Re: Stacking up on standard works

At 4:22:31 PM on Sunday, April 1, 2012, Tavi wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>>> Considering most Vasco-Caucasian languages have become
>>> extinct and only survive in loanwords to other families
>>> such as IE, a direct reconstruction of Proto-VC would
>>> very difficult if not impossible. However, it looks like
>>> Starostin's PNC (actually Proto-NEC with Proto-NWC
>>> fitted in) is a much older entity than commonly though,
>>> so IMHO it constitutes a good approximation to the real
>>> PVC.

>> I take this to be an admission of defeat. Though you
>> pretend to stick to the comparative method, you have
>> presented no shred of comparative evidence that there is
>> a plausible connection between Basque and NEC.

> I've got a number of correspondences between both, but I'm
> afraid this isn't the appropriate place nor time to show
> them.

Why?

> Meanwhile I could refer you to Bengtson's articles.

Having read some of Larry Trask's detailed demonstrations of
Bengtson's incompetence in dealing with Basque, I am not
disposed to accept much of anything that he says on the
subject. And in any case it's *your* understanding of the
comparative method that's at issue, not Bengtson's.

>> Starostin's PNC (never mind its credibility and the
>> validity of a NC node) was not reconstructed using any
>> external data, so how on earth can it "approximate"
>> Proto-Vasco-Caucasian? Perhaps you believe Basque is
>> nested deep within North Caucasian, in which case
>> "Vasco-Caucasian" and "North Caucasian" would mean the
>> same thing, but that too would require some sort of
>> proof.

> I must repeat Basque isn't part of NEC or North Caucasian,
> but in any case a somewhat distant relative.

Then why on earth do you imagine that Starostin's PNC can
reasonably approximate Proto-Vasco-Caucasian?

[...]

Brian