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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2007-06 > 1181352939


From: "Ken Nordtvedt" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Megalith Builders
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 19:35:39 -0600
References: <123546.1191.qm@web52102.mail.re2.yahoo.com>


----- Original Message -----
From: "ellen Levy" <>
To: <>
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 6:15 PM
Subject: Re: [DNA] Megalith Builders


> Ken:
>
> I don't think a sub-stratum warps a language, nor does
> it represent the concept of how languages in the same
> family diverge from each other. Rather, it reflects
> the idea of linguistic borrowings from another
> language of the earlier inhabitants.

Well, what's the difference between a sub-stratum warping (my word) a
language and borrowing (your word) from the sub-stratum. ?
The different branches of Indo-European differ in a number of ways ---
vocabulary, sounds and pronunciations, structure ...... I can see all of
these diverging due to both pressures from sub-stratum languages or
isolation and drift. I say "hood" of my car; in England they say
"bonnet" --- the list is long of such drift. We did not pick up "hood" from
the first-Americans.

It seems to me all differences between the branches of IE, or of Latin for a
more recent example, don't need to be explained by the nature of the
previous languages spoken by the people who adopted the new language.



I guess this
> concept wouldn't apply in your Old Norse scenario
> because they moved into an unpopulated region, so had
> no one to absorb genetically and borrow from
> linguistically. This doesn't seem to be the case with
> the IE languages, however.

The point of my message is that in most cases we know nothing about the
sub-stratum languages, so how can we allocate the differences to
"borrowings" to use your wording or simply to separation, isolation, and
drift which would have occured in the absence of sub-stratum languages ?




>
> The ideas of separation, isolation and drift is, in
> fact, how linguists understand how the various
> languages within IE ultimately formed. I suppose the
> adoption of words from the earlier inhabitants of
> Europe, as reflected in the sub-stratum of those
> languages today, could have hastened that drifting
> apart.
>
> Ellen Coffman
>
> --- Ken Nordtvedt <> wrote:
>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "ellen Levy" <>
>>
>> So who was there earlier, as reflected
>> > in the sub-stratum of IE languages,
>>
>> I have heard this "sub-stratum" tossed out a few
>> times to give an
>> explanation for the different directions various
>> branches of the
>> Indo-European took.
>>
>> It seems not necessary to have a sub-stratum warp a
>> language, although it
>> certainly can. Just listen to the Asian-Indian
>> dialect of English, for
>> example. Maybe someday, given the demographics, it
>> will be the prevailing
>> English.
>>
>> But Old-Norse was taken to unpopulated Iceland 1200
>> years or so ago. There
>> was no sub-stratum (unless you want to argue that
>> the Celts who went along
>> perturbed Icelandic significantly? )
>>
>> There is now divergence of Norwegian from Icelandic,
>> although there is some
>> understandability between. Separation, isolation
>> and drift of languages can
>> create different branches. Is this totally
>> discounted as an ingredient into
>> the emergence of the branches of IE ?
>>
>> Ken
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
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