Re: PIE-Arabic Correspondences (was Brugmann's Law)

From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 51613
Date: 2008-01-20

A very 'fair and balanced' appraisal of the state of affairs, Piotr.
 
But forget PAA for a moment, do you not agree that sufficient data has been collected and analyzed to warrant a 'probable' connection between Semitic and PIE?
 
I will not argue this, I am only curious as to your view.
 
Patrick
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 9:40 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: PIE-Arabic Correspondences (was Brugmann's Law)

On 2008-01-20 12:14, fournet.arnaud wrote:

> But Ruhlen's "success" is also linked with the fact that "serious"
> linguists have left the domain unexplored because of that 10 000
> -years time-limit, which is just a complete stupidity. If you say it
> 's not feasible scientifically, do not be surprised if dumbs,
> crack-pots, idiots and crooks invade the area.

Nobody has ever imposed such a limit. If linguists sometimes say that
something like 10 kyr is the maximum depth of comparative
reconstruction, it's just an observation based on the success of
comparative analyses so far, not an a priori constraint on our
ambitions. There's no prohibition agains comparing, let's say, IE with
FU, Afroasiatic, Eskimo-Aleut or even Niger-Kordofanian. There are
professional linguists who do just that. The only problem is that such
comparison has not proved easy and the results achieved in this way
remain at best "suggestive" rather than conclusive.

Piotr