Marcantonio and the emperor's new clothes

[a***@hotmail.com]

I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
mainstream linguists:

http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vajda05.pdf

Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M
succeeds admirably in
shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently indefensible
assumptions about Uralic
languages. However, she does not replace them with any new ones of her
own. It remains
to be seen whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths
and statistics in
Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of paradigm shift for
which its author is
arguing. Nevertheless, it is now obvious that no advance in Uralic
studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

end quote.

[a***@hotmail.com]

On Nov 10, 8:13 pm, ***@hotmail.com wrote:

Here is an explicit statement of how comp ling started:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803a&L=linguist&P=5450

This could be said about a lot of scholars. Honeigswald, in an
acompanying message, undoubtedly had Greenberg and Merritt in mind
(Alexis dissociates himself from them, but this message is not about
Alexis). In any case, the word "anachronistic" struck me as
particularly appropriate to "genetic" classification, not only because
of the large role played by language contact in the evolution of
languages, but because of the original motivation for genetic
classification in *romantic nationalism* from the beginning of the
19th c. (until who-knows-when). The tree model of linguistic
evolution, compellingly simple and simply a part of the entire story,
served the political identity purposes of romantic nationalism in
providing the basis for origin myths for sociopolitical entities
seeking recognition of some sort. Origin myths, providing a common
origin for a current or desired sociopolitical entity, are quite
widespread among cultures and were wholeheartedly adopted by romantic
nationalism for reasons that we need not go into, cf. the Trojans for
the Romans, according to the Aeneid, Indo-European (called
"Indo-Germanische") and the much admired connection with Hindu
civilisation for the 19th c German intellectuals, struggling for a
common-origin myth.

In accordance with this myth, genetic classification was just a means
to an end, under the assumption that a sociopolitcal entity needs an
origin myth to motivate its members and establish its "legitimacy",
particularly in the face of more powerful and apparently more unified
entities, e.g., France for the early 19th c German romantic
nationalists. That, of course, has become anachronistic (at least in
academic and scientific discourse). Germany etc became somewhat
unified, and since then the rules of the political game have been
changed both politically and scientifically in power states, often to
the displeasure of remaining romantic nationalists in various
"minority" cultures. Yet, the preoccupation with singling out some
UNITARY origin for a language, as for a culture, persists, now as an
"obsession" (or acquired predisposition) without a clear purpose. A
vaguer purpose of chronologically layering the contacts which have led
to current cultures remains the underlying purpose. Somehow, for many
historical linguists, the notion of a "single" origin still has
primacy, and the problems involved in coordinating into some single
ancient period of time the various things that can be reconstructed is
short-changed by scholars who impatiently dismiss contact phenomena as
"noise", but argue incessantly about which phenomena are contact and
which are "original" (indicating no consensus on the principles for
establishing such things, a glaring weakness in historical linguistic
methodology at present).

end quote.

This website also talks about elimination of comp ling academic
positions.

It is amazing how easy it is to find echoes of my intutive assertions
about this repulsive field of human endeavor simply by googling.

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803a&L=linguist&P=...
This could be said about a lot of scholars. Honeigswald, in an
acompanying message, undoubtedly had Greenberg and Merritt in mind
(Alexis dissociates himself from them, but this message is not about
Alexis). In any case, the word "anachronistic" struck me as
particularly appropriate to "genetic" classification, not only because
of the large role played by language contact in the evolution of
languages, but because of the original motivation for genetic
classification in *romantic nationalism* from the beginning of the
19th c. (until who-knows-when). The tree model of linguistic
evolution, compellingly simple and simply a part of the entire story,
served the political identity purposes of romantic nationalism in
providing the basis for origin myths for sociopolitical entities
seeking recognition of some sort. Origin myths, providing a common
origin for a current or desired sociopolitical entity, are quite
widespread among cultures and were wholeheartedly adopted by romantic
nationalism for reasons that we need not go into, cf. the Trojans for
the Romans, according to the Aeneid, Indo-European (called
"Indo-Germanische") and the much admired connection with Hindu
civilisation for the 19th c German intellectuals, struggling for a
common-origin myth.
In accordance with this myth, genetic classification was just a means
to an end, under the assumption that a sociopolitcal entity needs an
origin myth to motivate its members and establish its "legitimacy",
particularly in the face of more powerful and apparently more unified
entities, e.g., France for the early 19th c German romantic
nationalists. That, of course, has become anachronistic (at least in
academic and scientific discourse). Germany etc became somewhat
unified, and since then the rules of the political game have been
changed both politically and scientifically in power states, often to
the displeasure of remaining romantic nationalists in various
"minority" cultures. Yet, the preoccupation with singling out some
UNITARY origin for a language, as for a culture, persists, now as an
"obsession" (or acquired predisposition) without a clear purpose. A
vaguer purpose of chronologically layering the contacts which have led
to current cultures remains the underlying purpose. Somehow, for many
historical linguists, the notion of a "single" origin still has
primacy, and the problems involved in coordinating into some single
ancient period of time the various things that can be reconstructed is
short-changed by scholars who impatiently dismiss contact phenomena as
"noise", but argue incessantly about which phenomena are contact and
which are "original" (indicating no consensus on the principles for
establishing such things, a glaring weakness in historical linguistic
methodology at present).
end quote.
This website also talks about elimination of comp ling academic
positions.
It is amazing how easy it is to find echoes of my intutive assertions
about this repulsive field of human endeavor simply by googling.

You are hardly the first person to find out how easy it is to google
apparent support for your prejudices. The less you know about the
subject, the better it works. Enjoy!

Ross Clark

[Peter T. Daniels]

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803a&L=linguist&P=...
This could be said about a lot of scholars. Honeigswald, in an
acompanying message, undoubtedly had Greenberg and Merritt in mind
(Alexis dissociates himself from them, but this message is not about
Alexis). In any case, the word "anachronistic" struck me as
particularly appropriate to "genetic" classification, not only because
of the large role played by language contact in the evolution of
languages, but because of the original motivation for genetic
classification in *romantic nationalism* from the beginning of the
19th c. (until who-knows-when). The tree model of linguistic
evolution, compellingly simple and simply a part of the entire story,
served the political identity purposes of romantic nationalism in
providing the basis for origin myths for sociopolitical entities
seeking recognition of some sort. Origin myths, providing a common
origin for a current or desired sociopolitical entity, are quite
widespread among cultures and were wholeheartedly adopted by romantic
nationalism for reasons that we need not go into, cf. the Trojans for
the Romans, according to the Aeneid, Indo-European (called
"Indo-Germanische") and the much admired connection with Hindu
civilisation for the 19th c German intellectuals, struggling for a
common-origin myth.
In accordance with this myth, genetic classification was just a means
to an end, under the assumption that a sociopolitcal entity needs an
origin myth to motivate its members and establish its "legitimacy",
particularly in the face of more powerful and apparently more unified
entities, e.g., France for the early 19th c German romantic
nationalists. That, of course, has become anachronistic (at least in
academic and scientific discourse). Germany etc became somewhat
unified, and since then the rules of the political game have been
changed both politically and scientifically in power states, often to
the displeasure of remaining romantic nationalists in various
"minority" cultures. Yet, the preoccupation with singling out some
UNITARY origin for a language, as for a culture, persists, now as an
"obsession" (or acquired predisposition) without a clear purpose. A
vaguer purpose of chronologically layering the contacts which have led
to current cultures remains the underlying purpose. Somehow, for many
historical linguists, the notion of a "single" origin still has
primacy, and the problems involved in coordinating into some single
ancient period of time the various things that can be reconstructed is
short-changed by scholars who impatiently dismiss contact phenomena as
"noise", but argue incessantly about which phenomena are contact and
which are "original" (indicating no consensus on the principles for
establishing such things, a glaring weakness in historical linguistic
methodology at present).
end quote.
This website also talks about elimination of comp ling academic
positions.
It is amazing how easy it is to find echoes of my intutive assertions
about this repulsive field of human endeavor simply by googling.

Hey. Idiot. Don't you know how intellectually dishonest it is to quote
entire paragraphs from other writers without identifying who those
other writers are?

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803a&L=linguist&P=...
This could be said about a lot of scholars. Honeigswald, in an
acompanying message, undoubtedly had Greenberg and Merritt in mind
(Alexis dissociates himself from them, but this message is not about
Alexis). In any case, the word "anachronistic" struck me as
particularly appropriate to "genetic" classification, not only because
of the large role played by language contact in the evolution of
languages, but because of the original motivation for genetic
classification in *romantic nationalism* from the beginning of the
19th c. (until who-knows-when). The tree model of linguistic
evolution, compellingly simple and simply a part of the entire story,
served the political identity purposes of romantic nationalism in
providing the basis for origin myths for sociopolitical entities
seeking recognition of some sort. Origin myths, providing a common
origin for a current or desired sociopolitical entity, are quite
widespread among cultures and were wholeheartedly adopted by romantic
nationalism for reasons that we need not go into, cf. the Trojans for
the Romans, according to the Aeneid, Indo-European (called
"Indo-Germanische") and the much admired connection with Hindu
civilisation for the 19th c German intellectuals, struggling for a
common-origin myth.
In accordance with this myth, genetic classification was just a means
to an end, under the assumption that a sociopolitcal entity needs an
origin myth to motivate its members and establish its "legitimacy",
particularly in the face of more powerful and apparently more unified
entities, e.g., France for the early 19th c German romantic
nationalists. That, of course, has become anachronistic (at least in
academic and scientific discourse). Germany etc became somewhat
unified, and since then the rules of the political game have been
changed both politically and scientifically in power states, often to
the displeasure of remaining romantic nationalists in various
"minority" cultures. Yet, the preoccupation with singling out some
UNITARY origin for a language, as for a culture, persists, now as an
"obsession" (or acquired predisposition) without a clear purpose. A
vaguer purpose of chronologically layering the contacts which have led
to current cultures remains the underlying purpose. Somehow, for many
historical linguists, the notion of a "single" origin still has
primacy, and the problems involved in coordinating into some single
ancient period of time the various things that can be reconstructed is
short-changed by scholars who impatiently dismiss contact phenomena as
"noise", but argue incessantly about which phenomena are contact and
which are "original" (indicating no consensus on the principles for
establishing such things, a glaring weakness in historical linguistic
methodology at present).
end quote.
This website also talks about elimination of comp ling academic
positions.
It is amazing how easy it is to find echoes of my intutive assertions
about this repulsive field of human endeavor simply by googling.

Hey. Idiot. Don't you know how intellectually dishonest it is to quote
entire paragraphs from other writers without identifying who those
other writers are?- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

Since I gave the website URL where I got the quote from, the question
of dishonesty doesn't arise. If you want to talk about intellectual
dishonesty, deal with the impression you tried to create about how
Marcantonio has been received by mainstream linguists.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
Hey. Idiot. Don't you know how intellectually dishonest it is to quote
entire paragraphs from other writers without identifying who those
other writers are?-

Since I gave the website URL where I got the quote from, the question
of dishonesty doesn't arise. If you want to talk about intellectual
dishonesty, deal with the impression you tried to create about how
Marcantonio has been received by mainstream linguists.-

No. You must do _your own_ reference work.

The very fact that you chose to obscure the identities of the authors
you cite shows that even you recognize there's something fishy about
what they wrote, even if you're not able to put your finger on it.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
Hey. Idiot. Don't you know how intellectually dishonest it is to quote
entire paragraphs from other writers without identifying who those
other writers are?-

Since I gave the website URL where I got the quote from, the question
of dishonesty doesn't arise. If you want to talk about intellectual
dishonesty, deal with the impression you tried to create about how
Marcantonio has been received by mainstream linguists.-

No. You must do _your own_ reference work.
The very fact that you chose to obscure the identities of the authors
you cite shows that even you recognize there's something fishy about
what they wrote, even if you're not able to put your finger on it.

Go ahead, get lamer than this - I am sure you can do it.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M
succeeds admirably in
shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently indefensible
assumptions about Uralic
languages. However, she does not replace them with any new ones of her
own. It remains
to be seen whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths
and statistics in
Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of paradigm shift for
which its author is
arguing. Nevertheless, it is now obvious that no advance in Uralic
studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.
end quote.

And here is Mark Hubey:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803e&L=linguist&P=860

start quote:

What is at stake is the definition of "geneticity". AT present the
ideas being passed of as scientific truth are held together mostly by
equivocation, and rubber bands. There are basic principles of
measurement which have not been taken into account at all in
historical linguistics. The two fundamental characteristics of
measurement instruments are validity (accuracy) and reliability
(precision).

.............................

Is the instrument accurate and precise? That is where the equivocation
comes in. It is circular. The test creates geneticity and geneticity
is verified by the test. IN what range are the numbers produced by
this test? Suppose the test (the comparative method) was fixed up so
that it produced numbers about 0.8 or 0.9 for the various IE
languages. Does this mean that there are no other ways of knowing
about family relationships?

....................................


So it is an act of faith to say that the comparative method is the
only way to measure geneticity when geneticity has been circularly
defined in terms of the comparative method. The first thing to do is
to clearly define a mathematical model of language change so that what
we mean by geneticity is not ambiguous. At the same time we can use
probability theory to make calculations with which we can create a
fuller and more mature theory of language change.

The present method suffers from lots of flaws. The main one can be
understood with the example of "morphing". We have all seen on TV
commercials and sci-fi movies the morphing of objects and faces into
other objects and faces. Suppose we had one of those morping programs
for the PC so we can run a small experiment. We start with the face of
Clinton and then specify the final face to be Mao Tse Dong, and also
Eddie Murphy. We then specify the number of frames in which this
metamorphosis will take place. Now if we look at the any frame, say
the nth frame and compare that to the n-1 frame and n+1 fram we will
see that they will look almost like the nth frame. So if we look at
these frames at random (statically) we can see that from one frame to
the other there is such a small change that we can always say that
this person on the n+1 frame is the same person as the one on the nth
frame. By using induction on this we will then obviously conclude
that Clinton, Eddie Murphy and Mao are the same person. This is the
modern version of the sorites paradox (which comes in various flavors
including the Neurath's boat version). This is what linguists have
been doing all along when they were creating language families. That
is what you will get if you only trace some 100 words accross time and
space. This is the result if you ignore everything about language
except some 100 or 200 specially selected words. This is what you get
if you ignore every aspect of language except some 100 words.

In order to get a grasp we should first clearly define what language
is? Clearly it is more than 100 words. That is why the present state
is held together by equivocation and scotch tape (or was it rubber
bands?).

With this kind of thinking we could demonstrate that an elephant and a
dragon fly are genetically related. It's easy, start with a picture of
an elephant and morph it to a dragon fly!

How is this idea of geneticity of language related to biological
genetics? IN genetics the father's contribution is not called
"borrowing". In genetics, we are not called fish although we are
descended from them. In genetics, the genetic line of a person is not
decided only via the mtDNA (the mother's line).

.................................................

If the definition of geneticity is changed to become more like that of
biological genetics, then "borrowings" would no longer be considered
mere noise but rather the contribution of another language to the
creation of a language. The Latin words are as much a part of the
English language now as the Germanic ones. The Gaelic speakers were
probably responsible for not learning the case system of German and
creating this isolating language. They also dropped some of the front
rounded vowels of Germanic (u-umlaut). That is certainly a genetic
component of English as much as the Germanic and Latin words in it
presently. IF we keep thinking that languages change type the same way
people change underwear or the way bored housewives re-arrange the
furniture, historical linguistics will stay in the same rut that it
has been in most of this century.

end quote.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
How is this idea of geneticity of language related to biological
genetics? IN genetics the father's contribution is not called
"borrowing".

In genetics, naturally occurring species are not said to be produced
by a recombination of genes from two species; each species is held to
be descended from a single parent species rather than a combination of
two parent species. No change to this single parent taxonomy is
foreseeable barring some earthshaking discovery such as (say) a
mermaid - which might force geneticists to think about whether it is
possible for hominid and piscene genomes to recombine their genes to
produce a part-hominid part-piscene descendant species.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In genetics, we are not called fish although we are
descended from them.

Likewise, in linguistics, Swahili and Russian speakers are not called
protoWorld speakers even though these languages are presumed to be
descended from a protoWorld language.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In genetics, the genetic line of a person is not
decided only via the mtDNA (the mother's line).

Aside from the above observation about naturally occurring species,
this is a good observation. Has any of those who made this claim tried
to divide a language up into genes to show how naturally occurring
languages (as opposed to artifically constructed languages) have
recombined genes from different parent languages? If so, let us see an
analysis of a diploid recombination (only 2 parents)? Only if that
analysis looks worthwhile would it be fruitful to go on to polyploid
recombination.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If the definition of geneticity is changed to become more like that of
biological genetics, then "borrowings" would no longer be considered
mere noise but rather the contribution of another language to the
creation of a language. The Latin words are as much a part of the
English language now as the Germanic ones.

They are considered so even by those adhereing to a single parent
taxonomic scheme, so changing to English having multiple parents would
not make these words any more English than they are currently.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
The Gaelic speakers were
probably responsible for not learning the case system of German and
creating this isolating language. They also dropped some of the front
rounded vowels of Germanic (u-umlaut). That is certainly a genetic
component of English as much as the Germanic and Latin words in it
presently.

