Not that I have read every scrap of paper inscribed with Indo-Europeanist argumentation that has ever been published - nobody can do that in their lifetime. But I have examined the standard model of PIE closely enough to recognize that the argumentation is sound. I have seen the evidence; I found it to be much more convincing than your hypotheses.

Germanic is a typical Indo-European language group, even if it has undergone a sweeping sound change that considerably altered its appearance. Its grammatical structure is thoroughly Indo-European, and it can be derived from the standard model of Late PIE without any problems. The same is true for Armenian, even if the sound changes that happened there altered its appearance even more.

While appeal to authority is a fallacy, disrespect towards academic scholarship is not helpful. I don't know who was it, but one scholar once said that scholars should stand on other scholars' shoulders, not tread on their feet. I try to stand on other scholars' shoulders; you tread on their feet.

[Octavià]

So am I! It is just that I am careful with assumptions about the relationships of the substrata before sufficient evidence has been found. I have to admit that I have not yet sought for Kartvelian cognates in the Germanic words without good IE etymologies I have found. But then, I don't have the leisure to compare those words with whatever language that may be spoken several thousand kilometres away. What is it that singles out Kartvelian as an especially likely relative of the European substratum languages?

Once again, I was speaking about loanwords in Spanish and Latin, not Germanic.

So the Indo-Europeanists have followed a wrong trail for two hundred years? All of them? You are funny.

I've already mentioned some of the drawbacks of the traditional model. And the "consonantal shift" of Germanic and Armenian happen to be one of them.

But I have examined the standard model of PIE closely enough to recognize that the argumentation is sound. I have seen the evidence; I found it to be much more convincing than your hypotheses.

Perhaps you'll change your mind in due time. I'm very patient

While appeal to authority is a fallacy, disrespect towards academic scholarship is not helpful. I don't know who was it, but one scholar once said that scholars should stand on other scholars' shoulders, not tread on their feet. I try to stand on other scholars' shoulders; you tread on their feet.

You're a living example of what the Academia does with students' minds: it trains them to behave like Pavlov's dogs (I heard that phrase from an architect critical with some of today's practice).

[WeepingElf]

So am I! It is just that I am careful with assumptions about the relationships of the substrata before sufficient evidence has been found. I have to admit that I have not yet sought for Kartvelian cognates in the Germanic words without good IE etymologies I have found. But then, I don't have the leisure to compare those words with whatever language that may be spoken several thousand kilometres away. What is it that singles out Kartvelian as an especially likely relative of the European substratum languages?

Once again, I was speaking about loanwords in Spanish and Latin, not Germanic.

OK; I have understood that. I haven't yet examined the loanwords in question, so I am agnostic about their relationship to Kartvelian.

So the Indo-Europeanists have followed a wrong trail for two hundred years? All of them? You are funny.

I've already mentioned some of the drawbacks of the traditional model. And the "consonantal shift" of Germanic and Armenian happen to be one of them.

I frankly don't see the problem. Sure, these two branches underwent phonological developments different from all the rest of IE, but that does not mean that there is good reason to single them out of the entire family!

But I have examined the standard model of PIE closely enough to recognize that the argumentation is sound. I have seen the evidence; I found it to be much more convincing than your hypotheses.

Perhaps you'll change your mind in due time. I'm very patient

Oh, I am open-minded, and I have said goodbye to quite a few ideas which I used to find plausible until I hit upon problems with them. I cannot predict what will happen in the future, but as for now, I do not see any problems with the standard model of Late PIE which are sufficient to discard it.

[Octavià]

I frankly don't see the problem. Sure, these two branches underwent phonological developments different from all the rest of IE, but that does not mean that there is good reason to single them out of the entire family!

Try to see it the other way around. It was the rest of IE which underwent those phonological developments, while Germanic and Armenian remained closer to the original system.

But I have examined the standard model of PIE closely enough to recognize that the argumentation is sound. I have seen the evidence; I found it to be much more convincing than your hypotheses.

Perhaps you'll change your mind in due time. I'm very patient

Oh, I am open-minded, and I have said goodbye to quite a few ideas which I used to find plausible until I hit upon problems with them. I cannot predict what will happen in the future, but as for now, I do not see any problems with the standard model of Late PIE which are sufficient to discard it.

I think you haven't actually addressed my main objection to it, namely:

Many words commonly reconstructed for PIE are attested in some languages but not in others.
In some cases these words have cognates with different phonetics elsewhere in the IE family, e.g. my earlier example of 'summer' in Germanic vs. 'day' in Greek and Armenian.
These doublets can't be explained by the traditional model.

