Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

--- 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).
>

I take this kind of statements as personal harassment. And if you
persist, I'd ask the moderator(s) to take measures against you.

> > 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.

>

While now I regard 'bear' as a genuine (i.e. native IE) word, IMHO
'horse' is a late loanword designating the domesticated horses of the
Pontic-Caspian Steppes. I must insist than not all the words
reconstructed as "PIE" have the same chronology nor belong to the same
(proto-)language.

> 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.
>

Then you should refute my arguments instead of calling me an "amateur",
something which I take as a personal harassment.

> 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?
>

In short, I think the current PIE model is an over-simplification of
reality, collapsing several diachronic and diatopic linguistic
varieties. It's inadequate to explain the deep linguistic prehistory
(Mesolithic and beyond) and the relationships between IE and other
families.