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

At 3:38:58 AM on Monday, June 4, 2012, Tavi wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>>
>> Bollocks. There's an enormous amount of historical
>> linguistics that has been done and is being done on other
>> families. Two of the best introductory texts -- those by
>> Larry Trask and Lyle Campbell, especially the latter --
> use many non-IE examples.
>>

>>> Oh yes, the big guys. Trask was the one who defended at
>>> all costs the status quo of Basque as an isolate
>>> language,

>> Because no one was able to make a convincing case to the
>> contrary, and those who tried were frequently guilty of
>> distorting the data or even using non-existent data. It's
>> probably fair to say that he was inclined to be skeptical
>> in the sense of taking lack of demonstrated relationship
>> as the null hypothesis, but that's merely good practice;
>> anything else would be irresponsible.

> I'd say his function was being a *watchdog*, and he did it
> very well.

Of course you would: you can't imagine that anyone who
disagrees with you could possibly be engaged in honest
scholarship. And since you demonstrably can't distinguish
between real and pseudo-scholarship, you have no way to
judge anyone's work save your own prejudices.

> On the other hand, his own performance as a comparative
> linguist was poor, as I shown you earlier.

No, you didn't. But you've certainly demonstrated your own
incompetence in the field.

>>> and Campbell regards macro-families as "speculative, and
>>> often controversial, groupings".

>> He's right: that's a simple statement of fact. They *are*
>> speculative, since their existence has not been
>> established to the general satisfaction of the historical
>> linguistic community, and they are certainly often
>> controversial. Only someone who can't distinguish between
>> the world as it is and the world as he'd like it to be
>> could possibly object to the statement.

> Status quo is a priority for many people.

Yet another non sequitur. To be fair, given what you've
shown here, I doubt that you think clearly enough to
recognize it as a non sequitur.