Sanskrit and PIE

[Arlo Griffiths]

I don't see exactly which point you're trying to make. I don't know whether
figures are available, but I would guess that of the ca. 95% 'non-foreign'
words in the .RV a very vast majority can be reconstructed quite safely to
PIE.
    What is your point about the OIT?

Arlo Griffiths

----------
>From: Arun Gupta <suvidya at WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
>To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Sanskrit and PIE
>Date: woe, 6 sep 2000 10:27 PM
>

> 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 ? )
>
> Thank you,
> -arun gupta
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Arlo Griffiths  <griffithsa at RULLET.LEIDENUNIV.NL> wrote:
>
> [snip, for brevity]
>>In Indo-Iranian Journal 38 (1995), p. 261, Kuiper was able to present a
>>more exact figure: "We owe it to the computer that it is now known. A Dr.
>>Alexander Lubotsky kindly informs me, the sum total [of Rigvedic lexemes -
>>AG] is 100063. The percentage of the foreign  works [sic, read: words]
>>listed there [in Kuiper 1991] is not, accordingly, ``at least five per
>>cent'' ..., but 3.8 per cent. If only `words sensu stricto' were counted
>>(As in Aryans, p. 95), the percentage might be well over 4 per cent."