Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

At 8:08:57 AM on Friday, March 9, 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).

> I take this kind of statements as personal harassment.

It isn't.

> And if you persist, I'd ask the moderator(s) to take
> measures against you.

*This* moderator would be more than willing to remove you
from the group on the grounds of repeated off-topic and
pseudo-scientific posting. But since the group is largely a
lost cause anyway, he continues to approve your posts.

>>> 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.

It's as reconstructible in PIE as the 'bear' word. You have
no linguistically principled grounds for admitting one and
not the other.

>> '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

You've hardly made any. As a general rule you merely offer
outlandish 'cognates', often in non-existent families (e.g.,
Vasco-Caucasian).

> instead of calling me an "amateur", something which I take
> as a personal harassment.

If you're genuinely not an amateur, you have even less
excuse.

> 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.

Fancy that. Oddly enough, Latin is inadequate to explain
the deep linguistic prehistory and the relationships between
Romance and other families.

Brian