Re: IE common traits

I believe we're discussing two points of view here. If an anthropologist
says that we're most likely descended from a single group that spoke the
first language ever, I can easily believe it. The shift from a non-speaking
being to a speaking being seems so revolutionary that the probability of
such a revolution happen in different places not connected among themselves
is very, very small.
But the comparative linguistics has its own methods and should know its
limits. Comparing the seven thousand languages � who can do this? We all
know the questions that cannot be solved even inside the Indoeuropean
comparative linguistics � take the number of laryngeals, for instance, and
everything that's connected with this problem. What does the Nostratic
theory do with such problems? Go past them? With the increasing number of
languages involved in support of the theory such problems necessarly
increase into one huge mess.
Illich-Svitych (this time I've checked how it's written) is the founder of
the Moscow Nostratic school. He wrote the famous book Materialy k
sravnitel'nomu slovariu nostraticheskich jazykov (Materials for a
Comparative Dictionary of the Nostratic Languages, Moskva, 1965). This
dictionary is a good example of simplifying internal problems of single
languages. But it's still an interesting book, I must admit it.

Best regards,
Simona Klemencic




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