Re: [tied] Reconstructing a future language

From: tgpedersen
Message: 18439
Date: 2003-02-05

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
>
> >Is reconstructed PIE supposed to be exactly as related to one
branch as it
> is to any other? >That expectation seems a bit silly to me.
>
> And rightly so. But depending how you count, there are 6 - 12 main
> branches, and it would be equally silly to reconstruct PIE without
including
> all of them, and also silly in a purely statistical computer
algorithm to
> include 20 examples from one branch and only one from another. Real
> linguists can take into account the fact that evidence from Italian
and
> Spanish cannot count as heavily as evidence from Italian and
Russian, but a
> simple statistical computer program can't. Whe we learn that the
entire I-I
> branch was omitted, we have some questions to ask about the
validity of any
> result.
>
> Peter

Perhaps I should clarify about the article (Piotr was right about its
identity): the PIE mentioned is not one constructed by the algorithm,
but us everybody's, standard reconstructed PIE.

Torsten