Re: Re[5]: [tied] Re: PIE-Arabic Correspondences (was Brugmann's Law

You may well be right regarding "background noise" but
the point is that if someone is going to do long-range
comparison, the issue of background noise means
they're going to have to do an even more professional
job of comparing family and not individual words among
families.


--- "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

> At 6:14:28 AM on Sunday, January 20, 2008,
> 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.
>
> Piotr has already pointed out that the 10,000-year
> time
> limit is a straw man, and that serious historical
> linguists
> have attempted long-range work. I would add that it
> is none
> the less clear that evidence of linguistic
> relationships
> will eventually be swamped by the noise introduced
> by random
> changes. And on the evidence to date, this noise
> accumulates more than fast enough to make any
> attempt to
> reconstruct a 'proto-world' language an exercise in
> crackpottery. Even just securely identifying a few
> odd
> traces of one is highly unlikely: even if such
> traces still
> exist, odds are that it's impossible to distinguish
> them
> from false positives.
>
> Brian
>
>
>

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