Re: HORSA vs. EXWA

At 9:10:34 AM on Friday, March 9, 2012, Tavi wrote:

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

>>> 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.

> Being reconstructible for a late PIE stage doesn't make it
> a genuine (i.e. inherited) word in the sense I attribute
> to this concept.

Your private terminology doesn't interest me.

>>> 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).

> Using your own words, I don't think you're properly
> qualified to judge that.

Oh, I'm very well qualified to tell whether you have offered
genuine arguments or not. I might be unqualified to judge
real linguistic arguments if you did offer them, but that's
another matter altogether. Most of the 'arguments' that
you've offered are little more than statements of faith
without any actual evidence or reasoning.

>>> 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.

> But unlike "PIE", Latin is **real** attested language, so
> your example isn't valid.

Of course it is. And I could just as well have made the
point with PGmc. or any other language, reconstructed or
attested. The point is that asking PIE to 'explain the deep
linguistic prehistory ... and the relationships between IE
and other families' implies a ludicrous misunderstanding of
PIE, of the nature of historical linguistics, or of both.

> I'm sorry, but I find a waste of time to continue this
> dicussion.

I consider virtually all of your posts a waste of time; I'm
retired and have time to waste. Occasionally I get fed up
and say something. I have no expectation that it will do
any good: you've decided that all of the experts are wrong,
that they unthinkingly reiterate dogma and never think for
themselves (which already shows how far out of touch with
reality you are), and that you know better, and nothing and
no one is going to shake that conviction.

Brian