Re: Limitations of the compartive method

I guess, if the numbers are correct, that this is due to a high number of
"dialect words", i.e. "North European" words which appear for instance
only in Germ. and some of the other families like Celt., Ital. or BSl. but
not elsewhere. There are many roots like that in Pokorny.

Mate

On Pon, siječanj 28, 2008 5:14 am, Rick McCallister wrote:
> I was just reading Joseph Salmons' article on the
> IE-ness of Gmc and this stuck out
>
> 1) Representation of selected branches among Pokorny�s
> IE etymologies (Bird 1982)
> Germanic 67.4%
> Hellenic 60.4%
> Baltic 53.7%
> Indic 49.3%
>
> If Indic has the smallest percentage of IE vocabulary,
> how can anyone rationally claim it to be the center of
> IE?
> I realize Pokorny is dated but it's the relative
> numbers that count.
> BTW: How do other languages rate?
>
>
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