Re[5]: [tied] GLEN AND ANATOLIA IN 7500BC

At 11:23:30 PM on Monday, March 24, 2003, x99lynx@...
wrote:

> "Brian M. Scott" writes:

> <<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.>>

> It's not a waste of time for those who care to look at all
> the evidence before they make their judgments. If should
> you should start caring to do that, there is evidence you
> may want to look at. One of those pieces of evidence,
> suggested by work of archaeologists like Sherratt and
> Whittier is that high language-material culture
> correlations occur in historic times where extensive
> economic networks have developed and persisted. I mention
> again the Jared Diamond review of the evidence that the
> spread of most major languages can be correlated with the
> spread of food production, which is evident in the
> material record. (Jared Diamond is a Mallory advocate by
> the way.) Now you can dismiss this if you think you would
> be wasting "everyone's time". Or you can consider it with
> an open mind and see if it affects your point of view.

You've changed the subject. I pointed out that Glen was
correct in saying that there is no *necessary* connection
between language and material culture. You attempted to
deny this by pointing to one specific case in which a
particular material culture can quite reliably be associated
with a particular language. This was of course a logical
non sequitur. You didn't even bother to claim explicitly
that your carefully chosen example was typical, let alone
offer any evidence for such a claim. (Not that such this
would have demonstrated a necessary connection in any case,
of course.)

Now, finally, you're making a defensible claim, albeit a
very different one, since 'most major languages' are not
evidently representative of human language as a whole. Had
you started with this claim, you'd not have been wasting our
time.

> "Brian M. Scott" writes:

> <<I know that you neither understand nor trust comparative
> reconstruction, but that's not the place to attack
> palaeolinguistics.>>

> Well I do understand that that the comparative only
> creates a relative chronology. Absolute time and place are
> a completely different issues and any reconstruction needs
> "extra-linguistic" evidence to place itself.

Not entirely true. One can set broad bounds.

[...]

> <<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_.>>

> Mallory's "controls" do not address the fundamental
> problem -- the "shared words" he refers to are all
> thousands of years younger than the reconstructed form.

So?

> One does not have to challenge the comparative method to
> challenge the conclusions.

But you have frequently done just that, which is one reason
that I take with a shaker of salt much of what you say.

> Especially since many of the sound changes the words show
> can't be dated either -- that's the limitation of the
> comparative method when applied beyond written records.
> The sound changes could have occurred long after dispersal
> and represent nothing but later changes to later loan
> words between related languages.

This is rather opaque. What sound changes, for instance?

> (I also love Mallory's use of phrases like "attested as
> Proto-Indo-European *bhergo" (p. 275). Attested by what
> field linguist?)

Not the best choice of words, certainly, but a clear enough
shorthand for 'safely reconstructible on the basis of
attested reflexes in many dialects' if one is interested in
trying to understand what he's saying.

Brian