From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 58214
Date: 2008-04-30
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "Patrick Ryan" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 5:41 PM
Subject: Re[2]: [tied] Re: beyond langauges
> At 4:51:58 PM on Tuesday, April 29, 2008, Patrick Ryan wrote:
>
> > From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
>
> >> --- Patrick Ryan <proto-language@...> wrote:
>
> >>> From: "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
>
<...>
> >>> Bomhard has convincingly demonstrated that, if Dravidian
> >>> is not necessarily Nostratic, it certainly can be
> >>> related to Nostratic.
>
> No one has yet *convincingly* demonstrated the existence of
> a well-defined Nostratic family.
***
Patrick:
You can repeat that mantra until you are blue in the face but it will not
change the fact that the major premise of Nostratic, that PIE and Semitic
(and through it, PAA) are generically related, has been proven to any
objective observer.
If you wish to remain a Dunkelmann userer Zeit, that is your privilege. But
do not expect praise for it except in the land of the blind.
PIE and PAA are the core concepts of Nostratic; how the rest fit in is
negotiable.
But that they do fit in somehow is made certain by my essay on Nama:
http:/geocities.com/proto-language/c-Nama-14.htm
which establishes valid correspondences between Nama and three language
families: PIE, PAA (through HEgy) and Sumerian.
Unless you can discredit this essay through its methodology or otherwise, if
you are objective, you must admit that a strong case has been made for the
monogenesis of human language.
***
***
<...>
> > Strange. I though he was saying just what he wrote:
> > "Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages have had common
> > parents".
>
> Which they clearly did not, since the parent of IA is PIE,
> which is not the parent of the Dravidian languages. A more
> distant common ancestor is of course conceivable, but then
> the proper statement is that the IE and Dravidian languages
> share a common ancestor.
***
Patrick:
That is petty.
His choice of words is ambiguous but you had no trouble discerning what he
really meant, did you?
In fact, you stated it more clearly.
***
> But in fact one has only to read the paper to realize that
> he is saying something very different. Just for starters,
> his notion of 'parent language' is not the one used by
> historical linguists and does not imply a genetic
> relationship as the term is used by historical linguists.
> It's also clear that he really is relating IA and Dravidian,
> not IE and Dravidian:
***
Patrick:
I think I will go by what I read of his writing rather than your
interpretation of it.
***
> The structural relationships amongst the Indo-European
> family of languages are well known. Not equally well known
> are the structural connections between the Indo-Aryan, the
> Dravidian and the Munda languages. These languages may be
> said to belong to the Prakrit family of languages. We use
> the label "Prakrit" since it has been traditionally used
> to describe all Indian languages.
>
> In other words we argue that in general one might speak of
> membership of a language to more than one family. We
> believe such a usage is more accurate than the term
> "linguistic area" used earlier by Emeneau.
>
> The whole thing is pathetic exhibition of crackpottery. He
> doesn't understand the genetic classification of languages,
> he doesn't understand biological evolution, he doesn't
> understand the comparative method, and as Francesco already
> noted, he doesn't understand the concept of a linguistic
> area.
>
> Brian
***
Patrick:
Jesus weeps! Brian, cut the guy some slack.
He is addressing the Indian Rotary Club.
***
>
>
>