--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> As for "mass (or multilateral) comparison" (as opposed to the
standard comparative method), it basically consists in collecting
vocabulary lists for many languages and running eyeballing
comparisons in the hope of detecting similarities that might be due
to common descent rather than chance or other factors (the
practitioners of the method usually argue that the observed cannot be
attributed be due to chance if they are "sufficiently" numerous).
Crucially, regular sound correspondences are not required, nor is it
necessary to account for the derivation and history of
each "matching" form. This means that the basic requirements of the
comparative method are relaxed and there are no formal controls on
what counts as a "resemblance". These aspects of the method are what
its critics most often emphasise.
>
> Piotr
>
>
In other words when Glen says I do mass comparison, he is saying I
should be finding regular sound correspondences, ie. rules. To which
I would add two things:
1) What I have proposed is not that Austronesian was the ancestor
language of IndoEuropean and AfroAsiatic, in which case Glen's
criticism would apply without restriction, but that it provided a
good hundred loanwords to them.
2) Assuming that all these loans were adopted at the same time and
from the same Austronesian dialect, and that they were not bounced
around between IE and AA dialects, Glen's criticism would apply too.
I should find some correspondences and rules (eg. from Proto-
Astronesian). I might try that later, at the moment I am looking
Møller over for further correspondences.
Torsten