[tied] Re: Laryngeal Loss (was Does Koenraad Elst Meet Hock´s Chal

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:15:53 -0000, "tgpedersen
> <tgpedersen@...>" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >Now back to my question: Is loss of laryngeals a sign that there

was

> >once a substrate?
>
> Not necessarily. Loss of laryngeals is a completely natural process
> which can happen, or not, with or without any external motivation,

and

> at any time. In general, the question of _why_ (some soundchange)
> [happened] / [failed to happen] is unanswerable, especially when
> there's nothing idiosyncratic or peculiar about the change. If

things

> *can* happen, they eventually will. Blaming it on substrate

influence

> (especially when nothing at all is known about the substrate) only
> begs the question of why the substrate itself had the feature (or
> lacked it). Its own substrate? Etc. etc. and turtles all the way
> down?
>
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...

Robert Coleman:
Reflections on a distant prospect of Nostratic
in:
Renfrew & Nettle (eds.)
Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily

...
8.5
Another possible source of convergences, both close and distant, was
canvassed a generation ago by the geneticist Darlington and the
linguist Brosnahan, who noted that certain linguistic phenomena like
aspiration of initial voiceless occlusives, affrication androunded
front vowels showed a high correlation with blood groups. This work
has not been specifically followed up since DNA analysis arrived to
provide a much more powerful tool for the recovery of genetic
relationships among past populations...
...

So this seems to imply:

substrate(0) = genes
substrate(n+1) = turtle on substrate(n)

(I'm afraid I have an unfortunate tendency to always want to have the
last word)

Torsten