Re: Stacking up on standard works

W dniu 2012-04-01 04:05, Tavi pisze:

> > You make it sound very simple, but it *isn't* that simple at all.
> > Patterns are only too easy to see. Any random process may generate
> > "patterns". Even the stars in the sky form patterns.
>
> I disagree. Randomness is just the opposite of a pattern.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness

I didn't say that patterns are random. I said that random processes can
generate (regular or semiregular) patterns, or at least things that we
perceive as patterns.

> > How do you know
> > that the patterns you see "here and there" in two different languages
> > are evidence of their shared ancestry?
> >
> IMHO all you can prove (to a reasonable degree of certainity) is a set
> of words in language A and another set of words in language B have a
> shared *source*.

Comparative analysis goes way beyond comparing sets of words. It is not
just a critical mass of matching words that constitutes clinching
evidence of relatedness.

> The problem is that a the lexicon of a given language is typically made
> up of several strata (multi-layer) due to language replacement and
> contact processes, and it isn't always easy to tell which is the
> "inherited" part. This is where morphology usually comes to the rescue.

Indeed. And this is the really important part.

> In the case of the IE family, some of these strata have been digged out
> in the process of reconstructing "PIE", although they have been
> inadverted to most IE-ists.

Give us then an example of what you regards as a regular correspondence
between Basque and a NE Caucasian language of your choice, preferably
supported by morphological analysis.

Piotr