Re: [tied] Re: Ford -furta- fare

The fact is that if one relaxes the standard constraints on regularity even a little (by ignoring vowels, allowing "doublets" and other n-tuplets, permitting ad hoc consonantal permutations, etc.) the likelihood of finding spurious cognates increases dramatically, since a *vast* number of new sound combinations can be treated as "equivalent".

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 6:51 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Ford -furta- fare

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:54:09 -0000, "Torsten Pedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote: >But the real reason was something I found in Hermann Møller, back >from, I think 1906. Trying to find a way to relate IE and AA, he >came up with something he called alternate forms in IE (which means, >in a single language there would be pairs like habeo/capio). In the Vorwort zur Einfuehrung to his 1911 "Vergleichendes indogermanisches-semitisches Woerterbuch" (too early for "PAA"), he quotes " ... indogerm. Alternationen (der von E. Zupitza KZ. 37, 378ff. nachgewiesenen 'Doubletten', der Noreenschen 'Spuren indogermanischer Lautgesetze', s. SI. [= Møller 1907, "Semitisch und Indogermanisch"] 134 ff.) ... ", and compares them with similar alternations in Semitic. According to Møller, these alternations show that IE and Sem. are related. There are, in any case, a sufficiently large number of such alternations (D ~ DH ~ T / D ~ T. ~ T) to explain why both Illich-Svitych and Bomhard could each come up with a sizeable number of Nostratic etymologies (involving PIE/PAA), while using different tables of correspondences (Illich-Svitych: T=T./T, D=T, DH=D, Bomhard: T=T, D=T., DH=D). Not to mention Møller's more complex scheme (approx. T=T/D, D=T, DH=T.). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv@...