--- Patrick Ryan <
proto-language@...> wrote:
...
>
> Patrick:
>
> This has absolutely nothing to do with 'mass
> comparison'!!!!!!!!!
>
> Have you never been to the Tower of Babel website?
Yes, I have and I think it's a great start but there
are still issues to be sorted out. I was guessing you
were referring to Greenberg's Eurasiatic
>
> Do you think Starostin used anything but recognized
> reconstruction methods?
>
> Macro-Nostratic is not necessary if Eurasiatic is in
> place.
Yes it is if you really want to go firther
>
> Larry Trask was a brilliant man but he believed
> Nostratic _could not_ be
> reconstructed, a priori. You are not accurately
> representing his view.
Yes I am. He told me this privately. I don't have a
copy of his e-mail --I was at another university but
he believed Nostratic was plausible but needed to be
proven. I'm sure he probably said teh same thing to
Miguel, Piotr, Torsten, Stefan Georg, Kevin Tuite and
others.
>
> The "hard work" on connecting PIE and PAA has
> already been done; and for any
> objective observer, the core case is proven.
>
> Like so many, you can find so many reasons for
> putting off stating your
> position.
>
> I ask again: has it been proven that PIE and PAA are
> related - in your
> opinion?
My opinion is that they are very likely related but I
don't see proof positive yet and if it started me in
the face I might not recognize it. That's why I stress
the levels of proofs so it can be shown without doubt
and so any idiot can see it. That has been done for
IE. I believe Eurasiatic is very plausible given the
M-T paradigm for 1st and 2nd persons singular. More
work needs to be done to actually demonstrate how
Eurasiatic language families are related. Much more
work needs to be done to link Eurasiatic Nostratic to
AA, Dravidian, Elamite, Kartvelian and Sumerian.
To give an example --at what level are IE and Uralic
related? Are we looking at a realtively close genetic
relationship or a distant relationship blurred by
borrowing and areal phenomena?
How can we sort out Altaic, Korean, Japanese --same
question?
How do Eskimo-Aleut, Nivkh and Chukchi-Kamchatkan fit
into the picture. What ever happened to Uwe Seefloth's
hypothesis that Eskimo-Aleut was related to Uralic?
Stefan Georg seemed enthusiastic about it the last I
heard about it 7 or 8 years ago. Solve these problems
and you'll have everyone on board the Nostratic bandwagon
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