Re: [tied] Re: Proto Vedic Continuity Theory of Bharatiya (Indian)

At 10:15:54 PM on Sunday, October 30, 2005, mkelkar2003
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>> The attack on the recontruction of *snuso-s from:
>>
>> Sanskrit: snusha Greek: nuos
>> Old English: snoru Armenian: nu
>> Russian: snokha Albenian: nuse
>> Latin: nurus

>> is the sort of thing I would expect of Kazanas. Where did
>> the corruption of 'Albanian' to 'Albenain' come from?

> A typo. The argument summarized in the paper is given by
> McWhorter (2001) not Kazanas.

>> The correspondences of sn- and n- are backed up be other
>> examples - there is a problem here, summed up by 's
>> mobile', but the simplest solution is to start from *sn
>> and assume that other languages, with varying degrees of
>> regularity, lost the initial /s/ from such combinations.

>> "The first vowel must be u rather than an o. Russian and
>> Old English have muted that to an o. The majority rule
>> applies here. So so far the proto word is *snu".

>> How much of the argument reported here is original? The
>> /o/ in Russian and Old English can be derived by general
>> sound change rules

> The entire argument is borrowed from McWhorter.

>> indeed, there is Church Slavonic _snuxa_, and even an Old
>> High

> I Wonder why snuxa was not included in the seven.

What do you expect when you use a popularization by a
non-specialist? The reference in question is John
McWhorter's popularization The Power of Babel: A Natural
History of Language. One would have to be quite ignorant of
the subject or deliberately dishonest to present this as a
representative description of comparative reconstruction.

By the way, I see that you're still grossly misrepresenting
Merlijn de Smit by quoting him out of context.

Brian