--- "Brian M. Scott" <
BMScott@...> wrote:
> At 10:49:44 PM on Saturday, June 7, 2008, Rick
> McCallister
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Vennemann's work is frustrating because you get
> the
> > feeling he has something almost in his grasp but
> just
> > can't close his fingers. There are patterns to be
> seen in
> > his work, he's definitely a brilliant man and not
> a
> > crackpot.
>
> The two are not mutually exclusive. See also
> Greenberg.
>
> Brian
>
While I wouldn't call Greenberg a crackpot, he
suffered, in a sense, from intellectually laziness. I
get the feeling that the closer he was to old age, the
more shortcuts he took by substituting mass com for
the hard work of reconstruction through
proto-languages and trying to substitute genetics for
linguistics. While both mass com and genetics can
offer clues and insights, neither is a substitute for
hard work.
Yet, Greenberg did show a possible and plausible order
for macro-families. His ordering of African languages
families was a landmark work but as he got older, his
work got sloppier. His Eurasiatic was fortunate enough
to be backed up by Illich-Svytich's earlier work and
points the way to a possible macro-group. His Amerind,
while sloppy was hell, did point out the tantalizing
clue of n- for 1s and m- for 2s, which is so common in
Native American language, although again, he wasn't
the first to notice it. His Indo-Pacific, from the
little I've seen of it, looks like complete garbage.
Vennemann is no Greenberg. His work is thought out and
well elaborated although it often rests on very slim
foundations. Even if he were completely wrong, he
would not be a crackpot, just wrong.