Ah, so the altered pronunciation of some vowels in Tamilian English
means that Tamilian English is descended from both Tamil and English,
eh?

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
How is this idea of geneticity of language related to biological
genetics? IN genetics the father's contribution is not called
"borrowing".

In genetics, naturally occurring species are not said to be produced
by a recombination of genes from two species; each species is held to
be descended from a single parent species rather than a combination of
two parent species. No change to this single parent taxonomy is
foreseeable barring some earthshaking discovery such as (say) a
mermaid - which might force geneticists to think about whether it is
possible for hominid and piscene genomes to recombine their genes to
produce a part-hominid part-piscene descendant species.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In genetics, we are not called fish although we are
descended from them.

Likewise, in linguistics, Swahili and Russian speakers are not called
protoWorld speakers even though these languages are presumed to be
descended from a protoWorld language.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In genetics, the genetic line of a person is not
decided only via the mtDNA (the mother's line).

Aside from the above observation about naturally occurring species,
this is a good observation. Has any of those who made this claim tried
to divide a language up into genes to show how naturally occurring
languages (as opposed to artifically constructed languages) have
recombined genes from different parent languages? If so, let us see an
analysis of a diploid recombination (only 2 parents)? Only if that
analysis looks worthwhile would it be fruitful to go on to polyploid
recombination.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If the definition of geneticity is changed to become more like that of
biological genetics, then "borrowings" would no longer be considered
mere noise but rather the contribution of another language to the
creation of a language. The Latin words are as much a part of the
English language now as the Germanic ones.

They are considered so even by those adhereing to a single parent
taxonomic scheme, so changing to English having multiple parents would
not make these words any more English than they are currently.

I am more concerned about the genetic-contact differentiation applied
to Sanskrit and Tamil. The exact relationship between English,Latin
and Germanic is interesting, but not to me at this time.

By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
The Gaelic speakers were
probably responsible for not learning the case system of German and
creating this isolating language. They also dropped some of the front
rounded vowels of Germanic (u-umlaut). That is certainly a genetic
component of English as much as the Germanic and Latin words in it
presently.

Ah, so the altered pronunciation of some vowels in Tamilian English
means that Tamilian English is descended from both Tamil and English,
eh?

Since I categorically reject the notion that we know anything about
differentiatiing change from descent and change from contact, this is
the wrong question to put to me. In this example, we know a lot about
the history of how and when contact took place - we of course have to
look into Paulraj's derivation of the kinship bwetween Tamil and
English. So I would use all available information to try to answer
the question.

[Trond Engen]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I am more concerned about the genetic-contact differentiation applied
to Sanskrit and Tamil. The exact relationship between English,Latin
and Germanic is interesting, but not to me at this time.

You say so. Still, by dismissing all or most of what is known about the
history of both Sanskrit and Tamil (as well as other Indian languages),
you deny yourself access to any understanding of this deep and
longlasting relationship beyond the purely superficial.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

No.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

Grammar and morphology play a greater role than vocabulary. Consider
highly Persianized Urdu vs. highly Sanskritized Hindi. They have
identical grammars and nearly identical morphologies but significantly
different vocabularies. On the other hand, consider Manipravalam vs.
Sanskrit. I gave you an example where every word in a Manipravalam
(Sanskritized Malayalam) sentence is also a Sanskrit word, differing
only in affixes. According to the standard taxonomy, Urdu and Hindi
are genetically related despite their lexical differences whereas
Manipravalam and Sanskrit are not despite their lexical similarity.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Ah, so the altered pronunciation of some vowels in Tamilian English
means that Tamilian English is descended from both Tamil and English,
eh?

Since I categorically reject the notion that we know anything about
differentiatiing change from descent and change from contact, this is
the wrong question to put to me. In this example, we know a lot about
the history of how and when contact took place - we of course have to
look into Paulraj's derivation of the kinship bwetween Tamil and
English. So I would use all available information to try to answer
the question.

OK; consider the sentence "Setup paNNalAm." (Let us set it up). It is
not an Old Tamil sentence since "setup" is not in Old Tamil. It is not
an English sentence either. In what language is it? Consider the
proposition: Half of its words are from English and half from Tamil,
so it makes no difference whether we call it an English sentence or
Tamil sentence. Do you agree or disagree with the proposition? If not,
why not?

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

Grammar and morphology play a greater role than vocabulary. Consider
highly Persianized Urdu vs. highly Sanskritized Hindi. They have
identical grammars and nearly identical morphologies

because they are the same language.

Post by r***@yahoo.com
but significantly
different vocabularies.

different registers.

On the other hand, consider Manipravalam vs.

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Sanskrit. I gave you an example where every word in a Manipravalam
(Sanskritized Malayalam) sentence is also a Sanskrit word, differing
only in affixes. According to the standard taxonomy, Urdu and Hindi
are genetically related despite their lexical differences whereas
Manipravalam and Sanskrit are not despite their lexical similarity.

And the reason I should care about standard taxonomy is?

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Ah, so the altered pronunciation of some vowels in Tamilian English
means that Tamilian English is descended from both Tamil and English,
eh?

Since I categorically reject the notion that we know anything about
differentiatiing change from descent and change from contact, this is
the wrong question to put to me. In this example, we know a lot about
the history of how and when contact took place - we of course have to
look into Paulraj's derivation of the kinship bwetween Tamil and
English. So I would use all available information to try to answer
the question.

OK; consider the sentence "Setup paNNalAm." (Let us set it up). It is
not an Old Tamil sentence since "setup" is not in Old Tamil. It is not
an English sentence either. In what language is it? Consider the
proposition: Half of its words are from English and half from Tamil,
so it makes no difference whether we call it an English sentence or
Tamil sentence. Do you agree or disagree with the proposition? If not,
why not?

Not arguing from vacuum, with historical knowlede outside of words,
Its a Tamil sentence with an Engish loanword. A tooya-tamil
equivalent to "set up" I am sure can be coined. There is a real
chance that English will ovewhelm Tamil in a few generations (I know a
two-year old in Madras who uses "reddu color " for sivappu niram in
fact I doubt any big city dweller uses anything except "color" for
color in Tamil Nadu) - you and I may not be alive if and when that
happens but it would be interesting and sad to observe how Tamil
slowly dies to give rise to Tinglish.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Grammar and morphology play a greater role than vocabulary. Consider
highly Persianized Urdu vs. highly Sanskritized Hindi. They have
identical grammars and nearly identical morphologies

because they are the same language.

That's what linguists say. Do you suppose the Hindi- or Urdu-speaker
on the street would say so? Any more than the Serb or Croat on the
street would say that Serbian and Croatian are the same language?

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
but significantly
different vocabularies.

different registers.

You evidently don't know the meaning of the technical term "register"
in linguistics.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
On the other hand, consider Manipravalam vs.

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Sanskrit. I gave you an example where every word in a Manipravalam
(Sanskritized Malayalam) sentence is also a Sanskrit word, differing
only in affixes. According to the standard taxonomy, Urdu and Hindi
are genetically related despite their lexical differences whereas
Manipravalam and Sanskrit are not despite their lexical similarity.

And the reason I should care about standard taxonomy is?

So that when you choose to put your ridiculous opinions before
experts, you'll have a chance of being able to argue your case without
looking like the total idiot you look so far.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
OK; consider the sentence "Setup paNNalAm." (Let us set it up). It is
not an Old Tamil sentence since "setup" is not in Old Tamil. It is not
an English sentence either. In what language is it? Consider the
proposition: Half of its words are from English and half from Tamil,
so it makes no difference whether we call it an English sentence or
Tamil sentence. Do you agree or disagree with the proposition? If not,
why not?

Not arguing from vacuum, with historical knowlede outside of words,
Its a Tamil sentence with an Engish loanword.

That's what a linguist would say. On what grounds do you not say that
it's an English sentence with a Tamil loanword?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
A tooya-tamil
equivalent to "set up" I am sure can be coined. There is a real
chance that English will ovewhelm Tamil in a few generations (I know a
two-year old in Madras who uses "reddu color " for sivappu niram in
fact I doubt any big city dweller uses anything except "color" for
color in Tamil Nadu) - you and I may not be alive if and when that
happens but it would be interesting and sad to observe how Tamil
slowly dies to give rise to Tinglish.-

Too bad you've never studied the literature on language contact and
spread. There's no danger of the slow death of Tamil.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Grammar and morphology play a greater role than vocabulary. Consider
highly Persianized Urdu vs. highly Sanskritized Hindi. They have
identical grammars and nearly identical morphologies

because they are the same language.

That's what linguists say. Do you suppose the Hindi- or Urdu-speaker
on the street would say so? Any more than the Serb or Croat on the
street would say that Serbian and Croatian are the same language?

Thats only my layman's opinion. Obviously, it is a politically
fraught question in North India/Pakistan.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
but significantly
different vocabularies.

different registers.

You evidently don't know the meaning of the technical term "register"
in linguistics.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
On the other hand, consider Manipravalam vs.

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Sanskrit. I gave you an example where every word in a Manipravalam
(Sanskritized Malayalam) sentence is also a Sanskrit word, differing
only in affixes. According to the standard taxonomy, Urdu and Hindi
are genetically related despite their lexical differences whereas
Manipravalam and Sanskrit are not despite their lexical similarity.

And the reason I should care about standard taxonomy is?

So that when you choose to put your ridiculous opinions before
experts, you'll have a chance of being able to argue your case without
looking like the total idiot you look so far.

I think the numebr of people before whom my opinions on language
descent would make me look like an idiot is a small and declining
one. The academic discipline that teaches why my opinions are
idiotic is in termial decline IMNSHO.

I am hoping that pioneers like Marcantonio would help reduce that
number to zero in my lifetime.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
OK; consider the sentence "Setup paNNalAm." (Let us set it up). It is
not an Old Tamil sentence since "setup" is not in Old Tamil. It is not
an English sentence either. In what language is it? Consider the
proposition: Half of its words are from English and half from Tamil,
so it makes no difference whether we call it an English sentence or
Tamil sentence. Do you agree or disagree with the proposition? If not,
why not?

Not arguing from vacuum, with historical knowlede outside of words,
Its a Tamil sentence with an Engish loanword.

That's what a linguist would say. On what grounds do you not say that
it's an English sentence with a Tamil loanword?

I assume you are asking this question as if we are 2000 years into the
future and all we have are attestations of relatively pure Tamil till
say 1970 and then a slow proliferation of sentences like "Setup
pannu". I really don't know. I answered with respect to whats
happening right now.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
A tooya-tamil
equivalent to "set up" I am sure can be coined. There is a real
chance that English will ovewhelm Tamil in a few generations (I know a
two-year old in Madras who uses "reddu color " for sivappu niram in
fact I doubt any big city dweller uses anything except "color" for
color in Tamil Nadu) - you and I may not be alive if and when that
happens but it would be interesting and sad to observe how Tamil
slowly dies to give rise to Tinglish.-

Too bad you've never studied the literature on language contact and
spread. There's no danger of the slow death of Tamil.

Aren't even French speakers afraid of ther language getting invaded by
English? And apparently the Scandinavians have allowed English free
rein and they don't care about its inroads. So great a Tamil Scholar
like George Hart seems to think Tamil does face a threat from
English. Vijay TV (a Tamil satellite channel) caters to an urban
audience and I have seen interviews that are 10-20 percent in English
(complete sentencs, words,phrases etc.). Sun TV caters to a less
anglicized audience and while complete English sentences are rare,
many English words are used regularly. The "Brahmin"/"Dravidian"
political split is also hurting the language. All we can do is watch
what happens.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

highly Persianized Urdu vs. highly Sanskritized Hindi.

because they are the same language.

Sure, but on what basis do you deduce that they are the same language?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
And the reason I should care about standard taxonomy is?

... because you asked the following question about how people who
follow the standard taxonomy deduce descent: "can we agree that
genetic descent is purely deduced from word lists". The answer would
have to be based on how such people go about deducing descent.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
Ah, so the altered pronunciation of some vowels in Tamilian English
means that Tamilian English is descended from both Tamil and English,
eh?

OK; consider the sentence "Setup paNNalAm." (Let us set it up).

Not arguing from vacuum, with historical knowlede outside of words,
Its a Tamil sentence with an Engish loanword.

On what basis is it not an English sentence with a Tamil loanword
"paNNalAm"?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
There is a real
chance that English will ovewhelm Tamil in a few generations (I know a
two-year old in Madras who uses "reddu color " for sivappu niram in
fact I doubt any big city dweller uses anything except "color" for
color in Tamil Nadu)

It seems to require too much effort to use the English words. "sivanda
kARu" would a shorter way to say "red car" than "reddu color uLLa
kARu".

Post by a***@hotmail.com
- you and I may not be alive if and when that
happens but it would be interesting and sad to observe how Tamil
slowly dies to give rise to Tinglish.

Yes.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I am more concerned about the genetic-contact differentiation applied
to Sanskrit and Tamil. The exact relationship between English,Latin
and Germanic is interesting, but not to me at this time.

The exact relationship between English, Latin and Germanic is
_precisely_ identical to the exact relationship between English,
Sanskrit, and German. A difference is that we have far fewer loanwords
in English that come ultimately from Sanskrit (and most of those are
from Hindi, perhaps some from Bengali) than we do from Latin.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

No. "Grammar and morphology" are far more valuable than word lists for
deducing relationships. As the late Robert Hetzron put it, shared
morphological innovation is the best evidence of all; shared
suppletive paradigms are the gold standard of evidence. If a
previously unkown language turned up that had something like "good"
and "better," nothing else at all would be needed to establish that it
was a Germanic language.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Since I categorically reject the notion that we know anything about
differentiatiing change from descent and change from contact,

Your categorical rejection is just plain stupid. In most cases, it's
trivially simple to distinguish inherited from borrowed vocabulary.

In some cases it can be trickier -- it wasn't until 1875 that Armenian
was separated out from the Indo-Iranian group, and it wasn't until
1954 that Vietnamese was separated from Sino-Tibetan and recognized to
be Mon-Khmer (which, with the Munda family of India, makes up the
Austroasiatic phylum). But the demonstrations, by Huebschmann and
Haudricourt respectively, are entirely convincing, and no one has
expressed doubt about them ever since.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
this is
the wrong question to put to me. In this example, we know a lot about
the history of how and when contact took place - we of course have to
look into Paulraj's derivation of the kinship bwetween Tamil and
English. So I would use all available information to try to answer
the question.-

All available evidence has been used, and the conclusions are
incontrovertible.

Indeed, the similarities among the Dravidian languages are so great,
and they differ so greatly from the Indic languages despite millennia
of mutual influence, that it's astonishing anyone would even consider
any other position.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I am more concerned about the genetic-contact differentiation applied
to Sanskrit and Tamil. The exact relationship between English,Latin
and Germanic is interesting, but not to me at this time.

The exact relationship between English, Latin and Germanic is
_precisely_ identical to the exact relationship between English,
Sanskrit, and German. A difference is that we have far fewer loanwords
in English that come ultimately from Sanskrit (and most of those are
from Hindi, perhaps some from Bengali) than we do from Latin.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way, can we agree that genetic descent is purely deduced from
word lists and that "grammar and morphology" pointing to genetic
relationship are a crock that would dissipate on any close
examination?

No. "Grammar and morphology" are far more valuable than word lists for
deducing relationships. As the late Robert Hetzron put it, shared
morphological innovation is the best evidence of all; shared
suppletive paradigms are the gold standard of evidence. If a
previously unkown language turned up that had something like "good"
and "better," nothing else at all would be needed to establish that it
was a Germanic language.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Since I categorically reject the notion that we know anything about
differentiatiing change from descent and change from contact,

Your categorical rejection is just plain stupid. In most cases, it's
trivially simple to distinguish inherited from borrowed vocabulary.
In some cases it can be trickier -- it wasn't until 1875 that Armenian
was separated out from the Indo-Iranian group, and it wasn't until
1954 that Vietnamese was separated from Sino-Tibetan and recognized to
be Mon-Khmer (which, with the Munda family of India, makes up the
Austroasiatic phylum). But the demonstrations, by Huebschmann and
Haudricourt respectively, are entirely convincing, and no one has
expressed doubt about them ever since.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
this is
the wrong question to put to me. In this example, we know a lot about
the history of how and when contact took place - we of course have to
look into Paulraj's derivation of the kinship bwetween Tamil and
English. So I would use all available information to try to answer
the question.-

All available evidence has been used, and the conclusions are
incontrovertible.
Indeed, the similarities among the Dravidian languages are so great,
and they differ so greatly from the Indic languages despite millennia
of mutual influence, that it's astonishing anyone would even consider
any other position.

Modern Indic languages are less different from Dravidian languages
than OIA was.

[Peter T. Daniels]

This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.

I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

[p***@abo.fi]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by p***@abo.fi

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.- Hide quoted text -

What is "Peter or the rest of us" - you guys are some kind of gang?
For now we are not debating the merits of Marcantonio's work, but why
Daniels misrepresented how her work was received.

His blend of misrepresentations, bullying and ad hominem attacks is
actually sad and degrades the discourse.

Post by p***@abo.fi
- Show quoted text -

[benlizross]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by p***@abo.fi

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.- Hide quoted text -

What is "Peter or the rest of us" - you guys are some kind of gang?

