RE : [tied] Re: North of the Somme

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 7:15:23 PM on Saturday, August 15, 2009, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "bmscotttg" <BMScott@>
> > wrote:
>
> >> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"
> >> <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> But the languages around them swarm with lookalikes
> >>> which must be ultimately related, [...]
>
> >> An article of faith, apparently.
>
> > ??
>
> I was referring to your methodological approach in general.
> You routinely proceed on the basis that words that look
> vaguely similar and have, at least in your mind, vaguely
> similar meanings 'must be ultimately related'.

The problem I'm trying to address is not the similarity of those words in absolute terms, since there will always be people like you who, for fear of ending in a situation where their only talent, that of reproducing what other people have said before them, is useless, will claim that they are not similar enough, but that the similarity between the words within the language group to which they have traditionally been assigned is no greater than the similarity between members across those groups. Cf. eg. the Pokorny and UEW entries in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64759
and that's how it goes in every other example I've brought. Now the idea that they are related across groups is not mine, it is routinely proposed as either (in the case of IE and Uralic) loans from Germanic to Baltic Finnic (regardless of the fact that may of them are spread over all of FU or Uralic) or as loans from some IA dialect into Proto-FU or Proto-Uralic. But that presupposes (unless the loans are limited to a few FU or U languages) that there was a PFU or PU when IA was already independent, and that doesn't seem very likely.

> (You very rarely present anything resembling an actual argument,
> however.

The assumption is always some common substrate.

> Lengthy quotations from etymological dictionaries
> are not in themselves an argument.)

Of course not. I bring them so that the reader can get an impression of the variation and extent of the loan and even form his own opinion. Often the UEW also state the loan hypothesis Gmc. -> Finnish which is the on I'm up against. They are in many cases so obviously unreasonable that I refrained from commenting on them, since I felt it would be evident to most people.


Torsten