Re: [tied] Nostratic versus NonIE substrate: direct or not?

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 9:45 AM

Subject: [tied] Nostratic versus NonIE substrate: direct or not?

Piotr: You got carried away. The evidence for Nostratic is *not* direct, unless you happen to know of some Nostratic inscriptions or the like.

Glen: How am I "carried away"? Where IE reconstruction is built on written inscriptions, Nostratic, being so ancient, can only be mostly based on less exact reconstructions. Now to say that IE reconstructions from pronouns to vocabulary and the like aren't solid enough to base further theories on, fights against the work and purpose of IE reconstruction and comparative linguistics in the first place, which strives to describe in detail what these unwritten languages were like in the remote past. Let's not be
paradoxical.

 

The evidence for IE is also indirect, though solid. That's why we use those little warning asterisks.

Piotr: It's difficult to prove that a word is *not* IE (after all, it may have been lost everywhere except in Gmc.), unless you can convincingly show that it's a loanword [...] But a null hypothesis is only a starting point >for further research. People who compose glossaries of a non-attested substrate on such a shaky basis can be accused of jumping to conclusions.

Glen (in mock terror, God knows why): Oh dear, is that politics rearing its ugly head again? An attack towards me and my IndoTyrrhenian glossary perhaps? I'm sorry, I didn't realize there was a law against taking what is already known and trying to push the
boundaries of that knowledge. The only way to do this in comparative linguistics is to provide theories. -- People who harbor anger towards those who present new ideas might be accused of being contrary to the progression of comparative linguistics, which is a purely theoretical study in the end, yet I remind. Plus, if you are examining the glossaries I personally provide, you'll notice that they are evolving and adapting to new ideas as we speak - I hold no thought sacred so expect changes to occur.

 

Let's not be paranoid, Glen. I meant the pre-IE substrate in Germanic and its "reconstructions". No anger, no politics, and no personal reference to anyone called Glen Gordon -- a person whom I like, by the way, and whom I wouldn't attack except in a totally friendly way in a linguistic dispute. Your ITyrrh. is reconstructed on a comparative basis and I accept the method even if I may criticise the results, which I hope I'm allowed to do without being accused of holding back the development of science. As you yourself remark, our exchanges have some constructive effects, and that's what learned debate is all about.

 

Piotr