Re: Vandals

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "bmscotttg" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > ...
>
> >>>> [He] is only interested in finding evidence in science
> >>>> which supports this prejudice.
>
> >>> Of course.
>
> >> If you were a real scientist, you'd also be interested in
> >> subjecting your 'theories' to rigorous testing.
>
> > That's why I offer them here.
>
> You really just don't get it, do you?

What is it you want me to 'get' (note the scare quotes)?

> *You* have a fundamental responsibility to do at least some basic
> testing, preferably *before* you dump them here.

Nonsense. Of course I can ask the members of cybalist a question about
the etymologies of sets of of words in which I have no special
expertise. Everybody on the list does it all the time.

> Take that list of Breton-Slovenian look-alikes: what was the point
> of inflicting it on us?

Quote:
'It is of course interesting which of the words are only Breton and
Slovenian and which are generally Celtic and Slavic, respectively.
Comments are appreciated.'

The point was to find out which of the words had respectable pedigrees
from PIE to their respective languages, Breton and Slovenian, and
which didn't, thus making them suspect of being substrate words in
those languages.

> The authors obviously know nothing of linguistics, so there's no
> reason to suppose that it means any more than any other crank's
> list of surface similarities.

The do seem to know very little of general PIE stuff, but have some
knowledge of Slavic matters. The most bothersome, I finfd, is their
lack of knowledge of the concept of substrate in languages.

> Might there be a valuable nugget amongst the obvious crap? Of
> course there *might*, but there's absolutely no evidence pointing
> in that direction, and hence no reason to look.

That's an example of what I call to myself a 'circular Brian'. It
doesn't interest you because it is not interesting, and it is not
interesting because it doesn't interest you.

> [...]
>
> > The view you, George and others represent insists that those
> > sources concerning the history of Germanic-speaking peoples which
> > refer to native traditions should be dismissed out of hand,
>
> This is obviously false, since it's apparent from our posts that
> neither George nor I dismisses them _out_of_hand_.

Oh, yes you do.

> > thus treated differently from other sources, a prejudice which is
> > ideologically motivated as can be seen in George's past
> > insistence that I am an 'Odinist'.
>
> This is utter nonsense from start to finish. Your interpretation
> of George's use of 'Odinist' is as far off the mark as Kishore's
> insistence a while back that he'd been threatened by Francesco.

Could you be more specific?

> [...]
>
> >> By the way, George left out at least one: routinely
> >> appealing to invisible 'data', justified on the grounds that
> >> it belonged to an unrecorded 'low' register.
>
> > Please don't misrepresent me.
>
> I'm not: that's exactly what you do.
>
> > I sometimes posit words in low register; I never call that
> > 'data',
>
> I didn't say that you did; the quotation marks are scare quotes.

from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes
'Scare quotes is a general term for quotation marks used for purposes
other than to identify a direct quotation. For example, authors might
use quotation marks to highlight special terminology, to distance the
writer from the material being reported, to indicate that it is
someone else's terminology, or to bring attention to a word or phrase
as questionable or at least atypical in some way.

Scare quotes are often intended to provoke a negative association for
the word or phrase enclosed in the quotes, or at least a suspicion
about the appropriateness or full truth that might be presumed if the
quotes were omitted. When communicating face-to-face, an approximation
of scare quotes is a hand gesture known as air quotes or finger
quotes, which mimics the appearance of quotation marks.

...

The effect of using scare quotes is often similar to prepending a
skeptical modifier such as so-called or alleged to label the quoted
word or phrase, to indicate scorn, sarcasm, or irony.[1] Scare quotes
may be used to express disagreement with the original speaker's
intended meaning without actually establishing grounds for
disagreement or disdain, or without even explicitly acknowledging it.
In this type of usage, they are sometimes called sneer quotes.

Examples:

* Liberal: We've heard about these conservatives and their tax "relief".
* Conservative: The liberals have proposed yet another form of
"common-sense" gun control.
* Libertarian: We're disappointed with the liberals' and
conservatives' "inclusive" debate.
'

In other words, you are attributing that term to me.
I don't use that term that way, and you are misrepresenting me.
There are also stronger words for that.

> > they are proposals for earlier forms, [...]
>
> Which you then treat as established fact.

No, I don't. I treat them as proposals.


Torsten