We are several people who post regularly to sci.lang. You are not. Is
that so hard to understand?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
For now we are not debating the merits of Marcantonio's work, but why
Daniels misrepresented how her work was received.

This is of no more interest than why you misrepresent almost everything
about comparative linguistics.

Ross Clark

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by p***@abo.fi

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.- Hide quoted text -

What is "Peter or the rest of us" - you guys are some kind of gang?
For now we are not debating the merits of Marcantonio's work, but why
Daniels misrepresented how her work was received.

We're not "debating" any such thing. You are simply lying.

And, you are incompetent to evaluate either her work or the reviews by
her critics.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
His blend of misrepresentations, bullying and ad hominem attacks is
actually sad and degrades the discourse.

Any degradation of the discourse commenced when you began posting your
ignorant messages on the topics.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by p***@abo.fi

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.-

The principal difficulty in reconstructing Uralic is the pervasive
presence of vowel harmony throughout the phylum -- it has generally
proven to be impossible to decide which variant of a vowel is the best
candidate for the *root.

[p***@abo.fi]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by p***@abo.fi

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

The original text implies that this Marcantonio fellow has only "shed
light" on some inadequacies of the usual Uralic language
classification, but not introduced novel theories. This means, that
the old theories still stand. Uralic languages are a language family
whose internal structures and internal classification are still
subject to some debate. You haven't been able to actually show what
relevancy the internal squibbles of the Uralists actually hold for
Indo-European linguistics. Do not think that you can scare Peter or
the rest of us with your innuendo.-

The principal difficulty in reconstructing Uralic is the pervasive
presence of vowel harmony throughout the phylum -- it has generally
proven to be impossible to decide which variant of a vowel is the best
candidate for the *root.

I guess so - it does make sense. I am not very familiar with Uralic
studies, although a friend of mine has studied Finno-Ugric languages
and actually gave me his textbook of the Komi-Zyryan language. But I
am at least intimately acquainted with one Uralic language.

[benlizross]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

Well, I'd support Peter's assertion that Hubey's a crank, but you
probably think I'm a liar too. Your ignorance-based deconstruction of
comparative linguistics is (inevitably) acquiring a fine paranoid
superstructure.

Ross Clark

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus. He got a book
published at that vanity press LINCOM Europa.

Now that I have caught you out in serious misrepresentation (vis-a-vis
Marcantonio) your unsupported assertions are valueless.

Why do you lie about what I said about marcantonio?

She has not received a single positive review.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think the a priori assumption that your unsupported assertions are
lies is probably a better bet than "may be true or false". To
implicitly assume you tell the truth is now a non-viable proposition.

Why don't you follow your own advice and check out Hubey's posting
history in sci.lang?

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 09:52:43 -0800, "Peter T. Daniels"

Post by Peter T. Daniels
This is unintentionally hilarious. That person used to be a regular at
sci.lang -- he is a professor (somehow) of mathematics who fancies
that he knows something (anything?) about linguistics and was
continually being exposed as a fraud and ignoramus.

In mathematics as well as linguistics.

Post by Peter T. Daniels
He got a book published at that vanity press LINCOM
Europa.

Brian

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M
succeeds admirably in
shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently indefensible
assumptions about Uralic
languages. However, she does not replace them with any new ones of her
own. It remains
to be seen whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths
and statistics in
Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of paradigm shift for
which its author is
arguing. Nevertheless, it is now obvious that no advance in Uralic
studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.
end quote.

proof that non-sense is inseparable from indo-europeanism:

In page 287 of his book "theoretical bases of indo-european
linguistics" Winfred P Lehmann writes

in attempting to account for their [i.e., Indo Europeans' - its
unbelievable how shamelessly comp linguists go from a linguistic
category derived from a childish game to ethnic/tribal/racial/societal
categories. This Lehmann appears to be a sensible rational chap -
that he wouldn't use quotes around "Indo-Europeans" in a book
published in 1993 is very disturbing ] prevailing in use of their own
Indo-European languages as well as adoption by autochthons, we have no
better explantion than that of Meillet (1928). In his view the
essential trait of Indo-European society was a striving for
independence and individuality.

end quote.

In 1928 Meillet wouldn't have fully known about the strife for
independence and individuality by the ultimate "Indo-Europeans" -
Germans - through National Socialism, but surely he must have known
about "Indo-European" Russians and Communism?

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Nov 11, 2:02 pm, ***@hotmail.com wrote:

[a reprint of some irrelevant nonsense about Uralic]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In page 287 of his book "theoretical bases of indo-european
linguistics" Winfred P Lehmann writes

Does this mean you took my recommendation and actually read all the
way to the next-to-last page of the book?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
in attempting to account for their
[i.e., Indo Europeans' - its
unbelievable how shamelessly comp linguists go from a linguistic
category derived from a childish game to ethnic/tribal/racial/societal
categories. This Lehmann appears to be a sensible rational chap -
that he wouldn't use quotes around "Indo-Europeans" in a book
published in 1993 is very disturbing ]

No, I guess you didn't read any of the book at all.

Lehmann was (he died in June) one of the truly great Indo-Europeanists
of the 20th century.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
prevailing in use of their own
Indo-European languages as well as adoption by autochthons, we have no
better explantion than that of Meillet (1928). In his view the
essential trait of Indo-European society was a striving for
independence and individuality.
end quote.
In 1928 Meillet wouldn't have fully known about the strife for
independence and individuality by the ultimate "Indo-Europeans" -
Germans - through National Socialism, but surely he must have known
about "Indo-European" Russians and Communism?-

This is what happens when you take a quotation out of context. I guess
you didn't even look at the book to get this -- where did you get it?

The antecedent of "their" is not "Indo-Europeans" -- that is purely
your invention. The antecedent of "their" is "speakers."

To make it perfectly clear, here is the entire text preceding the
paragraph that begins "In attempting to account for" (so that you even
misrepresented the quote, beginning it with a small letter as if it
were not the beginning of a sentence, let alone the beginning of a
paragraph):

"12.9.4 Possible reasons for the spread of the Indo-Europeans

"In conclusion, we may comment briefly on the reason for the spread of
the family, and further for the adoption of its languages. The area
identified here as the homeland was clearly fertile. As in other
societies that prospered and expanded with the introduction of
agriculture, we may assume a large increase in population of the Indo-
European community. The technological advances like wheeled vehicles,
bronze and rapid transportation after the domestication of the horse,
facilitated expansion out of the area. The routes and goals of that
expansion must have been obvious to the speakers, based in part on
reports, in part on imaginative expectations, like those of nineteenth-
century Americans who were drawn by accounts of available land and
other prospects of wealth to expand westward."

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels
[a reprint of some irrelevant nonsense about Uralic]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In page 287 of his book "theoretical bases of indo-european
linguistics" Winfred P Lehmann writes

Does this mean you took my recommendation and actually read all the
way to the next-to-last page of the book?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
in attempting to account for their
[i.e., Indo Europeans' - its
unbelievable how shamelessly comp linguists go from a linguistic
category derived from a childish game to ethnic/tribal/racial/societal
categories. This Lehmann appears to be a sensible rational chap -
that he wouldn't use quotes around "Indo-Europeans" in a book
published in 1993 is very disturbing ]

No, I guess you didn't read any of the book at all.
Lehmann was (he died in June) one of the truly great Indo-Europeanists
of the 20th century.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
prevailing in use of their own
Indo-European languages as well as adoption by autochthons, we have no
better explantion than that of Meillet (1928). In his view the
essential trait of Indo-European society was a striving for
independence and individuality.
end quote.
In 1928 Meillet wouldn't have fully known about the strife for
independence and individuality by the ultimate "Indo-Europeans" -
Germans - through National Socialism, but surely he must have known
about "Indo-European" Russians and Communism?-

This is what happens when you take a quotation out of context. I guess
you didn't even look at the book to get this -- where did you get it?
The antecedent of "their" is not "Indo-Europeans" -- that is purely
your invention. The antecedent of "their" is "speakers."
To make it perfectly clear, here is the entire text preceding the
paragraph that begins "In attempting to account for" (so that you even
misrepresented the quote, beginning it with a small letter as if it
were not the beginning of a sentence, let alone the beginning of a

Oh my God, I thought I would get away with the non-capitalization
misrepresentation, but Daniels caught me. This is really pitiful. So
you are saying that Lehmann doesn't refer to "Indo Europeans" only to
speakers of IE.

then why does he give the paragraph heading 12.9.3

Principles underlying an assumption of the homeland in southern
Russia, with gradual expansion of the Indo-Europeans and their
languages

End quote.

I interpret (I have the great disadvantage of being endowed with
common sense, unlike the overwhelming mass of comp linguists) this to
mean that Lehmann sees their language as only a characteristic of
the Indo-europeans and not the totally defining characteristic.

Even If we assume that Lehmann and Meillet mean by Indo Europeans
nothing more that people who started with a root word and changed it
to "Chakra" here and "wheel" there and so forth - isn't it the height
of absurdity to claim that they had characteristics like independence
and individuality?

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
then why does he give the paragraph heading 12.9.3

Because it's the third part of the ninth section of the twelfth
chapter. Why would you need that explained?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Principles underlying an assumption of the homeland in southern
Russia, with gradual expansion of the Indo-Europeans and their
languages
End quote.
I interpret (I have the great disadvantage of being endowed with
common sense, unlike the overwhelming mass of comp linguists) this to
mean that Lehmann sees their language as only a characteristic of
the Indo-europeans and not the totally defining characteristic.
Even If we assume that Lehmann and Meillet mean by Indo Europeans
nothing more that people who started with a root word and changed it
to "Chakra" here and "wheel" there and so forth - isn't it the height
of absurdity to claim that they had characteristics like independence
and individuality?-

I don't know what any of that is supposed to mean. No one deliberately
"changed" the root word to anything else.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 15:57:04 -0800, <***@hotmail.com>
wrote in
<news:***@v2g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
in soc.culture.indian,sci.lang,alt.lang:

[...]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
then why does he give the paragraph heading 12.9.3
Principles underlying an assumption of the homeland in
southern Russia, with gradual expansion of the
Indo-Europeans and their languages
End quote.
I interpret (I have the great disadvantage of being
endowed with common sense, unlike the overwhelming mass
of comp linguists) this to mean that Lehmann sees their
language as only a characteristic of the Indo-europeans
and not the totally defining characteristic.

'Endowed with common sense' is an odd way to write 'unable
to read'. Section 12.9, titled 'The Homeland of the
Indo-Europeans', begins 'In spite of the problems involved
in proposing a homeland or cradle of the speakers of
Proto-Indo-European, an identification is difficult to avoid
inasmuch as it indicates the position of the investigator
regarding the culture and linguistic characteristics of the
proto-language and its speakers'. From this it is perfectly
clear that by 'Indo-Europeans' Lehmann here means 'speakers
of Proto-Indo-European'. Or you could read p. 15, where you
will find this sentence: 'Yet it is clear that some social
group, of whatever size or coherence, at one time spoke the
relatively unified language labeled Proto-Indo-European and
that this group maintained a specific culture'. Here again
it's perfectly clear that the language is being used as the
defining characteristic.

[...]

[Trond Engen]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vajda05.pdf
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
with Indo-European. Or quoting Vajda:

"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence—primarily lexical—that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"? Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE? at any rate who judges if the
reconstructions are correct?

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" ) and now Daniels has launched another unsupported ad
hominem attack on Mark Hubey) and to me this kind of unethical
behavior points to intellectual insecurity. And perhaps real
financial insecurity also, since the listserv group I cited mentioned
the elimination of comp ling teaching positions.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

That's recognized by normal people as ironic understatement.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE? at any rate who judges if the
reconstructions are correct?

Indo-Europeanists (other than Don Ringe) have no interest in the
Swadesh list, since the subgroupings of IE were long ago well
established. An investigation by Dyen et al. tested the reliability of
Swadeshian subgrouping techniques and found that no false positives
were achieved, but some subgroupings were missed -- on the basis of
modern Indic and Iranian languages, no Indo-Iranian group was
observed! But as even you must know, Old Avestan and Vedic are nearly
identical.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If this is your take-away from the review,

What are you referring to? Trond expressed no opinion whatsoever about
the content of the review; he merely filled out the quotation so that
what you copied was shown up as misrepresentation.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received

Stop lying, liar. You have not found a single positive review.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

You can look up _that_ nutcase in the sci.lang archives, too. It
apparently is a fact that one of the financers of the foundation that
publishes JIES also contributes to some sort of nefarious
organization. There is, however, no connection between that person and
anything published in the journal.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and now Daniels has launched another unsupported ad
hominem attack on Mark Hubey)

Even to you, Hubey would look like an utter fool.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and to me this kind of unethical
behavior points to intellectual insecurity.

If you would ever bother to learn something, your opinions _might_
garner some respect.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
And perhaps real
financial insecurity also, since the listserv group I cited mentioned
the elimination of comp ling teaching positions.-

Nonsense. LINGUIST List is full of ads for computational linguists.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

That's recognized by normal people as ironic understatement.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE? at any rate who judges if the
reconstructions are correct?

Indo-Europeanists (other than Don Ringe) have no interest in the
Swadesh list, since the subgroupings of IE were long ago well
established. An investigation by Dyen et al. tested the reliability of
Swadeshian subgrouping techniques and found that no false positives
were achieved, but some subgroupings were missed -- on the basis of
modern Indic and Iranian languages, no Indo-Iranian group was
observed! But as even you must know, Old Avestan and Vedic are nearly
identical.

Heres a challenge I do not expect to be met in hundred million years.

(1) You define the core vocabulary say in English or any other "Indo
European"language.

(2) You derive the list of cognate words to the words on the list =
starting with Swedish and ending with Sinhala. I will grant you
things like chakra = wheel.

(3) You announce the percentage of matches by language. "No false
postives" is almost quintessential professorial weaseling.

I

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If this is your take-away from the review,

What are you referring to? Trond expressed no opinion whatsoever about
the content of the review; he merely filled out the quotation so that
what you copied was shown up as misrepresentation.

I highlighted what I thought was significant and I pointed everbody to
the whole review. It is "misrepresentation" only in your dreams. I
have irretrievably de-pantsed you and you are blowing smoke.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received

Stop lying, liar. You have not found a single positive review.

Since you think you have the right to tell people what words mean -
the above sentence may be considered true on your terms.

But to all normal people

start quote:

Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously

end quote.

pretty much speaks for itself.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

You can look up _that_ nutcase in the sci.lang archives, too. It
apparently is a fact that one of the financers of the foundation that
publishes JIES also contributes to some sort of nefarious
organization. There is, however, no connection between that person and
anything published in the journal.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and now Daniels has launched another unsupported ad
hominem attack on Mark Hubey)

Even to you, Hubey would look like an utter fool.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and to me this kind of unethical
behavior points to intellectual insecurity.

If you would ever bother to learn something, your opinions _might_
garner some respect.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
And perhaps real
financial insecurity also, since the listserv group I cited mentioned
the elimination of comp ling teaching positions.-

Nonsense. LINGUIST List is full of ads for computational linguists.

Oh my God, comp ling "humor" - its almost unbearable.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

That's recognized by normal people as ironic understatement.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE? at any rate who judges if the
reconstructions are correct?

Indo-Europeanists (other than Don Ringe) have no interest in the
Swadesh list, since the subgroupings of IE were long ago well
established. An investigation by Dyen et al. tested the reliability of
Swadeshian subgrouping techniques and found that no false positives
were achieved, but some subgroupings were missed -- on the basis of
modern Indic and Iranian languages, no Indo-Iranian group was
observed! But as even you must know, Old Avestan and Vedic are nearly
identical.

Heres a challenge I do not expect to be met in hundred million years.
(1) You define the core vocabulary say in English or any other "Indo
European"language.

Who is "You"? What do you mean by "core vocabulary"?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) You derive the list of cognate words to the words on the list =
starting with Swedish and ending with Sinhala. I will grant you
things like chakra = wheel.

What on earth does that mean?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(3) You announce the percentage of matches by language. "No false
postives" is almost quintessential professorial weaseling.
I

I guess you saved me the bother of typing "?". That's
incomprehensible.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If this is your take-away from the review,

What are you referring to? Trond expressed no opinion whatsoever about
the content of the review; he merely filled out the quotation so that
what you copied was shown up as misrepresentation.

I highlighted what I thought was significant and I pointed everbody to
the whole review. It is "misrepresentation" only in your dreams. I
have irretrievably de-pantsed you and you are blowing smoke.

? So now you're aping Dushan's sexual innuendo?

Again, what _you_ think is significant is of no merit whatsoever,
since you have proven yourself again and again incapable of
comprehending any linguistic discussion, and you refuse to learn
anything about it.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received

Stop lying, liar. You have not found a single positive review.

Since you think you have the right to tell people what words mean -
the above sentence may be considered true on your terms.
But to all normal people
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously
end quote.
pretty much speaks for itself.

Who was that quote from?

