Re[4]: [tied] Re: Germanic Scythians?

At 3:12:51 PM on Wednesday, March 26, 2003, P&G wrote:

>>>> as long as it's independent in the several branches,
>>>> elementary probability theory will tell you that it's
>>>> unlikely.

>>> And yet elementary linguistics tells you that in well
>>> attested cases, it has happened.

>> Obviously there's a continuum of likelihoods in different
>> cases.... Certainly the situation is very different in
>> degree from the one that Torsten's proposal would
>> require.

> Ah, so your simple statement about "elementary
> probability" was a bit jejune. It is not a simple matter
> of probabilities.

I didn't say that it was; I took for granted that most
readers would be able to supply the missing bits from
context or background knowledge. Similarly, Ockham's Razor
is a useful tool, but a toolbox containing nothing else
would be pretty useless.

If you find the observation dull ('jejune'), perhaps it is
because you understand the simple point that I was making.
Torsten, to whom the comment was directed, appears to have a
bit more difficulty with it.

Brian