Re: *ka/unt- etc, new conquests

> since words are assigned to a substrate by definition, you can't disprove their membership.
>
> What should be disprovable is the actual existence of this artificially defined substrate.

So by "assigned to substrate" you mean nothing more than "has a specific phonetic shape", then. I think *that* may be our problem here. What "assigned to substrate" usually means is the much stronger claim of "is a loan from some extinct language" - a claim that needs some actual evidence for it. And having some phonetical shape is not sufficient evidence, if said phonetical shape is also possible in vocabulary deriving from other sorces.

Furthermore: if we have to disproov the existence of the substrate (or, "the substrate being an actual language", using the Torsten definition of "substrate") as a whole, that leaves no room for one word of similar shape to be a loan from an extinct language and another of similar shape to have a different origin. This model is fundamentally flaw'd, since words of similar shape CAN occur without them having a common origin.

> > Would you mean that having cognates in related languages counts
> > as counterevidence of being a loan?
>
> Counterevidence of it being a loan to that language at that particular time, yes.

Can we then agree that *kunta, *kënta and *kan-ta are all distinct and inherited from Proto-Uralic?

> > > > > 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.
>
> OK, sage, predict the appearance of the next Hittite.

Nice strawman. Read again what I wrote, please.

More rigorously: a linguistic reconstruction (or just the relevant regular correspondences, actually) predicts that, when scholars further study a language of the same family that has not been studied to full detail (but still to sufficient detail that soundlaws for that particular language have been estabilish'd), they will discover lexemes that can be connected to lexemes in other languages of the family in accordance with the soundlaws of the reconstruction.

> > > 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.
> >
> It does, but it's not prediction.

And you just said we need to come up with a criterion that doesn't involve prediction. I just can't win here, can I?

> > > > > > "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.

> > The Samic reflex means "roots". No association with hunting
> > storages - which they still use (eg. http://tinyurl.com/yjfmtak)
>
> So the technology came to the Saami after it had ceased being associated with a tree stump. Why is that a problem?

Because you have no evidence that the hunting storage is that new a technology for the Sami, and because you now require the completely unnecessary assumption that some ancestors of the Sami stopped using hunting storages for a while, until it was reintroduced for them later.

It is much simpler to assume that "hunting storage" is a semantic innovation in Ob-Ugric for an old technology. Especially since you have not even attempted to identify your mysterious hunting-storage-introductors.

> > You keep talking about "prestigious new technology" without any
> > evidence of who, where, and when. Until you have, it remains an
> > assumption.
>
> It remains an assumption that it was once new?

Are you playing dumb? Everything was once new, but you're making assumptions about the date of origin of this technology with regards to the dates of Proto-Uralic or Proto-Samic. You can't date things to any arbitrary date you'd like without evidence.

> It is sometimes difficult for me to understand the way you think.

Likewise, except close to 100% of the time.
(I do have one pretty good theory, but it requires assuming that you're at least half of the time either immune to logic, or trolling.)

John Vertical