Since she did not demonstrate what she set out to demonstrate, the
book is a failure. You have _no idea_ what features of it the reviewer
you refuse to name was complimenting, or why.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

You can look up _that_ nutcase in the sci.lang archives, too. It
apparently is a fact that one of the financers of the foundation that
publishes JIES also contributes to some sort of nefarious
organization. There is, however, no connection between that person and
anything published in the journal.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and now Daniels has launched another unsupported ad
hominem attack on Mark Hubey)

Even to you, Hubey would look like an utter fool.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and to me this kind of unethical
behavior points to intellectual insecurity.

If you would ever bother to learn something, your opinions _might_
garner some respect.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
And perhaps real
financial insecurity also, since the listserv group I cited mentioned
the elimination of comp ling teaching positions.-

Nonsense. LINGUIST List is full of ads for computational linguists.

Oh my God, comp ling "humor" - its almost unbearable.-

Where?

[a***@hotmail.com]

<Danielsian infantile tantrum snipped>

Post by Peter T. Daniels
Since she did not demonstrate what she set out to demonstrate, the
book is a failure. You have _no idea_ what features of it the reviewer
you refuse to name was complimenting, or why.

This is the nearest thing to a "mea culpa" I can expect - from
implying that she was totally laughed out of court - you have now
toned down your rhetoric to "she failed in her objective."
Read this "unattributed and unsourced" material and weep:

Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M
succeeds admirably in
shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently indefensible
assumptions about Uralic
languages. However, she does not replace them with any new ones of
her
own. It remains
to be seen whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts,
myths
and statistics in
Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of paradigm shift for
which its author is
arguing. Nevertheless, it is now obvious that no advance in Uralic
studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

end quote.

Daniels - being an adult entails being able to say "I was wrong". Do
you want to go through life with your mental age stuck at 14?

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
<Danielsian infantile tantrum snipped>

Post by Peter T. Daniels
Since she did not demonstrate what she set out to demonstrate, the
book is a failure. You have _no idea_ what features of it the reviewer
you refuse to name was complimenting, or why.

This is the nearest thing to a "mea culpa" I can expect - from
implying that she was totally laughed out of court - you have now
toned down your rhetoric to "she failed in her objective."

What an idiot. Remember the remark about "ironic understatement"?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still
accept much of the skepticism contained in her ground-breaking study.

Which points of skepticism does the reviewer accept?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I also urge both
Uralicists and non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M
succeeds admirably in
shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently indefensible
assumptions about Uralic
languages.

Waht are the assumptions she sheds light on?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
However, she does not replace them with any new ones of
her
own. It remains
to be seen whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths
and statistics in
Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of paradigm shift for
which its author is
arguing. Nevertheless, it is now obvious that no advance in Uralic
studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

Which unresolved issues does she bring so eloquently to the fore?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
end quote.

You have no idea what the reviewer is referring to, and you have no
idea what the book says. Yet you take it as a paradigm example of
historical linguistics! It isn't.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Daniels - being an adult entails being able to say "I was wrong". Do
you want to go through life with your mental age stuck at 14?

Pick something I was actually wrong about.

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

If you had more familiarity with science, you would notice a lot of
"college professors" using such words. They are normal expressions of
scientific caution. Only aggressive ignoramuses call them "weasel
words".

Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary

Post by a***@hotmail.com
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

One's peers. That's how science works.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

Shocking! Why, the next thing you know, people will be trying to
discredited comparative linguistics by associating it with "Aryans"
and Nazis!

Ross Clark

and now Daniels has launched another unsupported ad

Post by a***@hotmail.com
hominem attack on Mark Hubey) and to me this kind of unethical
behavior points to intellectual insecurity. And perhaps real
financial insecurity also, since the listserv group I cited mentioned
the elimination of comp ling teaching positions.-

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

If you had more familiarity with science, you would notice a lot of
"college professors" using such words. They are normal expressions of
scientific caution. Only aggressive ignoramuses call them "weasel
words".

By the way I don't believe one comp ling academic says that the
alleged IE languages are descended from a single proto-language. I
think they all use words like "unlikely to be produced by chance,
contact etc." Perhaps Latin to Romance languages is a case they may
use a simple declarative sentence to indicate descent.

Whether its weaseling or judiciousness is in the eye of the beholder
isn't it?

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary

Post by a***@hotmail.com
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

One's peers. That's how science works.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

Shocking! Why, the next thing you know, people will be trying to
discredited comparative linguistics by associating it with "Aryans"
and Nazis!

That doesn't justify comp linguists doing it to their own who have a
different viewpoint. I notice that you are maintaining a deafening
silence about the more balanced review of Marcantonio's work I
unearthed.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Ross Clark

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

If you had more familiarity with science, you would notice a lot of
"college professors" using such words. They are normal expressions of
scientific caution. Only aggressive ignoramuses call them "weasel
words".

By the way I don't believe one comp ling academic says that the
alleged IE languages are descended from a single proto-language. I
think they all use words like "unlikely to be produced by chance,
contact etc." Perhaps Latin to Romance languages is a case they may
use a simple declarative sentence to indicate descent.
Whether its weaseling or judiciousness is in the eye of the beholder
isn't it?

Exactly as I said. And I specified what type of "beholder" you are.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary

Post by a***@hotmail.com
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

One's peers. That's how science works.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

Shocking! Why, the next thing you know, people will be trying to
discredited comparative linguistics by associating it with "Aryans"
and Nazis!

That doesn't justify comp linguists doing it to their own who have a
different viewpoint.

No, it doesn't. So how do you justify _your_ smear tactics?

I notice that you are maintaining a deafening

Post by a***@hotmail.com
silence about the more balanced review of Marcantonio's work I
unearthed.

Deafening? You certainly have dramatized yourself into rich courtroom-
drama type scenario. Everything I say -- even what I don't say -- is
being held against me and entered into my dossier. Exactly where was
this powerful expectation coming from, that I ought to say something
about Vajda's review of Marcantonio? Look inside your own brain for
the answer.

You found one reviewer who felt she had some valid points to make
about method, while rejecting her centralclaim that Uralic was not a
valid family. So? At most this may prove that Peter overstated the
case re Marcantonio. Peter has been known to do such things. This
could lead to one of those interminable "you did/I didn't" sub-threads
that Usenet is all too prone to. I have no interest in pursuing it. I
only point out that your own record of distortion and
misrepresentation does not make you a leading contender for the
judge's seat here.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

If you had more familiarity with science, you would notice a lot of
"college professors" using such words. They are normal expressions of
scientific caution. Only aggressive ignoramuses call them "weasel
words".

By the way I don't believe one comp ling academic says that the
alleged IE languages are descended from a single proto-language. I
think they all use words like "unlikely to be produced by chance,
contact etc." Perhaps Latin to Romance languages is a case they may
use a simple declarative sentence to indicate descent.
Whether its weaseling or judiciousness is in the eye of the beholder
isn't it?

Exactly as I said. And I specified what type of "beholder" you are.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary

Post by a***@hotmail.com
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

One's peers. That's how science works.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

Shocking! Why, the next thing you know, people will be trying to
discredited comparative linguistics by associating it with "Aryans"
and Nazis!

That doesn't justify comp linguists doing it to their own who have a
different viewpoint.

No, it doesn't. So how do you justify _your_ smear tactics?

I think its false to say that I have smeared anybody. I have accused
this field of having racist antecedents. I am hardly alone in that.
I thought I found evidence of even recent racism by conflating comp
ling and comp mythology and when it was pointed out I apologized.
Apart from that I don;t know what you mean by smears. I have strong
opinions that my critics may call stupid,ignorant etc. and they have
done so pretty vehemently. All of Daniels's accusations of
"milseading quotes" are absurd since I have (AFAIK) always given the
URL to the full texts where I got my quotes from (unless I was
reusing a quote I had given the URL for before).

And even if a made a quote with no attribution whatsoever, its so easy
to find where it is with a text search. Thw whole notion that I was
making propaganda points with selective, elided quotes is false and
amounts to smearing me.

If I selectively quote something, with the URL for the whole text, I
can be shown up to be wrong by quoting a different section of the
original text - but since I made no attempt to hide it in the first
place there is no dishonesty involved.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
I notice that you are maintaining a deafening

Post by a***@hotmail.com
silence about the more balanced review of Marcantonio's work I
unearthed.

Deafening? You certainly have dramatized yourself into rich courtroom-
drama type scenario. Everything I say -- even what I don't say -- is
being held against me and entered into my dossier. Exactly where was
this powerful expectation coming from, that I ought to say something
about Vajda's review of Marcantonio? Look inside your own brain for
the answer.
You found one reviewer who felt she had some valid points to make
about method, while rejecting her centralclaim that Uralic was not a
valid family. So? At most this may prove that Peter overstated the
case re Marcantonio. Peter has been known to do such things.

If you are looking for the free interchange of ideas, you should
chastise Daniels pretty severly. he seems to be trying to discourage
people from trying to see for themselves what Marcantonio has to say
which is basically censorship.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
could lead to one of those interminable "you did/I didn't" sub-threads
that Usenet is all too prone to. I have no interest in pursuing it. I
only point out that your own record of distortion and
misrepresentation does not make you a leading contender for the
judge's seat here.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Did you notice the college professor weasel words "with some
confidence"?

If you had more familiarity with science, you would notice a lot of
"college professors" using such words. They are normal expressions of
scientific caution. Only aggressive ignoramuses call them "weasel
words".

By the way I don't believe one comp ling academic says that the
alleged IE languages are descended from a single proto-language. I
think they all use words like "unlikely to be produced by chance,
contact etc." Perhaps Latin to Romance languages is a case they may
use a simple declarative sentence to indicate descent.
Whether its weaseling or judiciousness is in the eye of the beholder
isn't it?

Exactly as I said. And I specified what type of "beholder" you are.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Is the reconstruction of "much" of the core vocabulary

Post by a***@hotmail.com
factual ? how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

One's peers. That's how science works.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by Trond Engen
--
Trond Engen
- still no linguist- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

If this is your take-away from the review, then you and I are not from
the same planet and so dialogue is impossible. At any rate, Daniels
created a totally false picture as to how Marcantonio's work was
received until I hunted up this review ((another guy went so far as to
say that Marcantonio's publisher had published white supremacist work
or some such thing - I don't exactly recall - but some kind of "guilt
by association" )

Shocking! Why, the next thing you know, people will be trying to
discredited comparative linguistics by associating it with "Aryans"
and Nazis!

That doesn't justify comp linguists doing it to their own who have a
different viewpoint.

No, it doesn't. So how do you justify _your_ smear tactics?

I think its false to say that I have smeared anybody. I have accused
this field of having racist antecedents. I am hardly alone in that.

Not being alone hardly makes it less of a smear.
Harping on so-called "racist antecedents" and connections between
comparative linguistics and Nazism etc. implies that these things are
still relevant to the present practice and practitioners of
comparative linguistics. I'm not surprised that someone who obviously
hates comparative linguistics would resort to such tactics. Just don't
try to excuse them as fair comment.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I thought I found evidence of even recent racism by conflating comp
ling and comp mythology and when it was pointed out I apologized.
Apart from that I don;t know what you mean by smears. I have strong
opinions that my critics may call stupid,ignorant etc. and they have
done so pretty vehemently. All of Daniels's accusations of
"milseading quotes" are absurd since I have (AFAIK) always given the
URL to the full texts where I got my quotes from (unless I was
reusing a quote I had given the URL for before).

No, you eventually started doing this, but at the beginning you just
dropped them.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
And even if a made a quote with no attribution whatsoever, its so easy
to find where it is with a text search. Thw whole notion that I was
making propaganda points with selective, elided quotes is false and
amounts to smearing me.

Your quotes were certainly selected, and often elided. The fact that
they are usually locatable by text search is irrelevant. There's no
reason why your readers should have to do that for themselves, just to
save you a few keystrokes.

Ross Clark

If I selectively quote something, with the URL for the whole text, I

Post by a***@hotmail.com
can be shown up to be wrong by quoting a different section of the
original text - but since I made no attempt to hide it in the first
place there is no dishonesty involved.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
I notice that you are maintaining a deafening

Post by a***@hotmail.com
silence about the more balanced review of Marcantonio's work I
unearthed.

Deafening? You certainly have dramatized yourself into rich courtroom-
drama type scenario. Everything I say -- even what I don't say -- is
being held against me and entered into my dossier. Exactly where was
this powerful expectation coming from, that I ought to say something
about Vajda's review of Marcantonio? Look inside your own brain for
the answer.
You found one reviewer who felt she had some valid points to make
about method, while rejecting her centralclaim that Uralic was not a
valid family. So? At most this may prove that Peter overstated the
case re Marcantonio. Peter has been known to do such things.

If you are looking for the free interchange of ideas, you should
chastise Daniels pretty severly. he seems to be trying to discourage
people from trying to see for themselves what Marcantonio has to say
which is basically censorship.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
could lead to one of those interminable "you did/I didn't" sub-threads
that Usenet is all too prone to. I have no interest in pursuing it. I
only point out that your own record of distortion and
misrepresentation does not make you a leading contender for the
judge's seat here.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If you are looking for the free interchange of ideas, you should
chastise Daniels pretty severly. he seems to be trying to discourage
people from trying to see for themselves what Marcantonio has to say
which is basically censorship.

No one's stopping you from buying a copy of the book -- it's very
inexpensive. Of course, you wouldn't understand the first page of it,
let alone the rest of it.

[John Atkinson]

[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
standard text, Mallory and Adams (Oxford Intro to PIE, p 96):

"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."

FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"

[...]

John.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list

language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words

Swedish nn
English nn

or some such thing.

How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it. If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me. I really wish
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks. I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it. If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me. I really wish
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks. I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.-

Why are you lying? If you were "seeking the truth," you would learn
all you can about the field and what it has accomplished, _before_ you
attempted to refute it.

Since you know nothing at all about what you are attacking, your
attacks are impotent.

[benlizross]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.

If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

I really wish

Post by a***@hotmail.com
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks.

Let's see. Your line could be roughly paraphrased as: "Comparative
linguistics is racist nonsense, and could only be defended by racist
fools because their jobs are at risk." Now I'll admit that in some
technical sense perhaps that is not "personal"; but perhaps you can
stretch your imagination to see how it could be offensive.

I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or

Post by a***@hotmail.com
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

Naw, I thought so at first, but it didn't take long to see through.
You've ignored every opportunity to learn some truth. You're after some
intellectual window dressing for your ethnic/religious based hatred of
comparative linguistics.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

If you are a usenet veteran, you'd know that most newsgroups have at
least one poster who uses the group as his personal trashcan. Soc
culture Indian has Jai,Habshi,Vogno - they cannot be influenced by
responses to their posts.

Since you have started playing Daniels's "lies" game - you are baldly
lying when you say that you or somebody else responds to me only to
makes sure that some "lie" doesn't stand unchallenged. First of all -
there have been no lies in my messages - and I state this
categorically. I have made errors of fact and interpretation here and
there all of which I have acknowledged and apologized for. I have
expressed strong opinions that can be characterized as wrong, but it
is infantile to call somebody whose opinions you disagree with a liar.

I think that I have mounted the most serious challenge to comp ling
you guys have seen so far and you are all reacting from a sense of
impending loss of something that seems to be dear to the heart.

OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

Post by benlizross
I really wish

Post by a***@hotmail.com
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks.

Let's see. Your line could be roughly paraphrased as: "Comparative
linguistics is racist nonsense, and could only be defended by racist
fools because their jobs are at risk."

I gave at least one citation of comp ling positions being eliminated.

Now I'll admit that in some

Post by benlizross
technical sense perhaps that is not "personal"; but perhaps you can
stretch your imagination to see how it could be offensive.
I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or

Post by a***@hotmail.com
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

Naw, I thought so at first, but it didn't take long to see through.
You've ignored every opportunity to learn some truth. You're after some
intellectual window dressing for your ethnic/religious based hatred of
comparative linguistics.

There is no religious component at all. Ethnolinguisitic - perhaps -
but confined purely to the South of the Himalayas. But primarily, my
disgust is for the ludicrousness of the methods used and the
disproportionately far-reaching inferences drawn from methods of very
petty (if any) probative power.

Post by benlizross
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

If you are a usenet veteran, you'd know that most newsgroups have at
least one poster who uses the group as his personal trashcan. Soc
culture Indian has Jai,Habshi,Vogno - they cannot be influenced by
responses to their posts.
Since you have started playing Daniels's "lies" game - you are baldly
lying when you say that you or somebody else responds to me only to
makes sure that some "lie" doesn't stand unchallenged. First of all -
there have been no lies in my messages - and I state this
categorically. I have made errors of fact and interpretation here and
there all of which I have acknowledged and apologized for. I have
expressed strong opinions that can be characterized as wrong, but it
is infantile to call somebody whose opinions you disagree with a liar.
I think that I have mounted the most serious challenge to comp ling
you guys have seen so far and you are all reacting from a sense of
impending loss of something that seems to be dear to the heart.

Perhaps I should have mentioned vanity among your problems. As we keep
vainly trying to explain to you, you are not mounting any sort of
"challenge" at all, since your knowledge of the field remains stuck on
Square Zero.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work -

No thanks. I was aware of it before you stumbled on it. Have you even
read a single paragraph of Marcantonio's actual writings (as opposed
to reviews of her)?

wouldn't it be better if

Post by a***@hotmail.com
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

Since neither of these is even slightly probable, it's hard to make a
comparison.
Of course, comparative linguistics is modified by practising
professionals as a matter of course, like any scientific field. But
that's not what you're talking about.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross
I really wish

Post by a***@hotmail.com
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks.

