Re: [tied] Re: Stop the insanity

----- Original Message -----

From: markodegard@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 8:53 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Stop the insanity

Oh, where do I put the Nostraticists?

Well, somewhere after Sir William Jones and not quite before Jakob
Grimm.

We have all these wonderful 'laws' which *prove* that PIE was, as I
said, a real language spoken by a real people at a real time in a real
place (place and time are hotly argued). PIE is a fact in the sense of
'science'; PIE was there/then as much as last ice age was there/then.

The Nostratic hypothesis is anything but unreasonable, and I'm the
first to say looking for [m] in the me-word is a reasonable place to
start building it (pronouns are the most extravagantly conservative
items in any languge -- but then, explain English 'she').

But. Jakob Grimm has not yet come along, much less Karl Verner. So,
you Nostraticists sway in the wind, spinning language families out of
nearly nothing.

It's my opinion that the next great leap in historical linguistics
will come from the neurologists, who will tell us how
the language *system* works, much in the same way cardiologists tell
us how the circulatory *system* works. Human language has to be
understood as a system in the same sense doctors understand
other anatomical systems.

<snip>

[PCR]

I cannot fault you for being sceptical about Nostratic --- mainly, because there have been so many false starts.

 

However, I personally believe Nostratic studies are basically on the right track now.

 

You might take a look at this file, which is a growing Nostratic dictionary, and see if the correlations presented there influence a slightly different view.

 

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/NostraticDictionaryAlpha.htm

 

 

Pat

 

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@...
(501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA
WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/
and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html

"Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío,
geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit,
hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)