Torsten:
>With respect to the *b/p-l/r- lump/dump I put it out on two separate
>occassions for two separate reasons:
>
>1) To establish a connection between Austric and IE/AA. [...]
>2) Someone was arguing for a link between some of the particular
>glosses that were also listed in my *b/p-l/r- lump/dump.
As anyone knows, I'm big time "long-range" so I don't reject a connection
between Austric and IE outright, but let's not expect a close or even a
"slightly remote" one, 'kay? It's brutally clear to most that any
connection, as disjointed in time as these two stages are to each other to
begin with, would be on the order of tens of thousands of years which makes
it extremely improbable that similarities are due more to
inheritance/borrowing rather than the abundant, garden variety coincidence.
There's just nothing one can do to convincingly argue against this.
What you're doing is mass comparison but without the firm conclusions. It's
a technique that doesn't produce meaningful data, no matter how extensive
(as has been said a nauseating amount of times to no avail), especially when
using languages so clearly unconnected both temporally and geographically.
Whether you claim anything from your listings or whether you're
dispassionately objective about what similarities you catalog, the
information is unlikely to do much for yourself or anyone else in the end
because a logical foundation just isn't there. It seems like so much work
for so little reward. If any benefit at all, it's more likely to illuminate
the existence of wanderwords, aiding to discount further any convictions you
have about close connections between IE and Austric.
In re of Oppenheimer and AA-IE-Austric connections I refuse to read anything
that involves the resurrection of quaint and very dead theories of the 19th
century, just like I refuse to entertain anti-evolutionists when they come
knocking on my door... like my parents... They're Jehovah's Witnesses
afterall. But hey, you don't get to pick and choose your parents (but
there's nothing wrong with ignoring the doorbell and turning off all the
lights when they come).
Back to Oppenheimer. This guy feels the need to take just about any world
folklore that suits his personal needs, to combine it with amazing,
dyschronistic catastrophes of biblical proportions, and to use questionable
anthropological, linguistic & genetic data to support his moving fantasies.
Now, the less romantic idea of a long-term diffusion of cultural elements
from the Eastern Meditteranean area, beginning in the neolithic, won't sell
as many books I suppose but it remains far more logically satisfying a
solution for linguists, archaeologists, geneticists and anthropologists. Of
course, I'm silly - I should try and rely more on today's sensationalistic
marketing to get my point across. Rather than spending my time in a library
researching the validity of my ideas, I should be spending my time on my
laptop whipping up the next best-seller like Oppenheimer. Thanx, Tor, You've
helped me make an important career move.
What else can you say about that? Not much. So I'll shutup now. ("Hooray!"
the crowd cheers, "We thought that arrogant blabbermouth would never shut
his trap!")
- gLeN
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