Re: [tied] Re: searching for common words for all today's languages

At 7:53:35 AM on Saturday, February 4, 2006, tgpedersen
wrote:

[...]

> Ruhlen's list of look-alikes is a stone in the shoe for
> linguistics. Nobody knows what to make of it, so it's
> generally condemned as unscientific and Ruhlen is one of
> the guys we are not supposed to play with.

Salmons did a pretty thorough job on Ruhlen's alleged *tik
word; some of the criticisms are specific to that word, but
the (rather serious) methodological criticisms carry over to
the rest of the list.

> Now, if the words on his list were part of a Neolithic
> agricultural culture package, its existence begins to make
> sense. Cf. also mr. Kelkar's long list of "aqua" words:

That list is actually Ruhlen's.

[...]

Brian