In a message dated 12/23/99 7:49:26 AM Eastern Standard Time,
gpiotr@... writes:
<< The current version of Nostratic has 50 (FIFTY) consonants, including
eight coronal fricatives and twelve coronal affricates. >>
I hate to jump in here, and I must admit that I am not very familiar with the
theory of the Nostratic family, BUT, if they are postulating 50 consonants
for Nostratic, doesn't this seem a bit ridiculous? Nostratic is supposed to
be the, for lack of a better term, more "primitive" ancestor of the various
languages that it is hypothesized as preceding. As such, wouldn't it's
phonemic structure be more simplified than its "daughter" languages? It
seems to me that by hypothesizing so many consonants that the supporters of
the Nostratic theory are stretching the limits in order to make the theory
more believeable. It is as if they took all of the consonants of the
languages that are "descendants" of Nostratic and lumped them together to
form a phonemic system for Nostratic so that it strengthens their case, even
if it isn't very logical. Or am I just off base on this one?
Chad Brown