From: Rick McCallister
Message: 69697
Date: 2012-05-27
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:
>
> > *I suggest you the book "global etymolgies" of Merrit
> > Ruhlen, in that book the author deals with shared lexical
> > items across dozens of languages from all over the world
> > and those shared lexical items are a legacy of the once
> > proto world language spoken by the first "successful"
> > modern human (successful in the sense that he was the most
> > recent common progenitor of all humans living todays)
>
> Waste of time: it's pseudo-scientific handwaving. If Ruhlen
> ever knew what an etymology is, he'd forgotten by the time
> he wrote that rubbish.
>
Well, I won't so far as to label it as "pseudo-science", but I agree
Ruhlen's work is nasty.
***R The pathetic thing is how he got into a place like Stanford. It's supposed to be one of the top 10 or 20 universities in the world and he can spout that schiznatz and be rewarded for it. He is a good writer and I guess the medium is the message in his case. But anyone who has taken Ling 101 can see through him. I'm guessing that, like Greenberg and Bengstsen, he's a nice charming person with a great gift of gab. But with the work he's done, he certainly doesn't deserve the positions he's been awarded.