Re: Why the Proto-Indoeuropean numerals are not motivated within IE?

From: Tavi
Message: 69694
Date: 2012-05-27

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>
> > *I suggest you the book "global etymolgies" of Merrit
> > Ruhlen, in that book the author deals with shared lexical
> > items across dozens of languages from all over the world
> > and those shared lexical items are a legacy of the once
> > proto world language spoken by the first "successful"
> > modern human (successful in the sense that he was the most
> > recent common progenitor of all humans living todays)
>
> Waste of time: it's pseudo-scientific handwaving. If Ruhlen
> ever knew what an etymology is, he'd forgotten by the time
> he wrote that rubbish.
>
Well, I won't so far as to label it as "pseudo-science", but I agree
Ruhlen's work is nasty.