Richard:

>It would be nice to hook up Austronesian and Nostratic, but,
>although it might resolve the place of Japanese (Altaic?, Austro-Tai?), I
>suspect that is getting rather proto-Worldian. (The same's been said of
>including Afro-Asian in Nostratic.) What are the feelings of the long
>rangers?

My views (since he did ask afterall!):

1) The Semitic-IE connections are overrated and
their more recent neolithic interactions are
vastly underrated. The word *septm is quite
obviously a Semitoid loan, so it disturbs me that
Bomhard overzealously includes this in his list
of Nostratic reconstructions.

2) Afro-Asiatic should be included in Nostratic but
certainly it is the first to branch from the group

3) Japanese seems underlyingly Altaic although it has
certainly been "Austronesian-ized", so to speak. However,
the topic of whether Japanese is more Altaic or more
Austronesian is rather a moot point anyways. Am I more
Irish or more Swedish? Who cares?!

4) Austronesian and Nostratic are certainly ultimately
related but I would estimate they are seperated by some
40,000 years... so I doubt we're going to be seeing
some sturdy reconstructions anytime soon.

5) I think "Proto-World", which would be the ancestor of
all modern languages did exist approximately 80,000 years
ago, but like mitochondrial Eve, it is the only survivor
of what was once many linguistic lineages that extend
further into even more unimaginable depths of time.
The reconstructions that have been proposed however are
definitely half-assed.


- gLeN


_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963