At 1:31:10 PM on Sunday, August 7, 2011, stlatos wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <bm.brian@...> wrote:
[...]
>> You haven't actually addressed the assertion that
>> *-mh1nó- is 'the only shape ...' and whatever arguments
>> suppor[t] it; you've merely asserted a contrary opinion.
>> And after what I've seen of your opinions, methodology,
>> and judgement over the years, I've little reason to take
>> any of them seriously.
> That is not true.
Don't be ridiculous: you've addressed neither the Tocharian
etyma nor the arguments in question.
> I gave plenty of ev. in favor of my theory and against
> yours;
I disagree, but it doesn't matter, since that's beside the
point, which is that you very obviously have not addressed
the specific problem mentioned by Ringe.
> far more than you provided for it.
I offered no theory concerning the suffix and provided no
evidence for one. I provided evidence that your assertion
that 'There's no ev. for -H1- or any other H here' is false.
> It seems you've chosen ignore ev. I provide.
Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant to the
present issue. However, I'm willing to address this one as
well.
You have far more linguistic data at your command than I
have (though as some real linguists have occasionally
demonstrated, not so much as you think), so it not
infrequently happens that I can't evaluate your evidence
myself. When I can, I'm generally not convinced, so I look
upon the rest with an exceedingly jaundiced eye. In short,
I reject or simply fail to be convinced by most of the
purported evidence that I *can* judge and therefore cannot
but be doubtfully agnostic (at best) about most of the rest.
This skepticism is reinforced by the fact -- obvious for a
long time now -- that you don't really know what to do with
your data: your methods are a parody -- sophisticated and
unintentional, but still a parody -- of the real thing, and
you remain resolutely blind to their serious flaws even when
these are explicitly pointed out. As a result, there's very
little common ground for serious linguistic discussion, and
I no longer waste my time trying to find any; I merely
comment occasionally on assertions that strike me as
exceptionally wrong-headed or that concern topics about
which I know a fair bit.
Bluntly, sophisticated crackpottery is still crackpottery,
and being serious about doing linguistics in no guarantee of
doing serious linguistics.
Brian