Re: Stacking up on standard works

W dniu 2012-04-03 08:35, Tavi pisze:

> Having read his magna opus "The History of Basque", I can say that while
> he was a good Vascologist, he was also a poor comparative linguist.
> Apparently, he had an agenda which not only made him negate any
> possibilty of genetic relationships between Basque and other languages
> (e.g. Iberian), but also he strongly minimized the influence of Basque
> in its neighbouring Romance languages, specially Spanish.

Larry Trask also wrote _Historical Linguistics_ (1996, London: Arnold),
one of the best and reader-friendliest handbooks in that field of
studies. Since it discusses, among other things, the application and
limitations of the comparative method, you could gain a lot from reading
it. By calling Trask "a poor comparative linguist" without having
anything to show as you own credentials you merely show that ignorance
breeds arrogance.

> I'm afraid the argument of a "very late attestation [in writing]" means
> little in a language like Basque, whose written tradition is
> comparetively recent (the first book is from the 16th century). Anyway,
> *mintz* can't be a recent borrowing because it shows nasalization of the
> initial labial (no t to mention the variants with *p-*). This would make
> it at least a word from the Middle Ages.

Still, it proves nothing about its origin or the direction of borrowing.

Piotr