Let's see. Your line could be roughly paraphrased as: "Comparative
linguistics is racist nonsense, and could only be defended by racist
fools because their jobs are at risk."

I gave at least one citation of comp ling positions being eliminated.

Such a rare occurrence in academia. And then you assumed that all of
us had jobs which would thereby be threatened.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Now I'll admit that in some

Post by benlizross
technical sense perhaps that is not "personal"; but perhaps you can
stretch your imagination to see how it could be offensive.
I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or

Post by a***@hotmail.com
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

Naw, I thought so at first, but it didn't take long to see through.
You've ignored every opportunity to learn some truth. You're after some
intellectual window dressing for your ethnic/religious based hatred of
comparative linguistics.

There is no religious component at all. Ethnolinguisitic - perhaps -
but confined purely to the South of the Himalayas. But primarily, my
disgust is for the ludicrousness of the methods used and the
disproportionately far-reaching inferences drawn from methods of very
petty (if any) probative power.

I'm willing to bracket the "religious" part (which makes you distinct
from most of the Indian ranters against comparative linguistics), but
the fact remains that your starting point is a visceral hostility to
comparative linguistics, which, you suppose, is the basis for certain
beliefs which you cannot accept. This hostility itself may impair your
rational faculties. You feel sure that c.l. must be a tissue of
fallacies which could be brought down by a little "deconstructionist"
ju-jitsu. Yet you try one move after another, and nobody is impressed.
You characterize its methods as "ludicrous", "childish", etc., yet
your actual understanding of those methods remains at a childish level
-- apparently by your own choice.

Maybe it is time for you to go back and ask whether the things that
you found so terrible in the beginning are really the fault of
comparative linguistics? I doubt that you'll get much sympathy trying
to declare Tamil an endangered language. But if Tamil speakers are
using too much English for your liking, is it comparative linguists
who have made them do so? If the Sinhala consider themselves superior
because they are "Aryans", I'm sure hundreds of comparative linguists
would be ready to tell them this is nonsense. But would it make any
difference? The centuries long cultural and linguistic ties between
Tamil and Sanskrit are obviously important to you. But this is
something no comparative linguist would deny. If, after this
discussion, you have even a slightly more accurate picture of what
comparative linguistics says and doesn't say, what is it that
frightens and disgusts you so much?

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

If you are a usenet veteran, you'd know that most newsgroups have at
least one poster who uses the group as his personal trashcan. Soc
culture Indian has Jai,Habshi,Vogno - they cannot be influenced by
responses to their posts.
Since you have started playing Daniels's "lies" game - you are baldly
lying when you say that you or somebody else responds to me only to
makes sure that some "lie" doesn't stand unchallenged. First of all -
there have been no lies in my messages - and I state this
categorically. I have made errors of fact and interpretation here and
there all of which I have acknowledged and apologized for. I have
expressed strong opinions that can be characterized as wrong, but it
is infantile to call somebody whose opinions you disagree with a liar.
I think that I have mounted the most serious challenge to comp ling
you guys have seen so far and you are all reacting from a sense of
impending loss of something that seems to be dear to the heart.

Perhaps I should have mentioned vanity among your problems. As we keep
vainly trying to explain to you, you are not mounting any sort of
"challenge" at all, since your knowledge of the field remains stuck on
Square Zero.

There are two levels of attack:

(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock - but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway). But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages? They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences". Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil". But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

(2) Learn all the nitty gritty of the method and try to dispute
individual words claimed to be cognates.

For now I am sticking to (1) but yes - one of these days I'll get into
(2)more. But a lot of sources are very opaque and make my eyes glaze
over with their "tectals", "obstruents" and "voiced plosives"

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work -

No thanks. I was aware of it before you stumbled on it. Have you even
read a single paragraph of Marcantonio's actual writings (as opposed
to reviews of her)?

I expect this kind of thing from Daniels, but not from rational
adults. It is incumbent on the establishment to answer her and not
me. If she does my job for me thats great - but you should stay on
top of the debate over her work and see how it plays out.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
wouldn't it be better if

Post by a***@hotmail.com
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

Since neither of these is even slightly probable, it's hard to make a
comparison.
Of course, comparative linguistics is modified by practising
professionals as a matter of course, like any scientific field. But
that's not what you're talking about.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross
I really wish

Post by a***@hotmail.com
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks.

Let's see. Your line could be roughly paraphrased as: "Comparative
linguistics is racist nonsense, and could only be defended by racist
fools because their jobs are at risk."

I gave at least one citation of comp ling positions being eliminated.

Such a rare occurrence in academia. And then you assumed that all of
us had jobs which would thereby be threatened.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Now I'll admit that in some

Post by benlizross
technical sense perhaps that is not "personal"; but perhaps you can
stretch your imagination to see how it could be offensive.
I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or

Post by a***@hotmail.com
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

Naw, I thought so at first, but it didn't take long to see through.
You've ignored every opportunity to learn some truth. You're after some
intellectual window dressing for your ethnic/religious based hatred of
comparative linguistics.

There is no religious component at all. Ethnolinguisitic - perhaps -
but confined purely to the South of the Himalayas. But primarily, my
disgust is for the ludicrousness of the methods used and the
disproportionately far-reaching inferences drawn from methods of very
petty (if any) probative power.

I'm willing to bracket the "religious" part (which makes you distinct
from most of the Indian ranters against comparative linguistics), but
the fact remains that your starting point is a visceral hostility to
comparative linguistics, which, you suppose, is the basis for certain
beliefs which you cannot accept. This hostility itself may impair your
rational faculties. You feel sure that c.l. must be a tissue of
fallacies which could be brought down by a little "deconstructionist"
ju-jitsu. Yet you try one move after another, and nobody is impressed.
You characterize its methods as "ludicrous", "childish", etc., yet
your actual understanding of those methods remains at a childish level
-- apparently by your own choice.
Maybe it is time for you to go back and ask whether the things that
you found so terrible in the beginning are really the fault of
comparative linguistics? I doubt that you'll get much sympathy trying
to declare Tamil an endangered language. But if Tamil speakers are
using too much English for your liking, is it comparative linguists
who have made them do so? If the Sinhala consider themselves superior
because they are "Aryans", I'm sure hundreds of comparative linguists
would be ready to tell them this is nonsense.

You'll have to agree that the early comp linguists (or their
interpreters) conflated "Aryan languages" and "Aryan Race". Europeans
made much of the Mahavamsha (the semi-legendary origin story of the
Lankans) for whatever reasons and actually in the early stages of the
Sri-lanka - Tamil eelam conflict, Western reporterts would report
about "lighter skinned Sinhalese descended from Northen India" and
"darker skinned Tamils descended from Southern India" - but for the
past 10 years or so the offical party line is "you can't tell them
apart by appearance".

The problem was initiated by the early comp linguists and there is
very little modern ones can do to prevent demogogues from misusing
these labels.

But would it make any

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
difference? The centuries long cultural and linguistic ties between
Tamil and Sanskrit are obviously important to you. But this is
something no comparative linguist would deny. If, after this
discussion, you have even a slightly more accurate picture of what
comparative linguistics says and doesn't say, what is it that
frightens and disgusts you so much?

The relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit has hardly been properly
explored. We'll have to dismiss all Westeren-inspired work and Tamil
Chauvinist work and start from the beginning.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock -

Only because of your ignorance. Ignorance is curable, stupidity isn't.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway).

Only because of your ignorance. Ignorance is curable, stupidity isn't.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages?

I don't know what computational linguists mean by that (if anything),
but historical linguists have meant the same thing by it for 221 years
now: that the languages in question are "sprung from some common
source."

A community that spoke a language a while ago divided, for some
reason, into more than one community that fell out of communication.
As a result, the spontaneously arising, random changes in the language
could not diffuse throughout the (former) speech community, and the
forms of speech of the later community drifted apart. Eventually,
there were so many changes that the two forms were no longer mutually
intelligible.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences".

Of course not. The sound correspondences show that there once was a
unified speech-community, and the sound changes are the differing ways
the subsequent speech communities took on the characteristics they
have and that distinguish them from each other. Of course it's not
only "sound" that changes, but also morphology (i.e., grammatical
endings) and the other characteristics of language as well.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil".

We don't need to know a single thing about whatever "blood and soil"
is your shorthand for. All we need to know is "same" or "different."

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

Computational linguists have nothing whatsoever to do with homelands.
(Neither do historical linguists.) Once the linguistic relationships
are established, the archeologists and (pre)historians and
anthropologists can fight over "homelands" all they want, but
linguistics has nothing to say about that at all. (Even common
reconstructed vocabulary isn't particularly useful, since words can
change their meanings over time just as readily as any of the other
changes set in.)

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

So you don't even know what a definition looks like????

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) Learn all the nitty gritty of the method and try to dispute
individual words claimed to be cognates.

Individual words are always in dispute. That does not negate the
existence of the overall patterns that are seen in sometimes hundreds
of examples, and the regularities in which are what makes it necessary
to try to account for the examples that seem not to fit into the
regularities.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
For now I am sticking to (1) but yes - one of these days I'll get into
(2)more. But a lot of sources are very opaque and make my eyes glaze
over with their "tectals", "obstruents" and "voiced plosives"

Those (well, except for "tectals") are terms you would learn within
your first week of Introduction to Linguistics 101/

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work -

No thanks. I was aware of it before you stumbled on it. Have you even
read a single paragraph of Marcantonio's actual writings (as opposed
to reviews of her)?

I expect this kind of thing from Daniels, but not from rational
adults. It is incumbent on the establishment to answer her and not
me. If she does my job for me thats great - but you should stay on
top of the debate over her work and see how it plays out.

The "establishment" (the handful of Uralicists in the world) has
"anssered" her. It is you who are (as yet) incapable of understanding
either her book or their evaluations of it.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
read more �-

Learn to snip.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock -

Only because of your ignorance. Ignorance is curable, stupidity isn't.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway).

Only because of your ignorance. Ignorance is curable, stupidity isn't.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages?

I don't know what computational linguists mean by that (if anything),
but historical linguists have meant the same thing by it for 221 years
now: that the languages in question are "sprung from some common
source."
A community that spoke a language a while ago divided, for some
reason, into more than one community that fell out of communication.
As a result, the spontaneously arising, random changes in the language
could not diffuse throughout the (former) speech community, and the
forms of speech of the later community drifted apart. Eventually,
there were so many changes that the two forms were no longer mutually
intelligible.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences".

Of course not. The sound correspondences show that there once was a
unified speech-community, and the sound changes are the differing ways
the subsequent speech communities took on the characteristics they
have and that distinguish them from each other. Of course it's not
only "sound" that changes, but also morphology (i.e., grammatical
endings) and the other characteristics of language as well.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil".

We don't need to know a single thing about whatever "blood and soil"
is your shorthand for. All we need to know is "same" or "different."

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

Computational linguists have nothing whatsoever to do with homelands.
(Neither do historical linguists.) Once the linguistic relationships
are established, the archeologists and (pre)historians and
anthropologists can fight over "homelands" all they want, but
linguistics has nothing to say about that at all. (Even common
reconstructed vocabulary isn't particularly useful, since words can
change their meanings over time just as readily as any of the other
changes set in.)

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

So you don't even know what a definition looks like????

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) Learn all the nitty gritty of the method and try to dispute
individual words claimed to be cognates.

Individual words are always in dispute. That does not negate the
existence of the overall patterns that are seen in sometimes hundreds
of examples, and the regularities in which are what makes it necessary
to try to account for the examples that seem not to fit into the
regularities.

But apparently comp linguists have made what can only be called gross
blunders, for example

http://indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Reg.htm

. SANSKRIT: rju- (straight); rj- (to make straight); rajan-, raj-
(king); rju- (right, moral).
2. AVESTAN (ancient Iranian): erezu- (straight); rasta- (straight
way); eresva- (right, moral).
3. OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC: no known cognates or reflexes.
4. GREEK: orthus (straight); oregu, (to reach, stretch).
5. LATIN: rectus (straight); regere (to direct, lead); rex (king);
rectus (right, moral).
6. OLD IRISH: diriuch (straight); rigim (to stretch out); recht (law,
authority); r (king).
7. GOTHIC: raihts (straight); (uf-)rahjan (to stretch out); reikinon
(to rule, govern); reiks ( ruler); garaihts (right, moral); rikan (to
heap up).
8. OLD NORSE: rettr, rakr (straight); rekja (to stretch out); rettr
(law, legal claim); retti (direction); retta (to direct, rule, lead);
rgr (king); rettr (right, moral); raka (to sweep together).
9. OLD ENGLISH: riht (straight); reccan (to stretch out); riht
(justice); rihtan (to direct, rule, lead); ricsian (to rule, govern);
rica (ruler); riht (right, moral); raca (to rake).
10. OLD HIGH GERMAN: reht (straight); recchan (to stretch out); reht
(justice); rihhison (to rule, govern); rihhi (ruler); reht (right,
moral); rehho (to rake).

end quote.

My god, if any word is a genuine root that gave rise to so many
cognates, it has to be *reg - after all kingship has to be a basic
primordial concept (like Louie says to Alex in an epiosde of Taxi when
Alex bets on "field" in craps - "look at how many ways you can win -
how could you possibly lose"? - "thats how" Alex says when the shooter
promptly rolls a non-field number).

You want to know how *reg can lose?

Lehmann page 252 of "Theor base IEL"

We have noted amply that there is no basis for reconstructing Proto-
Indo-European *reg - "king".

end quote.

This illustrates that comp ling shouldn't yield to temptation and
perform feats of linguistic legerdemain (to paraphase somebody quoted
by Lehmann) - it has to consider evidence other than words alone -
in this case "was society organized into kingdoms at the time of the
Proto Indo Europeans"?

He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious

"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of the Dorians that was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".

end quote.

This kind of vast variance in the interpretation of ancient words and
phrases means that the Tamil joke Shakespeare was "Seshappa Iyer" has
as much credibility as anything comp ling pros can come up with.

If "Raja" and "Rex" aren't cognate = then I would seriously start
considering that the entire litany of alleged cognates is just a red
herring.

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
For now I am sticking to (1) but yes - one of these days I'll get into
(2)more. But a lot of sources are very opaque and make my eyes glaze
over with their "tectals", "obstruents" and "voiced plosives"

Those (well, except for "tectals") are terms you would learn within
your first week of Introduction to Linguistics 101/

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work -

No thanks. I was aware of it before you stumbled on it. Have you even
read a single paragraph of Marcantonio's actual writings (as opposed
to reviews of her)?

I expect this kind of thing from Daniels, but not from rational
adults. It is incumbent on the establishment to answer her and not
me. If she does my job for me thats great - but you should stay on
top of the debate over her work and see how it plays out.

The "establishment" (the handful of Uralicists in the world) has
"anssered" her. It is you who are (as yet) incapable of understanding
either her book or their evaluations of it.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
read more �-

Learn to snip.

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Lehmann page 252 of "Theor base IEL"
We have noted amply that there is no basis for reconstructing Proto-
Indo-European *reg - "king".
If "Raja" and "Rex" aren't cognate

Might you be drawing a meaning that you prefer? Alby Stone* doesn't
understand Lehmann as saying there was no PIE *reg- or that rex and
rajah are not cognates. Alby says that IF** Lehmann is right, PIE
*reg- <<may be given a tentative meaning something like 'control(ling)/
(er)'; or 'enforce(r)/(-ing)'>>.
http://indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Reg.htm

* from the English in Alby's writing, does it seem like he doesn't
understand English?
** IF implies that Lehmann might be wrong

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by M. Ranjit Mathews

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Lehmann page 252 of "Theor base IEL"
We have noted amply that there is no basis for reconstructing Proto-
Indo-European *reg - "king".
If "Raja" and "Rex" aren't cognate

Might you be drawing a meaning that you prefer? Alby Stone* doesn't
understand Lehmann as saying there was no PIE *reg- or that rex and
rajah are not cognates. Alby says that IF** Lehmann is right, PIE
*reg- <<may be given a tentative meaning something like 'control(ling)/
(er)'; or 'enforce(r)/(-ing)'>>.http://indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Reg.htm
* from the English in Alby's writing, does it seem like he doesn't
understand English?
** IF implies that Lehmann might be wrong

I don't know what Alby Stone's source is for Lehmann's ideas on *reg,
but in his textbook Lehmann is categorical as my quote indicates.

page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL

An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

end quote.

After the embarrassing fairy tale in the early part of his article,
Stone starts weaseling towards the end, like almost all writers on
"language families"

The idea of Indo-European roots is dependent on accepting that there
was a single ethno-linguistic ancestor of all the current variants
(the fabled 'homeland'), and that the current distribution of Indo-
European languages is the result of colonisation (by whatever routes
and means) from that central source.

end quote.

By the way Lehmann pretty much pulls the rug out from under another
pillar of the edifice of PIE nonsense - the numerals:

P 254 :

In view of the great discrepancy between the lexical items for 20-90,
and also for 11-19, it seems far more likely that the numerical system
was also constructed independently in each dialect group or even
dialect. We accept the set to 5, and at a later period to 10, as
Proto-Indo-European......

