Re[2]: [tied] Re: Convergence in the formation of IE subgroups

At 3:37:27 PM on Thursday, May 11, 2006, Patrick Ryan wrote:

> From: Piotr Gasiorowski<mailto:gpiotr@...>

>> On 2006-05-10 18:00, Patrick Ryan wrote:

>>> That "some authority had decided that Nostratic" (also
>>> Proto-Language) "is too old" was exactly what was
>>> asserted on this list.

>> Can you name names?

> Yes. Brian.

Oh? Do please provide a message number.

I have said that if all known human languages share a common
ancestor, that ancestor is too ancient for identifiable
traces to have survived to the present (e.g., Nrs. 43257 and
43279); I have said nothing of the kind about Nostratic.
Any version of Nostratic.

[...]

> Nostratic has been proved.

Pull the other one; it has bells on.

[...]

>> I'm not going to prevent anyone from trying to
>> demonstrate the validity of long-range groupings. I can
>> only wish such adventurous spirits success. But somehow
>> the task proves to be enormously difficult -- much more
>> difficult, at any rate, than the reconstruction of the
>> ancestral language of a family with the probable time
>> depth of five or six millennia. Information (and with it,
>> evidence of relatedness) _is_ gradually lost over time as
>> a side-effect of language change. This fact _must_ make
>> reconstruction problematic sooner or later.

> Well, that is why Ballester's essay is so useful.

Piotr's already given a generous sample of reasons why it
isn't particularly useful, but he didn't mention my favorite
bit of silliness:

Speaking now over the long term, languages without writing
are more conservative, since they can better keep lexicon
as a living and active element, without fixing lexicon
into complex morphology or into developed syntax as much
written language does. The existence of writing promoted
the existence of grammar (from Greek grammatiké: ‘art of
writing’) favoring morphological rules instead of living
lexicon.

> This is the opposite of the now prevalent view that
> linguistic change is the norm; and that time-periods of
> relative stability are the exception rather than the rule.

> This latter position is logically indefensible. It asserts
> effect without cause.

No, it doesn't. It states an empirical observation, which
we may then try to explain.

Brian