Re: Mitanni and Matsya

----- Original Message -----
From: "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 11:23 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Mitanni and Matsya


--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Rick McCallister"
<gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
> >
> > It goes beyond that into plain irrationality.
> > If you're looking for vocabulary links, you look first
> > at closely related languages.
> > If you lost an outhouse in Arkansas, you don't go look
> > for it in Tennessee.
> > And if you are going to look at other families, you
> > look first at the proto-language. If you don't go back
> > to the proto-language, you run the risk of comparing
> > koalas to bears, wombats to woodchucks, plesiosaurs to
> > whales, etc,
>
> Right.
>
> That is why I have reconstructed _the_ Proto-Language.

Yes, of course you have, Patrick, and all by yourself moreover,
and every year or two Srinivasan Kalyanaraman dramatically
announces his latest decipherment of the Harappan script, and
periodically they find Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat or on some
other mountain (which is the _real_ Ararat of the Bible, don't
you know?!), or the lost city of Atlantis, or Big Foot's lair,
or they invent a perpetual-motion machine, or find evidence of
human-beings and dinosaurs walking the earth at the same time,
or ...

***

I have often found that those who shout "Prejudice!" are usually the most
prejudoced of all.

You have made a prejudgment about reconstructing man's earliest language;
and no amount of evidence, which I firmly believe you have not even
cursorily inspected, will sway you.

You are a Linguo-Bigot.

Do not feel too badly; there are many of you.

***

Well obviously there is just too much to have to debunk every
time we want to have an intelligent discussion of some topic,
and so we're forced to draw a line some place and say anything
beyond is just too improbable to be worth our time.

Where cybalist has drawn that line is in its list of rules at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Administrative/
under the heading "Off-topic postings and pseudoscience" where
it says

***

Ah, the penultimate liberal defense: whether it is true or not, you cannot
discuss it.

Bigotry lives on in Liberalism.

***

> Since this list is devoted to Indo-European studies, the
> discussion of extraneous or too general topics (e.g. OTHER
> LANGUAGE FAMILIES, THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE, LONG-RANGE
> COMPARISON etc.) will be discouraged. There are other
> lists where subjects like general linguistic, Nostratic
> studies, anthropology, etc., may be discussed more profitably.
> We assume that there is a nearly unanimous consensus among
> the list's managers and regular posters as to what should
> and what should not be discussed.

***

How dare you speak for them? They are individuals, like you try to be.

***


While the discussion of
> controversial issues is welcome on the list, there are certain
> limits that we should like to be observed. In particular, we
> will not encourage the pursuit of pseudoscience, by which we
> understand, for example, amateurish decipherments of ancient
> scripts, racist theories, speculation about the language spoken
> in Atlantis or in the Garden of Eden, demonstrations that
> Latvian and Sumerian are practically the same language, or
> anything else that sinks below the level at which serious
> discussion is possible.

David

***

I have indulged in none of those fantasies.

I have shared the evidence I have gathered over many, many years, where I
feel it has a direct bearing on PIE and its reconstruction.

Have I ever pratted on about Nostratic?

Pre-PIE usually suffices to make any phonological point which seems
requisite.

Patrick

***