I completely agree with the statement of Thomas Burrow that Dominik reported. A completely unified language without variation is an illusion, often created by the standardized "official" versions. In Marathi, there is a proverb that says that language changes after every 12 Kos [Skt. Krośa = 2 miles?]. As Kiparsky brought out vividly, Pāṇini's Sanskrit also has a great deal of variation, and one can indeed think of various local dialects or varieties of Sanskrit.
Madhav Madhav M. Deshpande Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit ane Linguistics University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India [Residence: Campbell, California, USA] On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 7:47 AM Dominik via INDOLOGY < [email protected]> wrote: > This is just an anecdote, but when I was an undergraduate, my teacher > Prof. Thomas Burrow told us that the earliest possible historical > reconstruction of PIE still looked like a "loosely connected set of > dialects," not a single language. > > Best, > Dominik > > _______________________________________________ > INDOLOGY mailing list > [email protected] > https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology >
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