[tied] Re: pre-Nostratic *male[:]k?xa, 'milk (vb.)'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <smykelkar@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@>

wrote:

> > >
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > At 9:30:27 PM on Sunday, February 12, 2006, mkelkar2003
> > > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >> At 6:21:19 PM on Sunday, February 12, 2006, mkelkar2003
> > > > >> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > >>> Of the 35 most basic word vocabulary PIE and OC have 23%
> > > > >>> cognates. That is too many for a chance occurence.
> > > >
> > > > >> This is a non sequitur. It's also obviously incorrect:
> > > > >> apart from a tiny handful of possible borrowings, there are
> > > > >> *no* known cognates, since OC is not known to be related to
> > > > >> PIE at all.
> > >
> > > Let us remember that the chance similarity when applying comparisons
> > > by Swadesh's rules is about 8% For 35 meanings, that means an

average

> > > of 2.8 matches could be due to chance! 23% of 35 means 8 items
> matched.
> > >
> > > The probability of getting 8 or more matches out of the 35 is about
> > > 0.8%, which is impressive. However, that is the *best* of 5
> > > comparisons. It's not too many for it be mere chance, but I'm not
> > > sure how many comparisons were done to get a good score. The

problem,

> >
> > The highest number of matches was for OC and TB 74% (Table 2) which
> > means about 27 words match. I do not know if linguists consider these
> > families to be genetically related.
>
> Most do - the family is called Sino-Tibetan. There is much debate
> over how its branches are related.
>
> > You have raised a good point
> > about sample size.
> >
> > "but I'm not
> > > sure how many comparisons were done to get a good score"
> >
> > Chi square tests requires enough data points to fill every cell.
> With
> > thousands of words any language has i do not see that as a problem.
>
> You're missing the point. Ethnologue lists about 110 language
> families. If you were to do the comparison between each of the
> non-Dene-Caucasian families and Proto-Indo-European, you would be
> unlucky not to get such a good match.

They may have used only the five mentioned in the paper.

>
> Moreover, those 35 meanings are the ones considered most conservative.
> If you compared the words for a thousand meanings, any cognates would
> be drowned in the noise.
>
> Richard.

Yes, the comparisons have to be restricted to the basic words. It is
difficult to accept that OC baba, Marathi baba (father) and English
papa are by chance. If there is no genetic relationship then it must
be an early loan. But at the same time OC gang (work together) English
gang are most probably spurious.

<http://www.zompist.com/proto.html#chineseenglish>

The comparative method could also be prone to taking too much semantic
leeway in order to find regular corrospondences.

http://www.zompist.com/lang9.html#10

"Actually, this process is iterative. For instance, at first glance we
might think that German haben and Latin habere 'have' are obvious
cognates. However, after noting the regular correspondence of German h
to Latin c, we are forced to change our minds, and look to capere
'seize' as a better cognate for haben."

Latin is attested in writing at least a thousand years before German.
So how could there be a regular corrospondence of German h and Latin
c? There is a big difference between having something and capturing
something. Latin capere and capture seem like cognates. Applying the
same rule to English capare could be a cognate to have and capture
both. Or one would have to argue that capture and capere are spurious.

m. kelkar