Dear Piotr,
Some time ago, I sent you an email with a couple of questions about the claims on the Nostratica web site. You said you would reply later, when you had the time. I haven't heard anything from you yet and I would like to make sure I haven't lost your reply somehow. There's absolutely no rush - please take your time if you're busy.
Best regards,
Hakan
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Dear Mr. Gasiorowski,
I'm one of the lurkers at Cybalist. I was surprised to see that Kirill was back and followed his link to the Nostratica web site. I would like to hear your opinion about the claims made at that site. They describe Nostratic as a scientifically proven language family (quote below, from
http://www.nostratic.ru/index.php?page=6 ). I'm not even an amateur linguist, but I haven't heard this before - is it true?
"The Nostratic macrofamily of languages is a scientifically proven genetic unity of a number of language families of the Old World, which descend from a common ancestor called the Nostratic proto-language which existed around 12,000 - 14,000 years ago. --- Therefore, we now know the approximate characteristic features of the Nostratic proto-language spoken some 12,000 years ago."
We do?
When reconstructing PIE, Proto-German, etc, you compare data with data. On the Nostratica site they say they compare reconstructions with other reconstructions, which must mean that the uncertainties/errors are on a much higher level. Aren't the uncertainties too high to make menaningful comparisons between reconstructed languages?
How far back (beyond the written texts that have survived) are we able to reconstruct languages with reasonable certainty?
From Nostratica: "It was proven that the changes in the 100-item list of the basic lexicon occur with a similar speed in all the world languages: e.g., in 1,000 years 86 out of 100 words are supposed to survive in the language. The mathematic calculation of these changes can help to identify the age of the language even if neither historical nor archaeological evidence can be found."
Is this true regardless of other factors (isolation/contact with other languages)? What about the last 1000 years on Iceland compared to Britain?
Is there any legitimate scientific research done in this field? Any books/articles you would like to recommend?
Are all the world's languages deeply related? Is there anything that suggests that languages have developed independently, in several parts of the world?
At the Nostratica site, they refer to an "international group of scholars within the framework of the Evolution of Human Languages� project in the University of Santa Fe". When I looked for the "University of Santa Fe" it turned out they mean the Santa Fe Institute (where a lot of interesting research has taken place!) - how is this work regarded by other scholars?
What is your opinion of the scholars at the Nostratica site, such as Greenberg, Dolgopolsky, Kortlandt, Starostin, Ruhlen?
I hope you don't mind that I ask you this directly, outside of Cybalist. The reason I do this is that I don't want to start a debate between you and Kirill.
I'm a freelance journalist and I'm thinking about writing something about long range language comparisons, if I can find a newspaper/magazine willing to publish such a story. It's definitely an interesting subject, even though I'm sceptical about the claims of the nostraticists.
I like very much to read your posts on Cybalist. You have an excellent ability of sharing your knowledge in clear and simple language. As a matter of fact, you seem to know so many languages, past and present, that I sometimes wonder...
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Dear H�kan,
I have much to say about the subject, but I have to run off to work now
and may not find the time to write a long reply in the evening. Please
forgive the delay -- I'll be back with some thoughts about Nostratic.
Just as an appetiser: I don't think comparing reconstructions with
reconstructions is a methodological fault. We routinely compare e.g.
Proto-Celtic reconstructions with Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-Iranian and
Proto-Tocharian. The problem with Nostratic is rather the opposite:
there are no secure protolanguage reconstructions for many of its
putative members (including such important ones as Altaic and
Afroasiatic), and what the Nostraticits do too often for my taste is the
practice of "reaching down": they take a word from Amharic, another one
from Greek (both without well-established cognates in their respective
families), another one from Mari of Saami to represent Uralic, etc.,
*ignoring* intermediate reconstructions (whoch normally serve as useful
controls).
Best,
Piotr