Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

At 12:12:46 PM on Thursday, March 8, 2012, Tavi wrote:

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


>> So you say. I've yet to see any evidence that you're
>> qualified to hold an opinion on the matter.

> Ad hominem arguments don't appeal to me.

That isn't an argument, let alone an ad hominem argument:
it's an observation (and a statement of fact).

>>>> Don't be silly. The word 'cognate' *means* that there
>>>> is a genetic relationship. When you say that A and B
>>>> are cognate, YOU ARE ASSERTING A GENETIC RELATIONSHIP.

>>> This might be true for the words themselves, but not
>>> necessarily for the languages involved.

>> This is silly: loans are to be distinguished from
>> cognates.

> IMHO the IE words 'bear' and 'horse' aren't native but
> loanwords.

If they were borrowed, they were borrowed *before* PIE and
are therefore native in PIE.

>>> So as far as the comparative method goes, there's no
>>> reconstructable PIE word for 'bear' besides the one
>>> found in Germanic.

>> And this is self-contradictory: *h2rtk^ko- *is* a PIE
>> reconstruction.

> Not really. At best is a "pseudo-PIE" reconstruction, due
> to its phonetical inconsistence.

You're wrong.

>> Hardly. An amateur with delusions of intellectual
>> grandeur is nearer the mark.

> This isn't only ad hominem but also a sheer INSULT.

'Ad hominem' refers to the fallacy of rejecting an argument
on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of the
argument; it is logically unrelated to sarcasm or insult. I
am not dismissing your arguments on the basis of some fact
about you; on the contrary, I'm inferring your linguistic
shortcomings from the defects of the arguments that you
offer.

As for 'delusions of intellectual grandeur', what else do
you call it when a person thinks that he can completely
rewrite an entire well-established field of intellectual
inquiry -- IE historical linguistics -- of which he seems to
have somewhat incomplete knowledge?

Brian