If each dialect group, or dialect, built its own system of higher
numerals rather than inherited it, the problems involved in
reconciling the forms would not be so tortuous.

.................

The most convincing explanation for the words for 6 to 9 is by means
of borrowing or calques

end quote.

So we are left with1,2,3,4,5 out of which Sanskrit lacks an inherited
1 (but Tamil has a ghost cognate "Onru") , 2 goes so far afield as the
Armenian Erku (that puts Tamil Iru, Irandu into play) and the
Nostratic root for fist explains 5 much better. Who knows what more
objective research may unveil about the two remaining pillars among
the numerals, 3 and 4.

I remember reading somewhere that "dog" cannot be traced back to the
alleged PIE.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL
An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL
An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

on p 245 he says:

the commonly cited *reg on the basis of sankrit *raj, latin rex "king"
has now been dismissed from the Indo European lexicon. Yet even such
meager attestation of roots used as nouns suggests ....that they may
well have been employed for nominal use in the proto-language. ....
When so used, they would have expressed the basic meaning of the root.

end quote.

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL
An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

the commonly cited *reg on the basis of sankrit *raj, latin rex "king"
has now been dismissed from the Indo European lexicon.

When did this dismissal take place? A 2000 edition of the American
Heritage Dictionary has reg in its list of IE roots.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Yet even such
meager attestation of roots used as nouns suggests ....that they may
well have been employed for nominal use in the proto-language. ....
When so used, they would have expressed the basic meaning of the root.

That seems to mean that Latin rex had a cognate in PIE which cognate
had a more basic meaning than king.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
end quote.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by M. Ranjit Mathews

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL
An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

the commonly cited *reg on the basis of sankrit *raj, latin rex "king"
has now been dismissed from the Indo European lexicon.

When did this dismissal take place? A 2000 edition of the American
Heritage Dictionary has reg in its list of IE roots.http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Yet even such
meager attestation of roots used as nouns suggests ....that they may
well have been employed for nominal use in the proto-language. ....
When so used, they would have expressed the basic meaning of the root.

That seems to mean that Latin rex had a cognate in PIE which cognate
had a more basic meaning than king.

which is why I say that finding cognates is only a pastime or cottage
industry - not worth the time of adults. That guy had this verbal
diarrhea of nonsense about kings being connected with straight,
upright, correct, encompassing, reaching out, streching,sweeping up
etc.- and this farrago of nonsense doen't consider some obvious
possibilities for the root words for kingship - first,head,God to name
just three.

[benlizross]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by M. Ranjit Mathews

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
page 68, Lehmann Theor base IEL
An exemplary study was provided by Scharfe..... in which he
demostrated that the assumed word for "king" as in Meillet.....and
many other handbooks. early Sanskrit raj-, is a ghost
word.....Scharfe's demonstration has important consequences: it shows
that the proposed word for "king" is attested only in Latin rex and
old Irish ri so that no Proto-Indo-European etymon can be
reconstructed.

In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

the commonly cited *reg on the basis of sankrit *raj, latin rex "king"
has now been dismissed from the Indo European lexicon.

When did this dismissal take place? A 2000 edition of the American
Heritage Dictionary has reg in its list of IE roots.http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Yet even such
meager attestation of roots used as nouns suggests ....that they may
well have been employed for nominal use in the proto-language. ....
When so used, they would have expressed the basic meaning of the root.

That seems to mean that Latin rex had a cognate in PIE which cognate
had a more basic meaning than king.

which is why I say that finding cognates is only a pastime or cottage
industry - not worth the time of adults. That guy had this verbal
diarrhea of nonsense about kings being connected with straight,
upright, correct, encompassing, reaching out, streching,sweeping up
etc.- and this farrago of nonsense doen't consider some obvious
possibilities for the root words for kingship - first,head,God to name
just three.

The farrago of nonsense evident here is the one produced by your
attempts to pretend you understand what IE linguists are doing.

There is still a PIE root *reg with the meanings "straight, etc etc".
Rex and raja are derived from that root, and hence in some loose sense
are cognate.

The change of opinion among scholars is that they are now considered to
be independent formations, rather than reflecting an original PIE noun
meaning "king".

(One reason for this AIUI is that the apparent occurrences of the noun
in the Vedas were shown, on closer examination, to be verbal derivations
of the root. Hence the noun raja was a post-Vedic development.)

The other "obvious possibilities" you mention (first,head,God) do not
come into the question here, since there is no root with such a meaning
from which rex and/or raja could be derived.

Ross Clark

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by r***@yahoo.com
In what you've quoted; it is not claimed Latin rex and Irish ri don't
have cognates in other languages. The apparent claim is that the
cognates of these words didn't originally mean king in other
languages. If there is a claim (somewhere else in the book) of no
cognates of rex/ri, you haven't quoted that portion.

the commonly cited *reg on the basis of sankrit *raj, latin rex "king"
has now been dismissed from the Indo European lexicon. Yet even such
meager attestation of roots used as nouns suggests ....that they may
well have been employed for nominal use in the proto-language. ....
When so used, they would have expressed the basic meaning of the root.
end quote.-

You stupid fucking idiot, this is in the context of an assertion that
reconstructed PIE shows very few purely nominal roots.

Which is absolutely true.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
By the way Lehmann pretty much pulls the rug out from under another

Right down to Hindi, PIE shows. Look at chattiis (like in Chattisgarh)
with <cha> from <che>, <ti> from <tiin> and <is> being an innovation
and che and tiin in turn coming from earlier predecessors.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
In view of the great discrepancy between the lexical items for 20-90,
and also for 11-19, it seems far more likely that the numerical system
was also constructed independently in each dialect group or even
dialect. We accept the set to 5, and at a later period to 10, as
Proto-Indo-European......

At a later period, the set to 10 is PIE? I haven't heard of a later
period of PIE. Perhaps someone can explain what this "later period"
means; I can't make head or tail of it.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
The most convincing explanation for the words for 6 to 9 is by means
of borrowing or calques

So, Hindi AT is not a cognate of oct? A long time back, I read that it
was deduced that PD speakers used base 8 arithmetic because they
borrowed or innovated digits greater than 7, 8 coming from IE and 9
originally being an idiom meaning "one less than 10". Take a look at
this to compare them in different languages.
http://www.zompist.com/euro.htm#ie

Post by a***@hotmail.com
So we are left with1,2,3,4,5 out of which Sanskrit lacks an inherited
1 (but Tamil has a ghost cognate "Onru") , 2 goes so far afield as the
Armenian Erku (that puts Tamil Iru, Irandu into play)

Erku looked like a substratal word when I first saw it, i.e., borrowed
from a pre-IE language of Armenia. Then, I saw a claim that PIE *dw
becomes erk in many words in Armenian. That is a most mysterious
transformation but if it is a regular change, linguists would probably
view erku as coming from dwu by the same mysterious (to me) process
that produced the other words.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and the
Nostratic root for fist explains 5 much better.

Nothing prevents a Nostratic word from becoming a PIE word; according
to the Nostratic tree, many IE words came from PIE and many PIE words,
in turn, came from Nostratic.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I remember reading somewhere that "dog" cannot be traced back to the
alleged PIE.

Greek and Sanskrit are supposedly related via some descendant of PIE
which allows the two to have cognates not present in PIE.

[Trond Engen]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
My god, if any word is a genuine root that gave rise to so many
cognates, it has to be *reg - after all kingship has to be a basic
primordial concept ([...]).

It's not. The title of the ruler has changed fairly recently in many
countries (and there's some reason to believe that it changed more often
in prehistoric times).

Post by a***@hotmail.com
You want to know how *reg can lose?
Lehmann page 252 of "Theor base IEL"
We have noted amply that there is no basis for reconstructing Proto-
Indo-European *reg - "king".
end quote.
This illustrates that comp ling shouldn't yield to temptation and
perform feats of linguistic legerdemain (to paraphase somebody quoted
by Lehmann) - it has to consider evidence other than words alone -
in this case "was society organized into kingdoms at the time of the
Proto Indo Europeans"?
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of the Dorians that was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.
This kind of vast variance in the interpretation of ancient words
and phrases means that the Tamil joke Shakespeare was "Seshappa Iyer"
has as much credibility as anything comp ling pros can come up with.
If "Raja" and "Rex" aren't cognate = then I would seriously start
considering that the entire litany of alleged cognates is just a red
herring.

Lehmann's point, however, seems to be that, based on his evaluation of
the evidence, the inherited "direct"-word was used to form titles of
rulers independently in several Indo-European languages rather than in PIE.

Such modifications are done all the time and are no weakness at all.
They are part of the continuous reevaluation of evidence that makes
historical lingusitics a science -- and as such maintaining a mainstream
view that is the best possible approximation from the current evidence
(or rather: a little to the cautious side). There's no historical
linguist who expects every detail of the current reconstruction of PIE
to last for ever. After all, what they all try do is to improve the
understanding.

Actually, no-one in any descriptive science expects the current
knowledge to be the final solution. If so, they wouldn't bother to work
there. There's alvays an unresolved detail to figure out and a potential
breakthrough to make that would leave previous work as "a good
approximation". That's what happened to Newton -- but still, both his
approximations and the methods he developed to calculate them are valid.
If you want everlasting answers you'll have to turn to religion.

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
My god, if any word is a genuine root that gave rise to so many
cognates, it has to be *reg - after all kingship has to be a basic
primordial concept ([...]).

It's not. The title of the ruler has changed fairly recently in many
countries (and there's some reason to believe that it changed more often
in prehistoric times).

"India under British Raj (British rule)". Can you translate that to
another IE language using a cognate of Rex or Reich in place of Raj?

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
My god, if any word is a genuine root that gave rise to so many
cognates, it has to be *reg - after all kingship has to be a basic
primordial concept (like Louie says to Alex in an epiosde of Taxi when
Alex bets on "field" in craps - "look at how many ways you can win -
how could you possibly lose"? - "thats how" Alex says when the shooter
promptly rolls a non-field number).

My god, you're stupid. If you had bothered to discover what Lehmann
means by "we have noted amply," you would have discovered that his
rejection of *reg is based on Scharfe's demonstration that Skt _raj_
does not mean 'king'/

If and only if you agree that Skt _raj_ does not mean 'king' can you
accept Lehmann's assertion that *reg does not mean 'king'.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
You want to know how *reg can lose?
Lehmann page 252 of "Theor base IEL"
We have noted amply that there is no basis for reconstructing Proto-
Indo-European *reg - "king".
end quote.
This illustrates that comp ling shouldn't yield to temptation and
perform feats of linguistic legerdemain (to paraphase somebody quoted
by Lehmann) - it has to consider evidence other than words alone -
in this case "was society organized into kingdoms at the time of the
Proto Indo Europeans"?

Computational linguistics has nothing to say on the matter, and
historical linguistics has nothing to say about the institution of
kingship in ancient India.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of the Dorians that was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

But you, as a layperson, find it hilarious, so I guess you're not
interested in those questions.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
This kind of vast variance in the interpretation of ancient words and
phrases means that the Tamil joke Shakespeare was "Seshappa Iyer" has
as much credibility as anything comp ling pros can come up with.

Computational linguistics has nothing to do with it.

What does the English word "set" mean?

What does the English wrod "bow" mean?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
If "Raja" and "Rex" aren't cognate = then I would seriously start
considering that the entire litany of alleged cognates is just a red
herring.

He didn't say they are not cognate, you stupid fucking idiot. He says
the existence of the root does not show that kingship was an IE
institution.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by a***@hotmail.com
read more �-

Learn to snip.

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

Ross Clark

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

I think comp linguits have either too little or too much imagination.
Can't you imagine furious letters to the editor of the house journal
of the linguistics department of Southwest Texas College when the
first professors started espousing "waving plumes" instead of "three
clans"?

Professor A question's professor B's abilities, professor B calls
professor A's conduct "unseemly", professor C chimes in with
"professor B doesn;t floss his teeth", professor D calls professor A
"ignorant", professor D & E stop talking to each other, the letters
get more and more acrimonious, rather like yon Daniels who seems to
have gone postal - the editor finally says "correspondence on this
topic is closed".

You should actually find this a cautionary tale - how trecherous
inferences about the meaning of words in the distant past can be.

Raj = Rex = King is almost as legendary as Bhrata and brother and it
turns out to be a gross error. Why should I believe the "ifs ands and
buts" with "straight" and the rest of the verbal diarreah at the
website I cited - tomorrow the word people thought to have meant
'straight" in the past might turn out to have actually denoted
"hippopotamus".

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

I think comp linguits have either too little or too much imagination.
Can't you imagine furious letters to the editor of the house journal
of the linguistics department of Southwest Texas College when the
first professors started espousing "waving plumes" instead of "three
clans"?
Professor A question's professor B's abilities, professor B calls
professor A's conduct "unseemly", professor C chimes in with
"professor B doesn;t floss his teeth", professor D calls professor A
"ignorant", professor D & E stop talking to each other, the letters
get more and more acrimonious, rather like yon Daniels who seems to
have gone postal - the editor finally says "correspondence on this
topic is closed".
You should actually find this a cautionary tale - how trecherous
inferences about the meaning of words in the distant past can be.

There just doesn't seem to be any way of curing you of your delusion
that you have something to teach us.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Raj = Rex = King is almost as legendary as Bhrata and brother and it
turns out to be a gross error.

"Legendary", I suppose, in the same circles that find the "waving
plumes" example "hilarious"?

Why should I believe the "ifs ands and

Post by a***@hotmail.com
buts" with "straight" and the rest of the verbal diarreah at the
website I cited - tomorrow the word people thought to have meant
'straight" in the past might turn out to have actually denoted
"hippopotamus".

You don't have to believe any of it. Just stop pretending you
understand it.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

I think comp linguits have either too little or too much imagination.
Can't you imagine furious letters to the editor of the house journal
of the linguistics department of Southwest Texas College when the
first professors started espousing "waving plumes" instead of "three
clans"?
Professor A question's professor B's abilities, professor B calls
professor A's conduct "unseemly", professor C chimes in with
"professor B doesn;t floss his teeth", professor D calls professor A
"ignorant", professor D & E stop talking to each other, the letters
get more and more acrimonious, rather like yon Daniels who seems to
have gone postal - the editor finally says "correspondence on this
topic is closed".
You should actually find this a cautionary tale - how trecherous
inferences about the meaning of words in the distant past can be.

There just doesn't seem to be any way of curing you of your delusion
that you have something to teach us.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Raj = Rex = King is almost as legendary as Bhrata and brother and it
turns out to be a gross error.

"Legendary", I suppose, in the same circles that find the "waving
plumes" example "hilarious"?
Why should I believe the "ifs ands and

Post by a***@hotmail.com
buts" with "straight" and the rest of the verbal diarreah at the
website I cited - tomorrow the word people thought to have meant
'straight" in the past might turn out to have actually denoted
"hippopotamus".

You don't have to believe any of it. Just stop pretending you
understand it.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

This is sad.

Answer yes or no.

Is this correct?

II. Lengthened-grade form *rg-, Indo-European word for a tribal king.
1a. bishopric, eldritch, from Old English rce, realm; b. Riksmål, from
Old Norse rki, realm; c. Reich; Reichsmark, from Old High German rchi,
realm; d. rich, from Old English rce, strong, powerful, and Old French
riche, wealthy. a-d all from Germanic *rkja-, from Celtic suffixed
form *rg-yo-. 2. real2, regal, regulus, reign, rial1, riyal, royal;
regicide, regius professor, vicereine, viceroy, from Latin rx, king
(royal and priestly title). 3. Suffixed form *rg-en-. raj, rajah,
rani, rye2; maharajah, maharani, from Sanskrit rj, rjan-, king, rajah
(feminine rjñ, queen, rani), and rjati, he rules.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE427.html

[b***@ihug.co.nz]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

I think comp linguits have either too little or too much imagination.
Can't you imagine furious letters to the editor of the house journal
of the linguistics department of Southwest Texas College when the
first professors started espousing "waving plumes" instead of "three
clans"?
Professor A question's professor B's abilities, professor B calls
professor A's conduct "unseemly", professor C chimes in with
"professor B doesn;t floss his teeth", professor D calls professor A
"ignorant", professor D & E stop talking to each other, the letters
get more and more acrimonious, rather like yon Daniels who seems to
have gone postal - the editor finally says "correspondence on this
topic is closed".
You should actually find this a cautionary tale - how trecherous
inferences about the meaning of words in the distant past can be.

There just doesn't seem to be any way of curing you of your delusion
that you have something to teach us.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Raj = Rex = King is almost as legendary as Bhrata and brother and it
turns out to be a gross error.

"Legendary", I suppose, in the same circles that find the "waving
plumes" example "hilarious"?
Why should I believe the "ifs ands and

Post by a***@hotmail.com
buts" with "straight" and the rest of the verbal diarreah at the
website I cited - tomorrow the word people thought to have meant
'straight" in the past might turn out to have actually denoted
"hippopotamus".

You don't have to believe any of it. Just stop pretending you
understand it.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

This is sad.

