Miguel:
>But that's not what I was talking about. Both Illich-Svitych and
>Bomhard (don't know about M�ller, as I haven't really studied his
>proposals) stick rigourously to their regularities, most of the time,
>and obtain results which, not always, but in a number of cases, seem
>rather convincing, or at least suggestive of a real genetic >connection
>between the "Nostratic" languages.
Whoa! Stop right there. You're honestly saying that Illich-Svitych "sticks
rigourously to his regularities" and obtains results which "seem rather
convincing"? Why don't you give us an example of a convincing root by IS?
The only reason why IS sticks to his "regularities" is because he freely
puts phonemic variables into his reconstructions as if they were part of a
mathematical formula. In the end, IS attempted to make regularities out of
truely irregular connections. Granted he may have identified some
unavoidable connections involving pronouns, demonstratives and the like but
he cheated a bunch. I like Bomhard because he doesn't use these variables.
He just reconstructs the damn root and that's it. No trickery. That way, the
flaws of a particular reconstruction become a little more obvious.
>The only thing that seems obvious is that if
>Nostratic exists, the exact sound correspondences (as yet unknown)
>will hardly be as simple as, say, Bomhard's PIE ~ PAA *t ~ *t, *d ~
>*t', *dh ~ *d. That just may be correct as a Grimmian first
>approximation, but there's a whole lot of Verner still required.
I'll agree here.
- gLeN
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