Re[8]: [tied] Re: Renfrew's theory renamed as Vasco-Caucasian

At 12:43:20 PM on Sunday, September 23, 2007, fournet.arnaud
wrote:

> From: Brian M. Scott

>>>> 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"

>> Bluntly, you can't, except perhaps to yourself.

> I noticed that :

> 1. People often speak of themselves believing they speak
> about other people,

I'm not talking about individuals; I'm talking about what is
possible in principle. If you don't already understand why
a claim to have identified 'proto-world' cognates is prima
facie incredible -- any remaining signal is swamped by the
noise, overwhelmed by random resemblances -- or why claims
of Tibetan loanwords in OE are likely at best to be greeted
by polite silence, I doubt that anything that I can say will
help.

Brian