27-07-03 14:56, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:
> Hear, hear! I think it is important to spread the word that Manczak has a
> personal allergy.
I'd hate to be taken for a gossipmonger, but Professor Manczak's
emotional allergy to Kurylowicz's work is evident to anyone who's ever
heard him read a conference paper on any IE-related topic. The fact that
his adversary has been dead for a quarter of a century hasn't mollified
his attitude.
> I did not know that, I had only observed that some
> solutions were never used. Some may believe the man has an argument they
> do not understand, as when he constantly ascribes some odd change to high
> frequency. Practically all hard problems have been solved by Manczak as
> due to some special development that occurred in words that were used very
> frequently. Since the oddities are never the same, there is hardly any
> Manczak's Law in this (as Collinge has made it into), rather it is a case
> of intellectual dumping.
The "Law" is just one aspect of Manczak's obsession. You are probably
familiar with his quasi-statistical comparative analysis of Bible
translations ("parallel texts") in various languages, which is supposed
to be the single reliable way of measuring genetic proximity and ...
locating urheimats, among other things. As he's been the only
practitioner of his methods for several decades, most of his articles
contain all-too-numerous references to his earlier articles, wherein one
finds the same intellectual short cuts ("language = texts", "science =
tabulated numbers", "cause = frequency of occurrence") and rhetorical
formulas ("the _only_ conclusion that can be drawn from these facts is
...").
I know from personal experience that Manczak is impervious to argument
and that his ideas are as fixed as a slab of concrete. When opposed, he
will explain to you patiently that anyone who disagrees with him is
simply mistaken, full stop. In other words, he's already found the
philosopher's stone. As for laryngeals, "mentionnons qu'à notre avis la
théorie des laryngales est fausse". For more variations on this "ceterum
censeo" theme ("nous ne croyons pas en l'existence des laryngales",
etc.), see any other paper by the same scholar.
Piotr