Miguel:
>No trickery. In this way, the flaws of a particular reconstruction
>become a little more obvious.
No they don't. Almost every reconstruction of his involves a "variable" and
so no particular reconstruction looks any less unlikely than the next. They
simply ALL look unlikely. His obsessive and ubiquitous uncertainty grates on
my nerves. I've never gotten the impression that he ever had even a general
idea of how Nostratic worked as a real human language.
Miguel:
>Bomhard indeed just "reconstructs the damn root". If the PIE reflex
>is just in Germanic, this is not marked.
The appropriate evaluation of any reconstruction requires some good research
and competent knowledge, yes. Research is good. Competency is good. Not
thinking about things you read is bad.
>If the equation only involves PIE and PAA, so be it.
Yes, "so be it". These particular equations I usually label as "Semitish
loanwords in IE" anyway. Obvious examples of Nostratic roots that should
never have been reconstructed are *sab- "seven" and *sWaksW- "six", which
have only IE-AA correspondances. I never said that Bomhard is perfect. Far
from it. Give me a Nostraticist that is.
However, these simple IE-AA correspondances make some of his reconstructions
easily identifiable as invalid and overall, comparing his reconstructions to
Dogolpolsky and IS, he seems to have things straighter in his head. (This is
not to say that what Dogolpolsky and IS have come up with is totally
useless.)
>If the reconstruction is possibly sound-symbolic, this is not marked.
Does everything have to be marked for you? People should be constantly
thinking about what they read regardless of whether there are footnotes or
not. Personally, this issue is always in the back of my mind when I look at
a particular reconstruction.
>If the root is not reflected in Kartvelian, Bomhard just reconstructs >*k.
>And Bomhard doesn't have the problem of second syllables, >because his
>roots are almost exclusively *CVC-.
His *CVC- is a very appropriate root structure for Nostratic and I think
that this happens to be the structure of the majority of Nostratic roots
anyway. Nostratic definitely could not have been like how IS portrayed it
where everything looked exactly like Uralic! I think it's pretty certain
that initial or final consonant clusters were unlikely.
Phonology is where I would agree he fails (but then, so do all
Nostraticists). The field of Nostratic would get along alot easier if the
phonological system was pinned down to a bare minimum until such time as
many of these phonemes are justifiable. Some dubious phonemes that
Nostraticists like to reconstruct to by chagrin include *L (voiceless
lateral), *tL, *q, *`, *dY, *gY, *z^, *s^ and *c^. Enough with the crap
already!
Please, I urge all Nostraticists to simplify, simplify, simplify! We don't
even need half of these phonemes! But we all know what's really going on. By
having an overwhelming cornucopia of phonemes available, one can justify a
whole slew of connections in order to fill up an entire book. Then you sell
the impressive 1000-page book for lots and lots of money. If your book
doesn't have aliens, unicorns or the lost city of Atlantis in it, it ain't
gonna sell and everyone knows that scholarship isn't profitable anymore :)
- gLeN
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