Ed Robertson:
>Welcome back, Glen.
I feel so welcomed... that's why I'm frightened. <:S
>I'm not here to defend Pat, because he can do that perfectly well
>himself. I don't agree with Proto-World or the inevitability of
>monogenesis either. But I don't think ad-hominems help.
Perhaps I have an ad-hominem disorder. Then again, let's face it. Pat really
is "out there" and when you're that far gone, an ad hominem here and there
isn't going to make a big dent into his already- existant reputation as a
crackpot. He doesn't try _at all_ to make sense and I do not have, and may
never have, respect for people like that.
There are many other crackpots on the net which I don't feel ashamed to say
are crackpots because they don't take the time to understand the topics they
are discussing, fundamentally don't understand how linguistics works and
stick steadfast to their schizophrenic theories that rely on pure faith,
void of any logical likelihood at all:
http://homepages.luc.edu/~cwinter/kush1.htm
This guy says Meroitic is an IE language. Crackpot? The fact that the
language is usually connected with NiloSaharan by the more knowledgable
linguists is not mentioned at all on his page because afterall, he is the
bearer of the torch of wisdom & truth. He will single-handedly take humanity
out of the dark ages of ignorance and into a new age of crystal clarity. He
knows without question, thanks to the unlikely words of some Greek guy named
Philostratus, that the Meroitic people are immigrants from India. Yes, of
course! It all makes perfect sense! Surely the Sudan people couldn't have
been smart enough to have created this civilisation themselves even when
influenced by neighbouring Egypt. Hahahahaha! The Sudan people, if we may
judge them by their cranial sloping and skin colour, are quite definitely
too mentally deficient to have done so. Instead, the civilisation must have
come from an exotic location like India, Japan or Canada, the lost continent
of Mu or a faraway planet orbiting Sirius. The latter can be seen to make
far more sense than an autochthnous explanation... (Can you feel the wrath
of my irony?)
But wait! It gets far worse...
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/TaRat.html
I can't even tell what this website is really saying at all but it remains
frightening in its sincerity nonetheless.
If we were take all the crackpots seriously, we would learn important
tidbits of misinformation such as:
1.
http://www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi53.htm
... that IndoEuropeans lived in Pharaonic Egypt.
2.
http://www.islandnet.com/~edonon/linguist.htm
... that Dravidian, Ainu and Basque are all derived from
a superior Saharan civilisation 18,000 years ago
because the Bible says so in Genesis.
3.
http://www.goohio.com/etruscan/default.htm
... that Etruscan is really a clever little trick
by ageless evil grammarian conspirators and everything
well-researched linguists have been telling you is a
lie in order to sell lots of books and become famous.
>Pat's theories are better argued than some Nostraticist offerings.
You definitely don't know what you're saying. I have some Nostratic works
before me as we speak. Which Nostraticists are you aware of, might I ask?
Let me guess: You've judged the entire state of modern Nostratic studies
totally on Mr Greenberg, right? Have you visited Pat's site? Let's visit
together.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/IE-VerbalInflection.htm
He states that there were originally three pronouns in some preIE stage: *me
meaning "converser", *se "clansman" and *te "tribesman". Somehow, so we are
told by the all-knowledgable Pat, these pronouns magically became the first,
second and third person pronouns, in that order. How this logically takes
place exactly is conveniently left out in the open. And of course, it's
perfectly obvious to ordinary folk that the 2nd person plural ending *-te
must derive directly from ProtoWorld *tHo meaning "heat, warm, species (of
animals), tribe, accompany, approach, press against, move together, expand,
large definite animate plural, animate iterative, do repeatedly". WOW! That
word packs a punch, huh? Surely anyone can see the plausibility of a
semantic change from "heat" to "animal species" to "you all".
Now, here you are, pretending that Pat should be respected for this insane
view and make the outlandish claim that Pat is just as good as any
Nostraticist like Bomhard, IS, Dogolpolsky or Kerns. I'm afraid I can't let
you off that easy. You will have to do your homework, mister, or accept
defeat. Find languages that evolve in the manner above. I go regularly to my
university library and see nothing confirming any of this stupidity. These
are unique Patrickisms that no one else could replicate.
I cannot respect and will not respect Pat or anyone else for their
uninformed opinion. It's a dog-eat-dog world and you gotta get wise or get
lost.
>Surely it is by debating the validity or otherwise of specific >proposed
>isoglosses and sound shifts etc. that we get closer to >understanding what
>really happened?
I agree but what Pat does is deny present knowledge altogether and start
with a blank slate, thereby giving him personal permission to go in a
totally opposite direction to mainstream linguistics. This is NOT a mentally
healthy attitude.
>On a technical point: Esperanto is not perfectly regular in every >way.
You're grasping at argumentative straws and losing focus. It was meant as an
example of unnatural regularity in human language. I could have said
"Assembly Language". So what? Point was, human language doesn't work the way
Pat says it should because Pat doesn't know diddly about linguistics.
- gLeN
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