Re: Why the Proto-Indoeuropean numerals are not motivated within IE?

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

>
> Bollocks. There's an enormous amount of historical
> linguistics that has been done and is being done on other
> families. Two of the best introductory texts -- those by
> Larry Trask and Lyle Campbell, especially the latter --

use many non-IE examples.

>
> > Oh yes, the big guys. Trask was the one who defended at
> > all costs the status quo of Basque as an isolate language,
>
> Because no one was able to make a convincing case to the
> contrary, and those who tried were frequently guilty of
> distorting the data or even using non-existent data. It's
> probably fair to say that he was inclined to be skeptical in
> the sense of taking lack of demonstrated relationship as the
> null hypothesis, but that's merely good practice; anything
> else would be irresponsible.
>

I'd say his function was being a *watchdog*, and he did it very well. On
the other hand, his own performance as a comparative linguist was poor,
as I shown you earlier.

> > and Campbell regards macro-families as "speculative, and
> > often controversial, groupings".
>
> He's right: that's a simple statement of fact. They *are*
> speculative, since their existence has not been established
> to the general satisfaction of the historical linguistic
> community, and they are certainly often controversial. Only
> someone who can't distinguish between the world as it is and
> the world as he'd like it to be could possibly object to the
> statement.
>

Status quo is a priority for many people.