[TaylorS]

My personal viewpoint is different, though that of course does not prove that you are wrong. In my opinion, the evidence for an IE-Etruscan relationship is so meagre (one pronoun and one case marker, and a handful of similar-sounding words which do not show regular sound correspondences, and are thus more likely borrowings or mere coincidence) that I see no reason to assume such a relationship. There is just as much evidence for an IE-Kartvelian or, for that matter, an Etruscan-Kartvelian relationship, but I am doubtful of both.

I reconstruct just three vowels */a i u/ for Proto-Europic. The distinctions between the three types of velars were already there; they stem from a yet earlier stage when there was a fuller vowel system (*/a e i o u/ at least), of which all but */i/ and */u/ collapsed into */a/ in Proto-Europic. This */a/ later split into */e/, */o/ and zero in Early PIE; */i/ and */u/ likewise split into */ei/, */oi/, */i/ and */eu/, */ou/, */u/, respectively. In the Hesperic branch of Europic, the 3-vowel system survived longer, and can still be seen in the Old European hydronymy (as reconstructed by Krahe in his 1963 paper Die Struktur der alteuropäischen Hydronymie).

Point taken. Disagreement is the mother of brilliant ideas.

[TaylorS]

[Gray & Atkinson 2003]
At least it was published online and it's available for free, something we can't say from many other articles/books.

Which says nothing about the quality of the work. All sorts of crap is available from the Net for free.

WHAT? Also, please don't abuse other people's terminology that way. You speak of "Europic", "Hesperic" and "Danubian" all the time, but refer to things that have nothing to do with what TaylorS and I mean when we use these words.

It's true that my own theory I've adopted somne of your terminology, and specifically the words "Hesperic" and "Danubian" (but not "Europic"), and in doing so I'm implicitly acknowledging your work. If you feel I've broken your "copyright", then I'll find other names for my own entities.

I find it a bit strange that you are using these names while you reject our hypotheses. What exactly do you refer to as "Hesperic" and what do you refer to as "Danubian"? So far, I got the impression that you use these names for branches of Indo-European proper, which is not what TaylorS and I use these names for. Using a name introduced by someone else usually implies that you refer to the same entity.

WHAT? There is too little evidence for an IE-Kartvelian relationship. Just a handful of similar-looking words - which are probably borrowings.

Really? In which direction? This is important.

I don't know; could be either direction. I don't have a list of these similar-looking words, much less compared them to a list of presumable Indo-Uralic cognates. If a word occurs in IE, Uralic and Kartvelian, it was probably borrowed by Kartvelian from IE.

You should compare languages and not just dictionaries.

I'm doing the same than other macro-comparativists/Nostraticists do.

Which exactly is the problem. Most macro-comparativists do the same thing as you - they just compare dictionaries, ignoring both the structures of the languages and what is known about the histories of the words compared. That is a pretty low standard, and as Goatface said, no-one is going to take you seriously.

With the exception of Basque, Etruscan and the Caucasian languages, the pre-IE languages of Europe are so poorly known that little can be said about them. In the Mediterranean, some were written, such as Iberian and Eteocretan, but the inscriptions are not yet understood. North of the Alps, none survived long enough to be still alive when writing came to their rescue, and the only evidence are old geographical names and apparent substratum effects and loanwords in the known languages - but those things are very difficult to interpret.

Yes, they're so for most people. But it doesn't mean they can't be studied.

Of course not. As you know, I do try to study them; but I am aware of the difficulties involved with that, and don't try to reach bold conclusions beyond what can be known.

The the long-range folks I respect are the ones that emphasize cognates in morphology, such as M-T Pronouns and verbal endings. the problem with most Mass-Comparativists is that they start with words of modern languages, NOT words of reconstructed proto-languages. We should be looking for cognates between PIE, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Proto-Kartvelian, etc., not modern languages.

[TaylorS]

PS: He had access to copies of the maps drawn by a Chinese fleet several decades ago (see Gavin Menzies' 1421).

Menzies is a ****ing CRANK!!! His ideas are complete, falsified NONSENSE.

[TaylorS]

I'd rather say rebuilt.

The changes are not really THAT extreme. the main changes that occurred were:

The shift in Aspect-Transivity-Volition verbal morpheme usage and the associated reanalysis of the Active-Stative verbal system into an Durative-Perfective-Aorist aspectual system (Tense developed independently in the various branches) with a separate Subjunctive Mood.

A shift from Active-Stative to Nominative-Accusative Alignment

The formation of new cases from postpositions.

[Morrígan]

The the long-range folks I respect are the ones that emphasize cognates in morphology, such as M-T Pronouns and verbal endings. the problem with most Mass-Comparativists is that they start with words of modern languages, NOT words of reconstructed proto-languages. We should be looking for cognates between PIE, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Proto-Kartvelian, etc., not modern languages.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. And to reiterate the importance of morphology, there is Vajda's 2009 paper on the Na-Dene/Yenisei connection which is founded largely on morphological correspondences in the verb complex, and comparisons between reconstructed proto-languages for these groups.