What's "sad"? The same thing that was "hilarious" yesterday? Not only
is your response basically emotional rather than rational -- it
appears to be bipolar.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Answer yes or no.
Is this correct?
II. Lengthened-grade form *rg-, Indo-European word for a tribal king.
1a. bishopric, eldritch, from Old English rce, realm; b. Riksmål, from
Old Norse rki, realm; c. Reich; Reichsmark, from Old High German rchi,
realm; d. rich, from Old English rce, strong, powerful, and Old French
riche, wealthy. a-d all from Germanic *rkja-, from Celtic suffixed
form *rg-yo-. 2. real2, regal, regulus, reign, rial1, riyal, royal;
regicide, regius professor, vicereine, viceroy, from Latin rx, king
(royal and priestly title). 3. Suffixed form *rg-en-. raj, rajah,
rani, rye2; maharajah, maharani, from Sanskrit rj, rjan-, king, rajah
(feminine rjñ, queen, rani), and rjati, he rules.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE427.html- Hide quoted text -

Lehmann would disagree with the first line, assuming that by "Indo-
European" Watkins means PIE rather than "some branches of IE".
The rest is probably OK.
Are you still sad?

Ross Clark

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
He also gives an example that laypeople must find hilarious
"Tricha-ikes" an epithet of theDoriansthat was formerly assumed to
mean "of three clans" but today is taken to mean "of waving plumes".
end quote.

It's not in the index. Where do you think he says this, and what is
your evaluation of his arguments for saying so, if he does indeed say
so?

It's on p.252, in the paragraph immediately following the "king"
comment. He gives it as an example of a "hopeful interpretation"
relating to IE social organization, which is now considered incorrect.
The probable reference is to the work of Otto Schrader (Reallexikon
der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, 1917-29).

And why does our ignoramus find it "hilarious"?

If I try to reverse-engineer a plurality of "laypeople" who might find
something like that funny, not surprisingly they come out looking very
much like analys... (and maybe some others like "harmony")...people
who have decided a priori that comparative linguistics is a massive
hoax, so everything actual linguists do is either evil or funny,
depending I guess on what sort of mood you're in. I can't imagine the
average person finding it of any interest at all, much less hilarious.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

I think comp linguits have either too little or too much imagination.
Can't you imagine furious letters to the editor of the house journal
of the linguistics department of Southwest Texas College when the
first professors started espousing "waving plumes" instead of "three
clans"?
Professor A question's professor B's abilities, professor B calls
professor A's conduct "unseemly", professor C chimes in with
"professor B doesn;t floss his teeth", professor D calls professor A
"ignorant", professor D & E stop talking to each other, the letters
get more and more acrimonious, rather like yon Daniels who seems to
have gone postal - the editor finally says "correspondence on this
topic is closed".
You should actually find this a cautionary tale - how trecherous
inferences about the meaning of words in the distant past can be.

There just doesn't seem to be any way of curing you of your delusion
that you have something to teach us.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Raj = Rex = King is almost as legendary as Bhrata and brother and it
turns out to be a gross error.

"Legendary", I suppose, in the same circles that find the "waving
plumes" example "hilarious"?
Why should I believe the "ifs ands and

Post by a***@hotmail.com
buts" with "straight" and the rest of the verbal diarreah at the
website I cited - tomorrow the word people thought to have meant
'straight" in the past might turn out to have actually denoted
"hippopotamus".

You don't have to believe any of it. Just stop pretending you
understand it.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

This is sad.
Answer yes or no.
Is this correct?
II. Lengthened-grade form *rg-, Indo-European word for a tribal king.
1a. bishopric, eldritch, from Old English rce, realm; b. Riksmål, from
Old Norse rki, realm; c. Reich; Reichsmark, from Old High German rchi,
realm; d. rich, from Old English rce, strong, powerful, and Old French
riche, wealthy. a-d all from Germanic *rkja-, from Celtic suffixed
form *rg-yo-. 2. real2, regal, regulus, reign, rial1, riyal, royal;
regicide, regius professor, vicereine, viceroy, from Latin rx, king
(royal and priestly title). 3. Suffixed form *rg-en-. raj, rajah,
rani, rye2; maharajah, maharani, from Sanskrit rj, rjan-, king, rajah
(feminine rjñ, queen, rani), and rjati, he rules.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE427.html

Looks so to me but Lehmann seems to disagree. He claims that raja was
first used in Sanskrit somewhere in Mandala 2-7 of the Rg Samhita,
that it didn't mean king in its first use and that therefore, reg
didn't mean king in PIE and its meaning of king in later Sanskrit was
an Indian innovation that happened to give it the same meaning as Rex.
To take a stab at examining the strength of his claim, look at 2.31.2
in the Rg Samhita; there is a "rAjaH" in there but there's no "king"
in the English translation of that line.

[benlizross]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

If you are a usenet veteran, you'd know that most newsgroups have at
least one poster who uses the group as his personal trashcan. Soc
culture Indian has Jai,Habshi,Vogno - they cannot be influenced by
responses to their posts.
Since you have started playing Daniels's "lies" game - you are baldly
lying when you say that you or somebody else responds to me only to
makes sure that some "lie" doesn't stand unchallenged. First of all -
there have been no lies in my messages - and I state this
categorically. I have made errors of fact and interpretation here and
there all of which I have acknowledged and apologized for. I have
expressed strong opinions that can be characterized as wrong, but it
is infantile to call somebody whose opinions you disagree with a liar.
I think that I have mounted the most serious challenge to comp ling
you guys have seen so far and you are all reacting from a sense of
impending loss of something that seems to be dear to the heart.

Perhaps I should have mentioned vanity among your problems. As we keep
vainly trying to explain to you, you are not mounting any sort of
"challenge" at all, since your knowledge of the field remains stuck on
Square Zero.

(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock - but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway). But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages? They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences". Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil". But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if

I have no idea what "blood and soil" has to do with it, other than
another bit of irrelevant Nazi regalia you have decided to wave around.
One language descending into others is business as usual. So is contact
with other languages, but that contact is not a necessary cause of the
language diversification.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

Non sequitur.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

No. This is not a definition of anything, but an indication of things
that might be mistaken for genuine cognates. It's more like a note in a
field guide that says "...things that might be mistaken for horse:
donkey, zebra, something stuck to your binoculars...."

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) Learn all the nitty gritty of the method and try to dispute
individual words claimed to be cognates.
For now I am sticking to (1) but yes - one of these days I'll get into
(2)more. But a lot of sources are very opaque and make my eyes glaze
over with their "tectals", "obstruents" and "voiced plosives"

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work -

No thanks. I was aware of it before you stumbled on it. Have you even
read a single paragraph of Marcantonio's actual writings (as opposed
to reviews of her)?

I expect this kind of thing from Daniels, but not from rational
adults. It is incumbent on the establishment to answer her and not
me. If she does my job for me thats great - but you should stay on
top of the debate over her work and see how it plays out.

Thanks for the advice. I was commenting on your amazing arrogance in
pretending to have "made us aware" of someone whose work you have not
read, which you found through a few keyword searches. You really do
overestimate yourself.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
wouldn't it be better if

Post by a***@hotmail.com
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

Since neither of these is even slightly probable, it's hard to make a
comparison.
Of course, comparative linguistics is modified by practising
professionals as a matter of course, like any scientific field. But
that's not what you're talking about.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross
I really wish

Post by a***@hotmail.com
you guys would stop taking attacks on comp ling as direct personal
attacks.

Let's see. Your line could be roughly paraphrased as: "Comparative
linguistics is racist nonsense, and could only be defended by racist
fools because their jobs are at risk."

I gave at least one citation of comp ling positions being eliminated.

Such a rare occurrence in academia. And then you assumed that all of
us had jobs which would thereby be threatened.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Now I'll admit that in some

Post by benlizross
technical sense perhaps that is not "personal"; but perhaps you can
stretch your imagination to see how it could be offensive.
I don't know any of you and have no feelings of like or

Post by a***@hotmail.com
dislike towards any of you and apart from toying with Daniels and
trying to get him to do his Rumpelstiltskin routine, I do not post in
order to get a certain kind of reaction. I am seeking the truth and
expect the same from my adversaries, putting personal shit aside.

Naw, I thought so at first, but it didn't take long to see through.
You've ignored every opportunity to learn some truth. You're after some
intellectual window dressing for your ethnic/religious based hatred of
comparative linguistics.

There is no religious component at all. Ethnolinguisitic - perhaps -
but confined purely to the South of the Himalayas. But primarily, my
disgust is for the ludicrousness of the methods used and the
disproportionately far-reaching inferences drawn from methods of very
petty (if any) probative power.

I'm willing to bracket the "religious" part (which makes you distinct
from most of the Indian ranters against comparative linguistics), but
the fact remains that your starting point is a visceral hostility to
comparative linguistics, which, you suppose, is the basis for certain
beliefs which you cannot accept. This hostility itself may impair your
rational faculties. You feel sure that c.l. must be a tissue of
fallacies which could be brought down by a little "deconstructionist"
ju-jitsu. Yet you try one move after another, and nobody is impressed.
You characterize its methods as "ludicrous", "childish", etc., yet
your actual understanding of those methods remains at a childish level
-- apparently by your own choice.
Maybe it is time for you to go back and ask whether the things that
you found so terrible in the beginning are really the fault of
comparative linguistics? I doubt that you'll get much sympathy trying
to declare Tamil an endangered language. But if Tamil speakers are
using too much English for your liking, is it comparative linguists
who have made them do so? If the Sinhala consider themselves superior
because they are "Aryans", I'm sure hundreds of comparative linguists
would be ready to tell them this is nonsense.

You'll have to agree that the early comp linguists (or their
interpreters) conflated "Aryan languages" and "Aryan Race". Europeans
made much of the Mahavamsha (the semi-legendary origin story of the
Lankans) for whatever reasons and actually in the early stages of the
Sri-lanka - Tamil eelam conflict, Western reporterts would report
about "lighter skinned Sinhalese descended from Northen India" and
"darker skinned Tamils descended from Southern India" - but for the
past 10 years or so the offical party line is "you can't tell them
apart by appearance".
The problem was initiated by the early comp linguists and there is
very little modern ones can do to prevent demogogues from misusing
these labels.
But would it make any

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
difference? The centuries long cultural and linguistic ties between
Tamil and Sanskrit are obviously important to you. But this is
something no comparative linguist would deny. If, after this
discussion, you have even a slightly more accurate picture of what
comparative linguistics says and doesn't say, what is it that
frightens and disgusts you so much?

The relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit has hardly been properly
explored. We'll have to dismiss all Westeren-inspired work and Tamil
Chauvinist work and start from the beginning.

"Western-inspired"? You sound like a worse ethnomaniac than A.Banerjee.

Ross Clark

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

If you are a usenet veteran, you'd know that most newsgroups have at
least one poster who uses the group as his personal trashcan. Soc
culture Indian has Jai,Habshi,Vogno - they cannot be influenced by
responses to their posts.
Since you have started playing Daniels's "lies" game - you are baldly
lying when you say that you or somebody else responds to me only to
makes sure that some "lie" doesn't stand unchallenged. First of all -
there have been no lies in my messages - and I state this
categorically. I have made errors of fact and interpretation here and
there all of which I have acknowledged and apologized for. I have
expressed strong opinions that can be characterized as wrong, but it
is infantile to call somebody whose opinions you disagree with a liar.
I think that I have mounted the most serious challenge to comp ling
you guys have seen so far and you are all reacting from a sense of
impending loss of something that seems to be dear to the heart.

Perhaps I should have mentioned vanity among your problems. As we keep
vainly trying to explain to you, you are not mounting any sort of
"challenge" at all, since your knowledge of the field remains stuck on
Square Zero.

(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock - but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway). But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages? They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences". Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil". But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if

I have no idea what "blood and soil" has to do with it, other than
another bit of irrelevant Nazi regalia you have decided to wave around.
One language descending into others is business as usual. So is contact
with other languages, but that contact is not a necessary cause of the
language diversification.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

Non sequitur.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

No. This is not a definition of anything, but an indication of things
that might be mistaken for genuine cognates. It's more like a note in a
donkey, zebra, something stuck to your binoculars...."

All right - it seems to me that the only way "linguistic genetic
descent" could happen is

(1) The proto-language was spoken in a clearly defined geographical
area - "soil".

(2) A signififcant (at least 50 pct) means of survival and
transmission over time of the proto-language is through parents
teaching children and children learning from other children and
unrelated adults who themselves learnt it from their parents.

I am allowing for up to 50 percent contact with other languages, but
the proto-language had "dominant genes" and managed to at least
transmit a majority of inherited words to future generations. So here
is the "blood" part.

An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or "clan"
that existed at a place and over a period of time is fundamentally
necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

(3) Once the proto-language became reasonably well-defined, you get
these people migrating and separating and that might account for sound
changes etc.

We can add all kind of complications on top of this basic model.

But it seems to me that comp linguists do have to consider a homeland
- especially when postulating an unattested proto-language - without
one the proto-language cannot be said to have been a real language
spoken by real people - it can at best be a theoretical framework to
explain sound correspondences.

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or "clan"
that existed at a place and over a period of time is fundamentally
necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

At a place and over a period of time, yes, but is it a single race,
tribe or clan that speaks Afrikaans or Haitian Creole?

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by M. Ranjit Mathews

Post by a***@hotmail.com
An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or "clan"
that existed at a place and over a period of time is fundamentally
necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

At a place and over a period of time, yes, but is it a single race,
tribe or clan that speaks Afrikaans or Haitian Creole?

what is it about proto-language you don't understand?

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
All right - it seems to me that the only way "linguistic genetic
descent" could happen is

What "seems to you" is irrelevant, since you have no knowledge on
which to base your "seeming."

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(1) The proto-language was spoken in a clearly defined geographical
area - "soil".

Why? In what "clearly defined geographical area" is English spoken?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) A signififcant (at least 50 pct) means of survival and
transmission over time of the proto-language is through parents
teaching children and children learning from other children and
unrelated adults who themselves learnt it from their parents.

That's called "language acquisition." Where did you come up with
"50%"?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I am allowing for up to 50 percent contact with other languages, but
the proto-language had "dominant genes" and managed to at least
transmit a majority of inherited words to future generations. So here
is the "blood" part.

Metaphors are not helpful. Are you now supposing that half the time,
an infant is hearing a language other than its sole native language
and somehow mixes in half of its vocabulary?

That isn't remotely what happens when an infant is exposed to several
languages: it learns ALL the languages of its environment, perfectly,
without interference. If you don't know even that, you are far, far
more ignorant than anyone has suspected.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or "clan"
that existed at a place and over a period of time is fundamentally
necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

"Proto-languages" don't somehow "come into being." They develop out of
earlier languages just as attested languages develop out of language-
forms that happen not to be attested. And so on all the way back to
the first pre-linguistic communication forms that proved to have
evolutionary advantages.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(3) Once the proto-language became reasonably well-defined, you get
these people migrating and separating and that might account for sound
changes etc.

It did not "become" well-defined. It inherited its "well-definition"
from its own ancestor, all the way back to the first speaking proto-
community.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
We can add all kind of complications on top of this basic model.

"We" who? You don't have the slightest idea what sort of complications
might be involved.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But it seems to me that comp linguists do have to consider a homeland

Computational linguists have no interest at all in homelands.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
- especially when postulating an unattested proto-language - without
one the proto-language cannot be said to have been a real language
spoken by real people -

Why not? What about a language that might be attested in a few
manuscripts whose origin is completely unknown? Was it somehow not a
real language?

it can at best be a theoretical framework to

Post by a***@hotmail.com
explain sound correspondences.-

(And all the other correspondences.) That's exactly what it is, you
stupid fucking idiot, and no one has claimed otherwise since
approximately the time of Schleicher.

[Trond Engen]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related languages?
They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring back to
"sound changes/correspondences". Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from
"blood and soil". But one language descending into others without
contact with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by
definition and if

I have no idea what "blood and soil" has to do with it, other than
another bit of irrelevant Nazi regalia you have decided to wave
around. One language descending into others is business as usual. So
is contact with other languages, but that contact is not a necessary
cause of the language diversification.

[...]

Post by benlizross

I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect
of "not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words"
- isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a
cat, dog or a hippopotamus?

No. This is not a definition of anything, but an indication of
things that might be mistaken for genuine cognates. It's more like a
note in a field guide that says "...things that might be mistaken
for horse: donkey, zebra, something stuck to your binoculars...."

All right - it seems to me that the only way "linguistic genetic
descent" could happen is
(1) The proto-language was spoken in a clearly defined geographical
area - "soil".

As clearly defined as any language. A language without a community of
speakers is no language. A community of speakers is kept together by
communication. Geographic proximity is (was) essential for that. It's
not important, hardly even relevant (for a linguist, it's relevant for
historians), and in many cases impossible anyway, to reconstruct that
area now.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(2) A signififcant (at least 50 pct) means of survival and
transmission over time of the proto-language is through parents
teaching children and children learning from other children and
unrelated adults who themselves learnt it from their parents.
I am allowing for up to 50 percent contact with other languages, but
the proto-language had "dominant genes" and managed to at least
transmit a majority of inherited words to future generations. So
here is the "blood" part.

