Re: Ligurian

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

>
> > Pretending everything must be inherited from "PIE" instead
> > of borrowed is more an obsession than a true scientific
> > approach.
>
> Of course no one does that: that's a straw man of your own
> invention. It's perfectly true that explanations via
> inheritance are preferred, ceteris paribus, to explanations
> via borrowing; that's as it should be.
>

The problem is the amount of valid inherited etymologies in the
mainstream PIE framework is actually lower than expected, especially in
the case Latin, thus indicating the model is inadequate.

> A claim that
> explanations by borrowing are actually excluded, however, is
> either a lie or indicative of ignorance of the field.
>

As usual, you misrepresent what I said. Of course, supporters of the
mainstream model do their best to produce "inherited" etymologies
because they constitute the heart of their own theory. Unfortunately,
very often this doesn't work.

> In your preference for ill-supported explanations by
> long-range borrowing you seem as obsessive as the proponents
> of OIT who have occasionally infested the list.
>

I *never* used the expression "long-range borrowing", which doesn't make
more sense than a wingless fly. The correct term is "substrate
loanword". They represent the legacy of people stigmatized by the
dominant society, which ultimately lead to the extinction of their
languages. In fact, languages are at present disappearing all over the
world, replaced by dominant languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin
Chinese, etc.