> > Read Stephen Oppenheimer's recent 'Origins of the
> > British'.
>
> <http://www.grsampson.net/QOppenheimer.html>
> <http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004276.html>
>
> Oppenheimer has apparently been much influenced by Peter
> Forster. Trask on Forster & Toth:
>
> <http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1876.html>
> <http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2040.html>
Yes, they are his big linguistic sources - too bad they are fringe
nutballs! He also draws inspiration from the often-debunked
Celtosceptics Simon James and John Collis.
Note that Oppenheimer is actually a pediatrician who studies genetics
and history as a hobby.
See this blog, as well:
http://mr-verb.blogspot.com/2007/03/english-as-fourth-branch-of-
germanic.html
Where Joe Eska and Don Ringe are quoted as saying:
"We have shown that [Forster & Toth's] selection and analysis of data
are full of errors, that their confusion about what kinds of evidence
are valuable for research in linguistic phylogeny has compromised
their project, and that their rejection of the principles of the
comparative method is not only counterproductive, but also completely
antithetical to historical linguistics as a science. Most
importantly, they have not addressed the crucial computational
problems involved in phylogenetic reconstruction from comparative
data."
[Eska, Joseph F., Don Ringe. 2004. Recent work in computational
linguistic phylogeny. Language 80.569-582.]
- Chris Gwinn