[tied] Re: Laryngeals in IE

From: tgpedersen
Message: 31717
Date: 2004-04-05

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Baum <daniel@...> wrote:
> While writing my thesis, I had the dubious pleasure of reading
quite a
> lot of Möller's work on the supposed connections of IE and Semitic.
>
> My impression of him was the he was, shall we say, somewhat
eccentric. I
> wouldn't like to use unscientific words like "bonkers" in polite
> company, so I won't :~)
>
>

My impression was that he had collected some hundreds of IE and
Semitic roots, constructed a hypothetical Vorindogermanisch-Semitisch
and set up one set of rules to derive the IE roots from that language
and a corresponding set of rules to derive the Semitic roots from it.
I knew he was supposed to be bonkers, but unfortunately I couldn't
find substantial faults with the rules; they seemed to produce the
respective roots as he said they would (which is why I endde up
believing that what Möller described must have been Semitic or Afro-
Asiatic loanwords in IE. Now if one decides that that whole oeuvre is
spurious, that would have grave consequences for linguistics as a
science, it would mean that it is possible to set up sets of roots in
different languages and connect them with rules to match them and the
whole edifice would be deemed valid or invalid alone on its author's
being in good or bad standing with the linguistic community. That's
not science, that's politics.

Torsten