Re: Indo-European Origins and Geography

John Atkinson:

> Such a statement is meaningless.
> If you mean, "the ancesters of the speakers of American...

You seem to be nitpicking. Anyway, you have a point there, my writing
is too careless at times.

> But Gascon lies on thge *same* side of the Pyrenees as all other
> varieties of Occitan!

Great! So what? It's still Occitan, not a different language. You mean
I have to show where the difference between Gascon and other varieties
of Occitan arose from? That's a separate question.

> Basque does occur on both sides of the western Pyrenees, and has for
> millenia, though during the last 2000 years its distribution seems
> to have changed from largely north of the Pyrenees (Aquitania) to
> predominately south of them. The mountains don't seem to have done
> much splitting there.

Okay, this punch is a little better. Basque was NOT split by the
Pyranees, because languages like Basque, Nouristani group,
Nakh-Dagestani group, etc are seen as *highland* languages in this
theory. This means that the life style of their speaker has been
associated with living in the mountains for hundreds or thousands of
years. Mountains is their home. In some cases, when ridges are
particularly high (as in Nuristan, 5000-6000 m, or 15.000-18.000 ft)
*and* people inhabit this territory long enough, dialects and
subsequently distinct languages begin to form. But in most cases,
because the speakers of these languages are adapted to this particular
life style, the contacts between different groups are still
sufficiently intense, hence little or no splitting no matter how the
exact distribution of speakers changes over time.

> Could you elaborate? How does "the same reasoning" (whatever that
> is) explain why the Australian languages are so much *less* diverse
> typologically and (especially) phonologically than the North American
> languages?

This is a good one. I'll try to answer it a little later.

> Again, what is your evidence that trade was "invented" recently in
> either America or Australia, or that the amount of trade carried out
> in either of those places 10 000 years ago was significantly less (or more) than
> it was just before the whites arrived -- when, as is well known, many
> long-distance trade routes existed?

The idea is that less population spread over larger distances
necessarily means less linguistic contacts either in the form of trade,
marriages or warfare. I wrote "the trade was invented" because it is
known from economics, that intense trade appears with the division of
labor which usually comes with agriculture and permanent settlements...

Peter T. Daniels:

> They formed _subgroupS_ within the IE family.
> There is no reason to
> suppose there was a single Satem subgroup.

If you insist on this point, I could demand evidence for this just as
well as you do for the opposite. I doubt that proving the Satem
subgroup never existed is any easier than proving the opposite
statement.

> No, there were _four_ distinct groups of English settlers

Maybe I oversimplified a bit. Anyway, it looks like the split between
the Northern and Southern dialects is connected with the Appalachians
that diverted some of the migrating colonists to the south.

.

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