Re[4]: [tied] GLEN AND ANATOLIA IN 7500BC

At 11:57:31 PM on Sunday, March 23, 2003, x99lynx@... wrote:

> I wrote:

> <<To say that the tie is not "necessary" -- that it's not
> 100 out of 100 -- is not scientifically relevant in these
> instances, because the correlation is something like 95
> out of 100 and way beyond the levels of serious
> statistical doubt. And this only means that the rare
> exceptions prove the rule.>>

> "Brian M. Scott" writes:
> <<Does this have a point?>>

> Of course it has a point. You just choose to omit it from
> your reply.

No. The question refers to what directly precedes it, the
conclusion of which is still quoted above. I snipped the
rest because I agreed with it.

> "Brian M. Scott" writes:

> <<Of course if you choose an example in which the
> correlation is known to be good, you'll find that the
> correlation is good.>>

> So, you'd prefer we only look at the cases where the
> correlation is bad.

No. Please paraphrase accurately or not at all.

> And disregard the cases where your statement is
> demonstrably incorrect?

You're working awfully hard to miss the point. My statement
is about the collection of all cases, not about individual
cases. I doubt very much that you can show that there's a
tie in even a majority of cases. Pointing to a 'nice' case
as if it were typical is a waste of everyone's time.

> I also wrote:

> <<It should also be noted that if there is no correlation
> between archaeology and language, the whole Pontic-PIE
> theory loses all foundation. Paleolinguistics is entirely
> linked to archaeology. You have no dates or locations for
> horses, wheels, graves, beeches, beavers, etc., without
> archaeology.>>

> "Brian M. Scott" replied:
> <<And this is of course irrelevant, as it deals with a
> completely different type of relationship between
> linguistics and archaeology.>>

> Yes.

Then why suggest otherwise? Rhetorical effect?

> And it is much more dubious. Not only does
> paleolinguistics seek to correlate archaeology with
> linguistics, it actually attempts to correlate particular
> words in unrecorded languages with archaeology that is
> thousands of years older than any direct evidence of such
> languages.

I know that you neither understand nor trust comparative
reconstruction, but that's not the place to attack
palaeolinguistics. You've done better in the past, pointing
to the obvious difficulty that words' meanings can change
(e.g., 'elk'). But while caution is indicated, there are
some controls; see, for instance, Mallory's endnote on the
subject in _In Search of the Indo-Europeans_.

Brian