Ed:
>At the root of [Ruhlen & Greenberg's] weakness is their refusal to do
>internal reconstruction where possible or to provide some sort of >detailed
>scenario for how all these alleged daughter languages split >up and when.
>Chronology, chronology, chronology.
This drives me nuts too. Ironically, this is exactly what you're to me in re
of your Etruscan-NEC connection that is so far dangling like a loose thread.
>Just to clarify my attitude: I do not accept Nostratic or Eurasiatic
>as anything more than a minority theory. Probably something along
>these lines happened, but I see no reason for believing these
>presentations of the *details* of it.
Certainly not if you rely solely on Mr Greenberg to provide you with those
details, as you appear to be doing.
>Any idea that we could approach certainty on a level with that >achieved in
>IE studies is a fantasy.
Erh, I disagree. To approach the same level of accuracy of both IE and
Nostratic at the same time is a fantasy, yes. The achievements of more
remote stages of reconstruction can only lag behind that of the more recent
ones because it is the more remote stages which are indebted to the more
recent for their very existence - This is common sense. However, there is no
rational reason to assume that Nostratic in some near or distant future
cannot achieve the same level of understanding that IE has arrived at
currently as it stands on a sunny Monday morning in 2001. There is no
rational reason to assume a limit to human knowledge in itself.
>In addition, over-concentration on the genetic side of things also >gives a
>false picture because it is never all that is going on. >Creoles never
>happened in ancient history then?
Hmm, seems unlikely if you're talking about "creole" in a non-layman sense.
I would have thought that you need some precise conditions for this to
occur, like, say, mass-slavery of indigenous populations or colonial
expansion. Hmm... I don't know of any hunter-gatherer societies that fit
this bill :) Usually, a language is predominantly comprised of features of
one language group with the usual [ad/sub/ca/pro]-strate influences and so I
don't see this creole arguement as a serious one that needs to be addressed.
>It may also well be that Dixon's model applies to IE's relationship
>with its nearest 'relatives' because of the relatively greater social
>equilibrium of the historical period in question.
No need stressing out over every wild possibility. It's more logically
economical to presume that everything worked the same in the past as it does
now.
>Etruscan's closest relative is KOREAN? Come on, pull the other one. >And
>you thought I had problems getting from the southern Caucasus to >Anatolia?
I wish you would raise the bar a little higher than Greenberg and strive to
achieve much more. Greenberg is fringe with a capital "F", even within the
fringier study of Nostratic. In my scheme of things, Korean is Altaic,
derived in turn from Altaic-Gilyak. Only with the larger Altaic-Gilyak
grouping would I say that IndoTyrrhenian, to which Etruscan belongs, is
related. My estimated seperation between Korean and Etruscan is therefore on
the order of about 11,000 years.
Greenberg, as usual, is off in his own world. Whatever you do, don't visit
that world. Take the next shuttle back to Earth and read something more
serious on Nostratic. Granted, Greenberg is an entertaining science-fiction
author but he is half the reason why average linguists are so skeptical of
anything involving long-range comparison. Greenberg is to Nostratic like the
National Enquirer is to Hollywood's reputation. The Enquirer doesn't need to
be true or based in reality because it makes loads of money on suckers
who'll believe in anything.
So the "believers" will base their entire arguements on what Greenberg is
doing. "He says this." "He supports that." "I saw him walking his dog in New
York." But who really cares about what Greenberg thinks? I certainly don't.
I simply said that some of what he says may happen to be true (eg: 1ps
pronoun *Ha), but only out of sheerly twisted happenstance, not because he
is a serious linguist at all. Greenberg has no bearing on the state of
Nostratic linguistics.
- gLeN
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