Except that the number of inherited words has nothing to do with it. A
language is a system, always developing. Historical linguistics is the
reconstruction of the history of the system. As you've been told, a
language might be Indo-European without a single surviving word.
Likewise, a language might replace every single word with borrowings
from English and still be non-IE, as long as the new words were used
within the inherited grammar. But of course, such borderline cases would
be hard to discover. As you've also been told, there are several
languages with contested family membership around. None of them are IE.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or
"clan" that existed at a place and over a period of time is
fundamentally necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

A speech community is necessary. There's no need for any assumptions as
to how the speakers were organized or defined themselves.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(3) Once the proto-language became reasonably well-defined, you get
these people migrating and separating and that might account for
sound changes etc.

Why? It may well have been a community of speakers with a reasonably
unified language for a long time before the language started to spread.
But then again, it may not -- and there's no way to know. And the spread
accounts only for the diversification, not the changes. If the language
hadn't spread, there would still have been sound changes. But without
diverging developments, one wouldn't be able to reconstruct the previous
stages.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
We can add all kind of complications on top of this basic model.

Sure. Sorting them out and explaining them is a large part of what
historical linguistics do. For some families it's difficult and no
reconstruction is possible. For others, like IE, it's pretty
straightforward.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But it seems to me that comp linguists do have to consider a homeland
- especially when postulating an unattested proto-language - without
one the proto-language cannot be said to have been a real language
spoken by real people - it can at best be a theoretical framework to
explain sound correspondences.

... as well as correspondences in grammar and lexicon.

It's very much a theoretical construct, though, and no-one will tell you
anything else. It's an approximation of (parts of) a language spoken
millennia ago based solely on what have survived. No-one expects the
reconstructed proto-language to be an accurate rendering of the language
as it was spoken at some time in the past. E.g., there's no way to
reconstruct beyond changes taking place in all daughter languages. And
some differences we see now may be due to dialect differences before the
real split. Thus, to me it seems possible, even likely, that some
reconstructed phonemes or words were quite different at the time when
others came into use. Large parts of the lexicon will be lost in all the
daughter languages. Much of the lexicon probably survive as words in one
or two languages and can neither be attributed safely to inheritence or
reconstructed with any certainty. So?

And I still don't understand why linguists would have to know where the
common language was spoken. When they consider such questions at all,
it's with much caution and mainly as a means to verify elements like the
time frame of the reconstruction and the supposed closer relations
between some branches. Is the suggested age sufficient for the spread?
Were there space and time for the branches to develop? How is that
supported by archaeological evidence? But these non-linguistic pieces of
information can hardly be used to prove anything of significance, and
nothing of a purely linguistic character, so it's more to see if
something can be ruled out.

[benlizross]

***@hotmail.com wrote:
[snip]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(1) I concede all the sound correspondences (and "morphological and
grammatical correspondences" - which seem to be a total crock - but I
can concede them because the lexical correspondences appear pretty
shaky by themselves anyway). But then observe that yes - this shows
some kind of relationship, but to say that it is "genetic" is only a
word game. What do comp linguists mean by "genetically" related
languages? They cannot define "genetic relationship" by referring
back to "sound changes/correspondences". Most references I see tiptoe
around this, and it is clear that they want to stay away from "blood
and soil". But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition and if

I have no idea what "blood and soil" has to do with it, other than
another bit of irrelevant Nazi regalia you have decided to wave around.
One language descending into others is business as usual. So is contact
with other languages, but that contact is not a necessary cause of the
language diversification.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

Non sequitur.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I have seen weaseling definitions of genetic descent to the effect of
"not random, not due to contact, not because of universal words" -
isn't that like saying this animal is a horse because its not a cat,
dog or a hippopotamus?

No. This is not a definition of anything, but an indication of things
that might be mistaken for genuine cognates. It's more like a note in a
donkey, zebra, something stuck to your binoculars...."

All right - it seems to me that the only way "linguistic genetic
descent" could happen is
(1) The proto-language was spoken in a clearly defined geographical
area - "soil".
(2) A signififcant (at least 50 pct) means of survival and
transmission over time of the proto-language is through parents
teaching children and children learning from other children and
unrelated adults who themselves learnt it from their parents.
I am allowing for up to 50 percent contact with other languages, but
the proto-language had "dominant genes" and managed to at least
transmit a majority of inherited words to future generations. So here
is the "blood" part.

Take out the "dominant genes", and this sounds like what I referred to
as "business as usual", in every part of the world. Languages are spoken
in particular places. People commonly learn the same language as their
parents. So why did you feel inspired to sum all this up using a phrase
with strong Nazi associations?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
An ethnolinguistically defined "race" or "people" or "tribe" or "clan"
that existed at a place and over a period of time is fundamentally
necessary for a proto-language to come into being.

A proto-language is just another language. We only know it's a
proto-language in the light of its subsequent history. There's no reason
to think we could tell, by studying a language at a point in time,
whether it would later have a large family of descendants, or just one,
or none.

As far as "race/people/tribe/clan" goes, we have a language. Therefore,
"ethnolinguistically", we have the people who speak that language. Their
genetic composition or social organization are not something we can
assume.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
(3) Once the proto-language became reasonably well-defined, you get
these people migrating and separating and that might account for sound
changes etc.

I don't know what "well-defined" means. Separation accounts for sound
changes which happen in one descendant community and not others.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
We can add all kind of complications on top of this basic model.
But it seems to me that comp linguists do have to consider a homeland
- especially when postulating an unattested proto-language - without
one the proto-language cannot be said to have been a real language
spoken by real people - it can at best be a theoretical framework to
explain sound correspondences.

Of course we consider that there was a homeland - the language was
spoken somewhere. But (pre-)history being what it is, we may have no
strong evidence to pinpoint this homeland. This does not render the
whole model invalid.

Ross Clark

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
But one language descending into others without contact
with other languages brings in "blood and soil" by definition

Where does blood and soil come into the picture when discussing
protoTamilMalayalam (or Old Tamil) "descending" into Tamil and
Malayalam?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
and if
no single "homeland" can ever be identified that meets the consensus
of comp linguists - that itself indicates the tree model cannot be
true.

No single homeland can be identified for protoDravidian either.
Homelands are not of interest to comparative linguists; they might be
of interest to historical linguists, and not even all historical
linguists at that but only the particular historical linguists who
specialize in using linguistic clues to postulate homelands.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.

Idiot.

Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.
Idiot.
Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

If it is a book, a publisher is free to publish it even if it's full
of nonsense. It would automatically get reviewed after the fact.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.
Idiot.
Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

If it is a book, a publisher is free to publish it even if it's full
of nonsense. It would automatically get reviewed after the fact.

Evidently you're not familiar with the academic publishing process. It
was brought out by the Philological Society.

[M. Ranjit Mathews]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by r***@yahoo.com

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.
Idiot.
Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

If it is a book, a publisher is free to publish it even if it's full
of nonsense. It would automatically get reviewed after the fact.

Evidently you're not familiar with the academic publishing process. It
was brought out by the Philological Society.

If that is the publisher, they ought to have had it reviewed by 3
experts in the field. If 3 experts didn't catch anything wrong, it is
not their fault for publishing it.

[r***@yahoo.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.
Idiot.
Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

If it is a book, a publisher is free to publish it even if it's full
of nonsense. It would automatically get vetted after the fact.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by a***@hotmail.com
OK I'll try to be gentle going forward- but comp ling (at least in its
present form) must go and go it will. You should all thank me for
making you all aware of Macantonio's work - wouldn't it be better if
the field was abandoned or drastically modified by practicing
professionals through mutual consensus instead of being shamed into
doing so by amateurs?

I bought it about four years ago, before any reviews were out.
Idiot.
Yes, it would have been better if Marcantonio's book had been vetted
by professionals before it was allowed to see the light of day.

You must be a glutton for public humiliation. I can't imagine why you
would throw yourself on your sword agian and again re: the Marcantonio
book.

Get over your infantile (not to speak of intellectually unethical)
conduct in this newsgroup about this book and move on. I'll be
looking for similar works and posting them going forward and similar
conduct from you and (your apparent loyal sidekicks) in response would
only lead to more humiliation for you.

[John Atkinson]

Post by benlizross

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
An amusing variation on the old Crank's Mantra -- "These people are
getting annoyed. That means I must be speaking truths they do not
wish to hear."
Nope, we're not offended easily, buddy. It takes a truly
exceptional
combination of ignorance and arrogance to get us annoyed. You can take
pride in that accomplishment.
Ross Clark

You are being dishonest here and you know it and you know that I know
it.

No, you are mistaken.
If I was being "ignorant and arrogant" in post after post after

Post by a***@hotmail.com
post you guys are smart enough to strictly ignore me.

Sometimes I manage to. And there are others on the group who do. You
don't know about them because they don't take part in your threads. But
there is some kind of compulsion not to let stupidity and lies go
unanswered. I'm probably wasting my time, but...

No, we're not wasting our time Ross. We all know "analyst" will never,
ever, learn anything; we're certainly not fooling ourselves there. But
there are others reading this thread, and we're actually writing for
them, just using "analyst"'s imbecilities as a take-off point to say
something others may (we hope) find interesting, or even teach them
something they didn't know.

[...]

John.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Try learning what glottochronology was intended to do, and how it (is
supposed to) work(s).

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling. I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit - the weakest link in
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.-

You do not compare "Germanic" and "Sanskrit." You compare Germanic and
Indo-Iranian.

[John Atkinson]

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites
Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Totally weaselly way of summarizing the data. How about a simple list

It's in the fucking book! I gave the exact reference: pp96ff, and
table 6.3. I attempted to summarise several pages of densely-packed
data in 3 lines. Of course I didn't succeed! How could I?

Read the book.
Read the book.
Read the book.
Read the book.

How many times do we have to repeat it?

BTW, did you actually read Marcantonio?

Post by a***@hotmail.com
language number fo attested
cognates to swadesh words
Swedish nn
English nn
or some such thing.
How about a grand average across all IE languages?

Well, I certainly couldn't be bothered picking up the book again and
doing the trivial sum involved. But at a guess, sixty-some percent for
the 100-word list.

Post by a***@hotmail.com

Post by John Atkinson

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]

In other words, weaseling on top of weaseling.

Why? All he's doing is saying is that Swadesh (and glottochronology)
isn't useful for much, and shouldn't be treated as though it was. For
reasons he has spent the preceding several pages (which I certainly
don't intend to copy here) justifying.

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I want to see the
degree of cognateness of Germanic and Sanskrit

If you really wanted to see that, it'd take you 2 minutes to get it from
the data given in any one of a dozen references -- assuming you're
capable of doing simple arithmetic.

All right, I did it for you. Saved you two minutes of your invaluable
time. I hope you're properly grateful! The only arithmetic involved
was counting. You know, 1,2,3,... ? The "degree of cognateness" between
Germanic and Indic is fifty-nine cognate out of the Swadesh hundred.

- the weakest link in

Post by a***@hotmail.com
this vast structure of nonsense. I can see why many of you guys have
hair-trigger tempers and are offended so easily - it must be stressful
to have to defend this baloney.

Why do you think we're "offended"? You're not the sort of person any
reasonable person could be offended by. In order to be offended by
anything said by you, one would first have to take you at least
semi-seriously.

J.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one

It was published one year and three weeks ago (I've never seen a copy;
it's too soon for reviews to be out) and it's a "standard text"
already??

Post by John Atkinson
"[Although glottochronology is largely bullshit] we cannot avoid the
allure of producing a list of the [Swadesh] hundred words with their
Proto-Indo-European forms and an indication of whether a particular
stock shares this form (Table 6.3)."
FWIW, this detailed three-page list shows that _all_ the hundred words
are attested in at least three of the twelve main IE "stocks". 82 of
them turn up in Italic and Indic, 42 in Albanian, and the other ten are
in between.

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz
at any rate who judges if the

Post by a***@hotmail.com
reconstructions are correct?

[Continue quote:] "This list, indeed any list, would be far from
definitive because there are numerous problems in establishing true
cognate forms. Although we may derive the cognate set from the same
root morphemes, a number of the sets require us to group together very
different endings, dialectal forms, or more distant derivatives [...]
In a number of instances there are multiple candidates for the PIE root,
e.g., *tweks 'skin' rather than *peln-, or *smeru-, 'oil, grease' and/or
*H1opus '(animal) fat' rather than *selpes- 'fat, grease'; [...]"
[...]
John.

[John Atkinson]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites
Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one

It was published one year and three weeks ago (I've never seen a copy;
it's too soon for reviews to be out) and it's a "standard text"
already??

Dunno. I like it, for the reasons I've mentioned before. Perhaps I
should have said "excellent text"? Or, "book I expect to become a
standard university text"? Anyway, I doubt if it will become a
"standard _reference_" (except for amateurs like me, who don't mind
making an occasional booboo in places like this), since I've picked up
the odd error and inconsistency in it, as I've mentioned from time to
time, and it doesn't reference the individual roots it quotes.

No doubt it's largely a condensed and radically reorganised (and much
cheaper) rewrite of their big book ("The Encyclopedia ...") that came
out a few years ago, which I haven't seen.

John.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by John Atkinson

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by John Atkinson
[...]

Post by b***@ihug.co.nz

Post by a***@hotmail.com
how come NOBODY cites how many of Swadesh's 200 odd words
can be reconstructed in PIE?

Maybe it's because NOBODY thinks it's of any great interest. If you
mean how many of the 200 items could we reconstruct PIE words for, the
answer would be "most of them". You could check this out yourself,
even come up with a number, by using something like Watkins' list of
roots. But I understand, you're too busy googling and pasting.

OTOH, where on earth did you get the idea that "NOBODY" cites Swadesh's
list in PIE? Of course, you're wrong as usual. To take just one

It was published one year and three weeks ago (I've never seen a copy;
it's too soon for reviews to be out) and it's a "standard text"
already??

Dunno. I like it, for the reasons I've mentioned before. Perhaps I
should have said "excellent text"? Or, "book I expect to become a
standard university text"? Anyway, I doubt if it will become a
"standard _reference_" (except for amateurs like me, who don't mind
making an occasional booboo in places like this), since I've picked up
the odd error and inconsistency in it, as I've mentioned from time to
time, and it doesn't reference the individual roots it quotes.
No doubt it's largely a condensed and radically reorganised (and much
cheaper) rewrite of their big book ("The Encyclopedia ...") that came
out a few years ago, which I haven't seen.

It was the very last thing brought out by Fitzroy Dearborn before they
were swallowed up and taken over by Taylor & Francis (the parent
company of Routlege), so it got little or no distribution. The
original Barnes & Noble at Fifth & 18th had a copy; I tried to get
them to discount it on the grounds it was OP, but they wouldn't budge
from the ridiculously high price in the computer.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Was "analyst" quoting Vaida there? It's a pity he didn't say so. Ed
Vaida is one of the most knowledgeable and competent linguists of
North Asian languages in the world. His specialty, though, is the
little-known, brutally endangered languages of Siberia, rather than
what he would likely be using as contact languages, the more obscure
eastern Uralic languages.

It would then have immediately been clear that he was misrepresenting
Vaida's review.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Post by Peter T. Daniels

Post by Trond Engen

Post by a***@hotmail.com
I think Daniels has misrepresented how Marcantonio is viewed by
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/canadian_journal_of_linguistics/v048/48.1vaj...
Despite my rejection of M's central thesis that Uralic is not a
genetic family, I still accept much of the skepticism contained in
her ground-breaking study. I also urge both Uralicists and
non-Uralicists alike to take this book seriously. M succeeds
admirably in shedding doubt on many widespread, yet apparently
indefensible assumptions about Uralic languages. However, she does
not replace them with any new ones of her own. It remains to be seen
whether this thought-provoking reassessment of facts, myths and
statistics in Uralic linguistics actually produces the kind of
paradigm shift for which its author is arguing. Nevertheless, it is
now obvious that no advance in Uralic studies can occur unless
Uralicists tackle head-on the many unresolved issues thatMbrings so
eloquently to the fore.

In his review, Edward J. Vajda actually dismisses most of what
Marcantonio has to say. What he seems to find valid is her questioning
of the (further) applicability of the comparative method on a language
group with so little surviving common vocabulary. That is not the case
"My review will argue that in making her arguments, M tends to minimize
the best evidence-primarily lexical-that supports Uralic as a valid
genetic node, though one whose constituent branches have undergone
extensive areal contact mutually as well as with non-Uralic languages.
Still, even if one accepts Uralic as a family on the basis of shared
basic vocabulary, then M is undoubtedly correct in emphasizing that it
is a family quite unlike Indo-European, for which much of the
morphosyntax as well as core vocabulary can be systematically
reconstructed with some confidence."

Was "analyst" quoting Vaida there? It's a pity he didn't say so. Ed
Vaida is one of the most knowledgeable and competent linguists of
North Asian languages in the world. His specialty, though, is the
little-known, brutally endangered languages of Siberia, rather than
what he would likely be using as contact languages, the more obscure
eastern Uralic languages.
It would then have immediately been clear that he was misrepresenting
Vaida's review.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -

It is of course grotesque to say that one extract is
"misrepresentation " and another is not. I have given the link to the
whole review, anybody can make up his/her mind as to the overall tenor
of the review. If all you regulars think that this review is purely
negative, then the discussion has to go to another plane - how to give
you guys English comprehension lessons, or psychiatric help.