From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 58247
Date: 2008-05-01
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
>> However, if Eurasiatic is reconstructed, why would
>> we need
>> "Macro-Nostratic"?
>
> But Eurasiatic is not reconstructed to the
> satisfaction of most linguists. We have Greenberg's
> mass com --which includes Ainu, a languages that is
> clearly not part of that proposed phylum. We don't
> have a consensus on its subdivisions or even on what
> Altaic is or isn't. So there's still a lot of work to do.
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Ainu is related to Uralic, Chinese, etc
Cf.
Vogul nom-t "thought"
Chinese nian1, nian4 "to think, thought"
Ainu namu "spirit".
The complete idiocy is to put Indo-European in here,
in a family made of Asiatic languages.
So long as a super-family will start with that premice, it's dead-born.
Arnaud
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>> The reasons for Nostratic's not being recognized
>> have more to do with
>> prejudice than science, IMHO; this is because of the
>> core hypothesis.
>>
>> ***
> I disagree. I think most linguists are probably
> amenable to the idea. I think the diehards like Lyle
> Campbell and Terence Kauffman are a minority, vocal to
> be sure. There is a lot of skepticism of Nostratic but
> I'm sure most linguists have a wait and see attitude
> much like Larry Trask who believed there was
> definitely something to Nostratic but he wasn't sure
> if it could be proven. It will just take a lot of hard
> work for a long, long time. This will mean adjusting
> paradigms to suit new data. And if you don't do this
> you run the risk of hoisting a "Mission Accomplished"
> banner on the deck of an aircraft carrier before the
> real war has even begun.
>>
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There is not even a reasonable perimeter of languages...
Arnaud
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