The Entmoot Court

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

And I would say at this point that the existence of PIE is treated as more than just "speculation" among linguists. Its been proposed and independently labored over since the 18th century and has been widely accepted by most linguists since the beginning of the 20th century to a point of detail that would certainly qualify as much more then just mere speculation. Do they have every word correct? Certainly not. But theres little doubt among most experts that such a language system existed and largely what its vocabulary consisted of.

But that's largely what scholars and philosophers do: they construct a speculative explanation of facts seen in the world, take it up as a given, and use it to construct a set of rules and a framework within which to work.

As far as the degree of acceptance...I hardly need to point out that a thousand years ago, my example of geocentrism was, I'm pretty certain, universally accepted by scholars on very similar grounds: it provided a framework within which those who were so inclined were able to produce a logical and coherent explanation of the data they found in the world around them, and its acceptance had a much stronger pedigree than PIE does today. Simply because a theory is accepted by a great many scholars doesn't make it so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a bad thing, and I am not saying PIE didn't exist (I believe it did): I'm just a little hesitant about putting such firm belief in the minor parts of such a construction, and assuming that we can reliably and consistently work out all of the particulars of it. When it comes right down to it, I just don't think that the world is so small that we can fit the whole thing in our heads like that.