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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote:

>
> 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.
>

He probably did, I haven't read it. AfaIk no one proposed so far
that the alleged cognates were loans, much less refuted that idea.


Torsten