[TaylorS]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. And to reiterate the importance of morphology, there is Vajda's 2009 paper on the Na-Dene/Yenisei connection which is founded largely on morphological correspondences in the verb complex, and comparisons between reconstructed proto-languages for these groups.

Thanks for reminding me about that paper, I had almost forgotten about it!

IIRC there also has been recent work on relating the Tai-Kadai and Austronesian families. that has gone mainstream.

I haven't heard anything on finding relationships between Amerindian families, Greenburg's "Amerind" nonsense must have scared people off. I think Penutian, Na-Dene, and one in South America (Macro-Ge?) were really the last big breakthroughs.

[Octavià]

the problem with most Mass-Comparativists is that they start with words of modern languages, NOT words of reconstructed proto-languages. We should be looking for cognates between PIE, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Proto-Kartvelian, etc., not modern languages.

The ones you call "mass-comparativists" are Greenberg and Ruhlen. Macro-comparativists use reconstructed proto-languages. Both approaches are VERY different.

[Morrígan]

I frankly don't see the problem. Sure, these two branches underwent phonological developments different from all the rest of IE, but that does not mean that there is good reason to single them out of the entire family!

Try to see it the other way around. It was the rest of IE which underwent those phonological developments, while Germanic and Armenian remained closer to the original system.

Wait, so how is this supposed to be an improvement over the traditional model? What does this explain that the traditional model can`t?

[Octavià]

Try to see it the other way around. It was the rest of IE which underwent those phonological developments, while Germanic and Armenian remained closer to the original system.

Wait, so how is this supposed to be an improvement over the traditional model? What does this explain that the traditional model can`t?

As I said before, there's no need to assume ALL IE languages are descendents from a single protolanguage (e.g. a tree model). This PoV, which unfortunately has become a dogma, actually brings more trouble than benefits.

Many words commonly reconstructed for PIE are attested in some languages but not in others.
In some cases these words have cognates with different phonetics elsewhere in the IE family, e.g. my earlier example of 'summer' in Germanic vs. 'day' in Greek and Armenian.
These doublets can't be explained by the traditional model.

Worse yet, many words have phonological "irregularities" which can't be explained from a single protoform. Then the traditional model assumes they're "variants" of the same root, often including different "extensions" or "root determiners" (Beneviste).

Besides the "consonantal shift" of Germanic and Armenian, the sound system of traditional PIE has other drawbacks like the ambiguity of the "laryngeal" symbols *H₁, *H₂, *H₃, ... and even *y.

This is why I think it's necessary to desconstruct the traditional model and build a new one. Ladies and gentlemen, we're in the 21st century!

[Whimemsz]

I haven't heard anything on finding relationships between Amerindian families, Greenburg's "Amerind" nonsense must have scared people off. I think Penutian, Na-Dene, and one in South America (Macro-Ge?) were really the last big breakthroughs.

I don't think anyone really accepts Na-Dene anymore (meaning Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit connected to Haida; the first three are agreed by most to be related although the connection of Tlingit is somewhat uncertain). Especially since in Vajda's work on connecting Yeniseic with AET he concluded there was no evidence for Haida's inclusion in Dene-Yeniseian. Aspects, at least, of Penutian are pretty well-accepted now, although it's still kind of up in the air exactly what the relationships are and which families should be included. I don't really know what the opinions on Macro-Ge are, but Aryon Rodriguez has a list of some possible cognates in his chapter on the "family" in Dixon and Aikhenvald's The Amazonian Languages; it looks like a good starting point to me, although pretty much all of the morphemes being compared are extremely short, and most of the grammatical similarities, as far as I can tell, are typological and could thus just represent areal influence etc. Also apparently many (most?) of the languages are dead and barely documented, so...that makes it kind of tough to prove anything one way or another.

[EDIT: Well, okay, SOME people accept Na-Dene, but they're crazy Dene-Caucasian people.]

[Nortaneous]

ambiguity of ... *y

How so?

[Morrígan]

Try to see it the other way around. It was the rest of IE which underwent those phonological developments, while Germanic and Armenian remained closer to the original system.

Wait, so how is this supposed to be an improvement over the traditional model? What does this explain that the traditional model can`t?

As I said before, there's no need to assume ALL IE languages are descendents from a single protolanguage (e.g. a tree model). This PoV, which unfortunately has become a dogma, actually brings more trouble than benefits.

Ok, so how is this hypothesis better able to explain the available data? Obviously the tree model is an oversimplification of language evolution; it's not a dogma if nobody really takes the tree model perfectly correct.

Besides the "consonantal shift" of Germanic and Armenian, the sound system of traditional PIE has other drawbacks like the ambiguity of the "laryngeal" symbols *H₁, *H₂, *H₃, ... and even *y.

What? How is ambiguity bad, if we don't have enough evidence for what these sounds actually were?