From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 60648
Date: 2008-10-07
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
>
>>>> Sometimes, wide-spread words are LWs when isolate words
>>>> are in fact cognates, so I'm not sure this reasoning is
>>>> really adequate.
>
>>> You're missing the point. Richard isn't claiming that
>>> using the proto-language instead of choosing from its
>>> daughters *guarantees* that you won't find false
>>> cognates; he's merely claiming -- correctly -- that you
>>> are much likelier to get them if you allow yourself to
>>> choose from the daughters. The probability that a word
>>> reconstructible for the proto-language is actually native
>>> to the family is clearly higher than the probability that
>>> a word chosen at random from one of the daughters is
>>> native to the family.
>
>> I understand the argument but I'm not convinced. There are
>> counter examples.
>
> The fact that you can talk about counterexamples shows that
> you do *not* understand the argument. The argument doesn't
> deny the existence of widespread loanwords.
==========
I understand the argument,
but I'm not *convinced*.
My scepticism has nothing to do with my understanding.
Arnaud
=========
>>> You misunderstand. The point isn't that you're reaching
>>> down into *English*; the point is that you're reaching
>>> down into only *one* IE language. You're stuck with all
>>> of its unrepresentative biasses, but at least you're not
>>> sampling from IE languages with widely divergent
>>> histories.
>
>> Yes, This is why I believe the direct comparison between
>> Arabic and PIE makes sense.
>
> Unfortunately, your belief is false. The fact that you
> could be doing something even worse does not excuse the
> error that you are making: you have no reason to think that
> Arabic is representative of AA. Indeed, I've read
> suggestions that it's likely to be quite unrepresentative,
> though they may have referred more to morphology than to
> phonology.
===========
I believe the direct comparison between PIE and Arabic is not only
legitimate,
but as PIE is much clearer than PAA, it will help understand how Arabic came
to be what it is.
Arnaud
===========
>> They would be, if the methods produced results of
>>> comparable quality; unfortunately, they haven't done so.
>>> And they're not likely to do so, because (1) the written
>>> record is much sparser, and (2) the time depth is much
>>> greater. If a convincing case is ever made for Nostratic
>>> -- and it might be -- it will probably depend to some
>>> extent on new techniques, perhaps quantitative techniques
>>> of the sorts that people like Ringe and April McMahon are
>>> investigating.
>
>> What are Ringe and April McMahon investigating ?
>
> I told you: quantitative techniques for doing historical
> linguistics.
>
> Brian
>
===========
Do you references for their work ?
Arnaud