Re: [tied] [Nostratic-L] Re: Why are Indo-Europeanist opposed to a

----- Original Message -----

From: etherman23

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 8:54 PM

Subject: [tied] [Nostratic-L] Re: Why are Indo-Europeanist opposed to a "proto-language" for all

<snip>

 

>   ***
>   Patrick:
>   Brian was challenged 16 hours ago to show where just one of my
reconstructed monosyllables (Proto-Language) was "unlikely" to be
associated in a large number of languages with a given set of related
meanings. A fairly modest task.
>
>   After his having made wide-reaching (but, apparently empty)
generalizations such as that made above by Etherman, Brian seems
reluctant to put his mind or tongue to this task.
>
>   Inquiring minds want to know!
>
>   Why?
>
>   ***

There are two major flaws with your reconstruction of Proto-World.
First, each of your monosyallables is given several meanings. The very
first one, *?a, can mean "forehead, brow, face, here, this (near
speaker), across, at, location, abut, be in contact with, (plant-)top
(foliage), nuclear family, straight, bird's beak, interrogative,
inanimate stative, 'be adjective';" With so many meanings for each
monosyallable I doubt speakers of such a language could even
understand each other! The second problem is after you form words out
of these monosyllables you then have to stretch the semantics to get
any kind of match. For example you give *?a-p?o, family+swollen =
phallus = (grand)father. Here's another one. *?e-mha-ro, tooth+bite
off+part=hoe.

***

Patrick:

I am not sure how carefully you may have read the material on my website if you can write

 

Proto-World

 

rather than the term I employ — exclusively — which is

 

Proto-Language.

 

In view of that, I can hardly expect  _you_ to recognize the semantic thread that connects the meanings of ?A.

 

 

***