Re: *ka/unt- etc, new conquests

> It is not possible to make an object-based description of a scenario of the movement of physical bodies (including object representations of statements of events (collisions etc) and permanent facts) without a statement like that.

>We still have such a theory, because there's no other way we can represent it (actually there is another, totally different way to represent gravity, namely as curved space, but that fact should tell us something about the limitations of our perceptional categories).

One word: "field".
And with that, I think I'm done with this tangent.

> > How would you propose disproving a word's belonging into one of
> > your substrate loan complexes?
>
> Words which have cognates in relatives of the successor languages should be assigned to the successor languages. Those which fulfill one of the defining characteristics of the proposed substrate languages should be assigned to them. Those who fulfill neither I can't assign anywhere by purely linguistic means.

You went from "disprooving" to "assignment" here. Would you mean that having cognates in related languages counts as counterevidence of being a loan?

If yes, you have not been folloing thru. When given that eg. *kanta- has Samoyedic cognates, you do not take that as counterevidence, but rather extend the substrate (eastward in space, or backward in time) in an ad-hoc fashion to cover that family too. Since you keep doing that I don't see how it is possible for there to BE a counterargument.

> > > Forget predictive power in a historical science. Any prediction
> > > a theory makes we already know, unless we discover new material
> > > like Hittite, and that's very rare.
> >
> > Maybe with Indo-European. There are still plenty of understudied
> > languages in the world which may or may not provide us with data
> > that fits our reconstruction of, say, Proto-Uralic.
>
> True, but it's pseudo-prediction in principle.

We can predict the *discovery* of new lexeme sets that fit our soundlaws, if you want to nitpick about chronology.

> We have to come up with some criterion for the historic sciences which doesn't involve prediction.

I hear regularity of sound change works pretty well.

> > > > "tree stump" is the kind of concept even stone-age hunter
> > > > gatherers can be expected to have in their vocabulary.
> > >
> > > But they can't be expected not to replace by a new word from
> > > some prestigious new technology.
> >
> >
> > OK… sure not, but I'd then expect those who kept the technology
> > (such as the Sami) to keep their word for it too, not just some
> > generalization of it.
>
> I didn't get that?

The Samic reflex means "roots". No association with hunting storages - which they still use (eg. http://tinyurl.com/yjfmtak)

> > And the newness of this prestigious technology remains assumed.
>
> What do you mean? Everything was new once.
>
> Torsten

I mean newness at the time of Proto-Uralic, obviously. You keep talking about "prestigious new technology" without any evidence of who, where, and when. Until you have, it remains an assumption.

Now perhaps you still think "assumption" is as good as "theory", but that's still utterly wrong.

John Vertical