Sanskrit and PIE

[Steve Farmer]

On these figures, see M. Witzel, "Substrate Languages in Old
Indo-Aryan (Rigvedic, Middle and Late Vedic)," Electronic Journal
of Vedic Sanskrit, Vol. 5 (1999), Issue 1 (September), available
in PDF format from:

http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501article.pdf

The figures certainly do NOT support OIT - exactly the reverse.

Arun Gupta writes:

> So, 95% to 96% of the vocabulary of Rigvedic Sanskrit is "not foreign".
> "Not foreign" presumably means that the words conform to the general
> patterns for RV Sanskrit words.
>
> Of the not-foreign RV Sanskrit words, how many are Indo-European in origin ?
> (i.e., have corresponding words in a sufficient number of other
> Indo-European languages to be confident that these words were in
> Proto-Indo-European, or were borrowed sufficiently early -- well before
> Indo-Aryan entry into India -- from other languages during the theorized
> Indo-European language dispersal) ?

> Surely the answer is not anywhere close to 95% !(  If it is that high, what
> reason is there not to believe in OIT ? )
>