Pat:

>I have completed about 200 pages of critique of Bomhard's dictionary in
>Indo-European and the Nostratic Hypothesis, which
>may interest some of you.

Thanx, PR. It's gLeNny gEe here. I was able to read it just fine.
Although I will be heartlessly efficient by dismissing all your whimsical
references to a reconstructed Proto-Language as
pure gunk, I find your critique of Bomhard's Nostratic
uncharacteristically logical.

One certainly should be skeptical of his monotonous obsession of
biliteral roots that appear to, at times, disregard the vocalisms
of the daughter languages. We also agree that his "ablaut" needs to
be scrapped and that a simple, three-vowel system works best, at
least for the sake of theoretical simplicity and manageability.

I'm glad that you are as suspicious as I of those reconstructions
of his that have only AA and IE as evidence for their existence. I feel that
all of these particular roots should be assumed to
be the result of later borrowings and should be omitted from
further Nostratic root lists.

- gLeN

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