Dear Kalyan,
Some comments:
Kalyan: Are you referring to this URL?
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/austric.html
Don't laugh; there is no *word in my work, simply
lexemes mostly
from CDIAL, DEDR, Enc. Mundarica and
Campbell's/Boding's Santali
dictionaries. I suppose these are non-hilarious
contributions to
linguistics.
JS: The asterisk words in Torsten�s rants are not the
problem: non-attested forms must take the asterisk no
matter what the reason for their being non-attested.
No, Torsten deserved the Monty Python Prize for Silly
Theories because of his quixotic �Sundaland is the
Atlantis of the East�- obsession. It is this obsession
that leads him and his comrades-in-arms & ignoramuses
at the �Austronesian� board to defend ideas that
violate all canons of sound research. Instead of
making inferences to the best and most likely
explanation, they infer to the least likely
explanation; instead of using Occam�s Razor, they
�explain� by reference to events and entities that are
purely speculative; instead of showing a sense of
source criticism and context, they pick up whatever
cherries strike their fancy etc. Hence the hilarious
tales about Austronesians being responsible for the
Bronze Age Corded Ware culture in the Baltic Sea area
and other uncontrolled flights of fancy.
And you? Well, you have surpassed him by your deluded
belief that your equally specious speculations could
make any difference to the Indo-European studies. Your
claim that �Surely, the IE work has to pause and
re-organize itself; shall I say, a paradigm shift is
called for to make significant leaps in knowledge
systems?� is a case in point: do you really think that
your half-baked and cherry-picked delicacies can force
a �paradigm shift� in comparative historical
linguistics? If you do, you can only blame yourself if
no genuine scholar will take your efforts seriously.
Your response to such criticism has been to plead for
patience as your seven volumes have not yet seen the
print. In itself, that is fair enough, but why an
earth you are then going around in claiming that you
have finally solved the enigma of the Harappan
inscriptions? And inviting discussion of your claims?
After all, you were quick enough to dismiss Steve
Farmer�s provocative ideas, when Farmer published an
account of them at the web
http://www.safarmer.com/indus/longbeach.pdf
Do not get me wrong here. I am not saying that all and
everything you are saying must be wrong and all and
everything Farmer is saying must be correct. No, my
point is this: can you give me any reasons why I
should take your �decipherment� more seriously than I
take Farmer�s challenge? If not, then I see no reason
not to include your attempted �revolution� to a long
line of failed putsches analysed by Iravathan
Mahadevan at his EJVS (VOL.8, 2002,ISSUE 2,March)
article �Aryan or Dravidian or Neither? A Study of
Recent Attempts to Decipher the Indus Script
(1995-2000)�.
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/issues.html
Best regards, Juha
P.S. And do pay some attention to the articles on soma
that are contained in EJVS (VOL. 8 (2002), ISSUE 3,
March):
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0803/ejvs0803.pdf
--- "S.Kalyanaraman" <
kalyan97@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Juha Savolainen
> <juhavs@...> wrote:
> > > Or is it? We know that to turn the legendary
> "Mighty >
> Saraswati" into your "ground truth" you will be >
> prepared to go to
> some lengths, in fact, going all the > way to
> dynamite and
> bulldozers. I hope that your > promise of earth
> shaking events
> within Indo-European > studies will have a more
> intellectual
> orientation.
>
> Dear Juha,
>
> Sarasvati is world's heritage. I will not go all the
> way to
> dyanamite and bulldoze. I am a loner and simply
> cannot. Efforts with
> test borewells have produced remarkable results
> throuhg a project of
> Central Ground Water Board called 'Sarasvati
> Project'. Rann of Kutch
> is floating on a sea of fresh water.
>
> I will fulfil my promise. I only hope that
> judgements will be
> suspended, till my 7 books including two on language
> and epigraphs
> are read. Surely, linguistics is also a tool used
> for this multi-
> disciplinary effort. If the present state of
> linguistics alone were
> adequate, the writing system problem would have been
> resolved long
> ago.
>
>
>
__________________________________
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