Re: searching for common words for all today's languages

From: tgpedersen
Message: 43330
Date: 2006-02-09

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:
>
> At 8:10:19 AM on Tuesday, February 7, 2006, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 6:06:39 AM on Monday, February 6, 2006, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> >>> <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>>> Salmons did a pretty thorough job on Ruhlen's alleged
> >>>> *tik word; some of the criticisms are specific to that
> >>>> word, but the (rather serious) methodological criticisms
> >>>> carry over to the rest of the list.
>
> >>> He probably did, I haven't read it. AfaIk no one proposed
> >>> so far that the alleged cognates were loans, much less
> >>> refuted that idea.
>
> >> Actually, many of the methodological objections to the idea
> >> that they're cognate are also damaging to the idea that
> >> they're loans:
>
> >> * unconvincing semantics;
> >> * absurdly generous criteria for phonological matches;
> >> * the fact that he ignores time depth.
>
> >> In short, it's not clear that there's anything there to be
> >> explained in the first place, as cognates *or* as loans.
>
> > Applying the above objections to the idea is a categorial
> > mistake, they must apply to the individual members of the
> > individual proposed sets (at least wrt the first two,
>
> Not a category mistake in the way that I meant it: these
> arguments cast significant doubt on the idea that the **tik
> words, for instance, are a loan-group.

Like I said.

>The unconvincing
> semantics are every bit as much of a problem for loans as
> for cognates; the absurdly generous criteria for matches are
> somewhat less of a problem.

Erh, why are you changing the subject?


>It is of course still possible
> that *some* of the items belong together as loans, just as
> it's possible that *some* of them are cognate, but each pair
> or plausible small subgroup would have to be investigated on
> its own merits.

Like I said.

>
> > I'm not sure what the third means?).
>
> Ruhlen uses attested forms in particular languages,
> including isolates; shallow reconstructions in tiny
> families; remote reconstructions in large and well-studied
> families; and reconstructions in highly speculative
> macro-families like Amerind. Given a form, he's perfectly
> willing to accept as a match either an attested form in a
> language X or a reconstructed form in a language ancestral
> to X; this obviously greatly increases his chances of
> finding a match. Whether or not the extra matches allowed
> by this approach are more likely to be false positives --
> and I think that they are -- it seems clear that true
> positives among them will be harder to identify as such.
>

Because?


> > Thus they can be used to reject individual members of sets
> > or individual sets of cognates, not the theory. If you
> > have such objections for eg. the "aqua" set, let's hear
> > them.
>
> As far as I'm concerned, that's the wrong question: the
> burden of demonstration is on those who wish to claim a
> relationship, by descent or by loan.
>

Suit yourself.


Torsten