Re[4]: [tied] Re: beyond langauges

At 4:33:11 AM on Wednesday, April 30, 2008, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>

>> 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.

> 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.

No, it hasn't. Don't confuse Patrick Ryan with 'any
objective observer'.

[...]

> 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.

You must have typoed the URL: no such page exists. And I
would have looked, though I consider the assertion on a par
with Arnaud's notion that Salish is IE.

[...]

>>> 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.

> That is petty.

> His choice of words is ambiguous but you had no trouble
> discerning what he really meant, did you?

No, his choice of words is *not* ambiguous. What he said is
simply false. And I'm not at all sure what he meant. I'm
not even sure that he understands enough to recognize the
difference between what he said and what you think he meant.

> In fact, you stated it more clearly.

I stated what is actually conceivable; whether it's what he
meant is another matter altogether.

[...]

>> 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.

> Jesus weeps! Brian, cut the guy some slack.

Why? He's an out and out crackpot, and ignorant to boot.

Brian