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

At 6:06:39 AM on Monday, February 6, 2006, tgpedersen wrote:

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

[...]

>> 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.

Actually, many of the methodological objections to the idea
that they're cognate are also damaging to the idea that
they're loans:

* unconvincing semantics;
* absurdly generous criteria for phonological matches;
* the fact that he ignores time depth.

In short, it's not clear that there's anything there to be
explained in the first place, as cognates *or* as loans.

Brian