Piotr:

>As an outsider who isn't particularly enthusiastic about Nostratic, I
>should perhaps be delighted at seeing two Nostraticists maliciously jumping
>down each other's throat and one of them (Patrick) denigrating still
>another one (Bomhard) with all his might.

But... one of _which_ denigrating still another of _what_?
We're touching again on the hasty equation of Nostratic with
other far more off-the-wall theories like Proto-World again.
This is always a relevant topic to tackle concerning Nostratic
studies.

Bomhard is a Nostraticist. He concerns himself with Nostratic,
a language presumed to have been spoken only around 15,000 BCE.
Patrick is a Proto-Worlder (or whatever nomenclature they might
use), reconstructing a Proto-World some 100,000 years ago or so,
using shaky methodology and assumption after assumption to meet
his goals.

I know that the Nostratic hypothesis isn't as cohesive as it
could be but I hardly think that the reconstruction of
Proto-World is on the same logical level as Nostratic
reconstruction nor do I think that Bomhard is seriously
reciprocally "duking it out" with Patrick.

I'm pretty sure Bomhard has many other people to talk to of the
non-Proto-World type. Certainly, Patrick's violent insistence
that his reconstructions are truth despite the fact that,
logically, one can only say that they are highly uncertain
reconstructions at best, would certainly make me want to dismiss whatever
criticisms he has for me personally. Bomhard doesn't
strike me as a crazy man so perhaps he's thinking along the same
lines.

Nostratic reconstruction is a relatively possible effort while
reconstruction of Proto-World is mostly regarded as quite
outlandish given our current knowledge, that is, assuming there
was only ONE Proto-World which is merely an unprovable assumption
in itself. Nostratic and Proto-World are just on two different
planes of existence. It musn't be lumped together carelessly like
this in all fairness.

- gLeN

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com