From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 50028
Date: 2007-09-23
> From: Brian M. ScottBluntly, you can't, except perhaps to yourself.
>> At 3:00:02 AM on Thursday, September 20, 2007,
>> fournet.arnaud wrote:
>>> The fact is I am less and less sceptical about
>>> proto-world.
>>> I think it is possible to work on very deep cognates,
>>> I have got some.
>>> not Ruhlenesque cognates, I mean clean phonetically
>>> relevant cognates.
>> If you have any, it's an accident, and there's no way for
>> you to be sure or to demonstrate their cognacy: at a time
>> depth of ~50,000 years there is no way to distinguish
>> cognates that by some accident of history are still
>> phonetically similar from unrelated words of similar
>> meaning that accidentally happen to be phonetically
>> similar.
> Suppose I can explain 20% words of Chinese, English,
> Patagonian Tehuelce and Kalahari Bushmen with "unrelated
> words caused by accident of history"