Thanks for your careful reply Richard. I have read it once and will
reread it again several more times. I have snipped some simply to
shorten this post.

> Shame Illich-Svitych and Bomhard can't agree on how the Kartvelian

and > Afro-Asiatic (= Hamitic-Semitic) plosives match up with PIE.
(See > 'Crows and the Glottalic Theory' at cybalist.) Or are regular
sound > correspondences the exception? There should be an enormous
number of > obscure conditioned changes! Miguel will tell you that
Afro-Asiatic > lacks decent reconstructions.

The above has been retained for further examination. And does anyone
have further information about the Elamo-Darvidian correspondence?

> There's Dene-Caucasian, which some think is relatable to

Nostratic. Dene-Caucasian includes a Caucasian family, Basque, Sino-
Tibetan, Burushaski and Na-Dene. There is debate as to whether
Karen is Sino-Tibetan.

Who are the scholars who continue holding out on a Dene-
Caucasian/Nostratic link?

> There's Austric, which includes Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian and

Daic (a.k.a. Tai-Kadai). That accounts for 25% of the world's
languages, but a far smaller proportion by population. This group
might include the Miao-Yao (Hmong) languages. There is the question
of whether Japanese is Altaic or Austric, to which many will
reply, 'No'. I've seen a wet finger estimate that it split from
Nostratic-Dene-Caucasian 40,000 years ago.

Have you gleaned any further information on the web concerning
Austric?

> There are the Papuan and Australian phylums, of uncertain status.
> There's Amerind, over which I get the feeling there's more heat

than light. Some of the discussion is quite vitriolic.

>
> I've not heard much of the purely African families -
> Niger-Kordofanian, which incorporates Niger-Congo; Nilo-Saharan -
> unity disputed; Khoisan - or is this just non-Bantu click

languages?. Omotic actually shows some grammatical similarities to
nearby Nilo-Saharan languages, so they might have some relevance to
the topic.

>
> A mischievous thought: Can there be natural, spoken languages that

do not derive from Proto-World?

A mischievous answer is "only if it's Other-Worldly" said I with a
twinkle in my eye.

> > Maybe I'm not the correct person to moderate the the new

nostratic list (since there won't be anything new).

>
> There hasn't been much trouble with people straying off-topic on
> Nostratic. The main issues have been flaming (which you've already
> dealt with) and spamming.

Guess I'm already in. Spammers keep out.

Gerry