Re: Nordwestblock, Germani, and Grimm's law

At 4:25:46 PM on Saturday, January 23, 2010, Torsten wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:

>> Note for example that we cannot indiscriminately clump
>> *thee and *tSai together, they are two separate loan
>> complexes (despite the shared meaning). We can only
>> securely join them given an understanding of historical
>> Chinese phonology.

> Rest assured that if we knew nothing of Chinese phonology
> there would be two opposing linguistic camps: one would
> say they are related, another that we are not permitted to
> make that inference.

And they'd be right. It would be entirely permissible to
conjecture a possible relationship, perhaps even to think it
probable, but it would clearly be impermissible to conclude
that they definitely were related.

Brian