More comments. I am a computer scientist. The history of computation begins
with the fingers. The counting in 20's was common, even English recently e.g.
"Four score and seven years ago...."..

That is because they counted on their fingers. The number 40 means "big" more
or less in the Mideast because of the usage e.g. "Ali Baba and 40 thieves,".
"40 years in the desert" etc. English "digit" is derived from Latin digitus (finger),
which brings us to Ruhlen's "tik/tek" paradigm (e.g. "one" came from
or is related to "finger").

Then the next "calculator" after fingers were "pebbles". Latin "calculus" not
only is connected with mathematics, but also as kidney stones.  One can even
see this in English "reckon".

It also seems to me that calculus is a reduplicated word kal.kul. The word
"kal" can be seen to mean "multiply" even as far back as in Sumerian. That word
I also derive from *kath. With changes *kh> dh>r we get "kerre" in Arabic
meaning "times" (e.g. multiply). With *th>t we get katla (to multiply, times)
in Turkic. With *kh > l , we get Sumerian kal (times, multiply). Furthermore
I can easily derive words for "stone" from *kath and all sorts of other things
done with stone (break, smash, cut, slice, dice, clip, cleave, etc) in various
language families e.g. Turkic, Semitic, and even IE.  These sound changes
show up all the time. My point is that the present methods produce too
many roots. If there was a single language, whether it is called Nostratic,
or Afro-Eur-Asiatic (AEA) there cannot be thousands of roots. The new
names had to be derived from old ones via analogical extension. Nobody
has to believe it. But I don't believe in the way things are being reconstructed.

If a counterexample can be found to a general statement, the general statement
is falsified. Many linguists like to quote Kuhn but only as it applied to
physics. But physics was already fixed when the results of experiments could
not be explained by classical Newtonian physics. William Wang has already
clearly falsified the Neogrammarian Rule that sound change is regular. Further
Hock's book shows that there are a zillion ways in which sounds change.
Even more so, the book  "History of the Hebrew Language (Saenz-Badillo)
says clearly
-------------------
p.8

The diversity of Semitic languages is especially problematic for
supporters of the 'historical' theory, and has led to various versions of the hypothesis,  widespread for several decades now, that successive waves ('Invasionswellen') of  Semites proceeded from the Arabian desert to the surrounding territories, imposing their  particular dialects
in these places. Thus, between 2000 and 1700 BCE there would have been
an Amorite (early West Semitic) wave, and between 1400 and 900 an Aramean (late
West SEmitic) wave; finally, in the eight century CE, there was an Arab wave. The  historical basis for the first two 'invasions' is not as clear as that of the last one, leading  some authors, in more
recent studies, to develop a theory of 'infiltration' which is less
rigid than the 'wave' theory.

Even if it is clear that the migration of Semitic-speaking groups did
play a part in spreading the various languages, it is difficult to account in this way for the  origins of the substantial differences that can exist between one Semitic language and another. As  emphasized some
time ago, there are no clearly defined boundaries between the languages
of the different 'waves' and no inherited features shared between shared areas, which we  should expect if the 'wave' theory were correct.
[Turkic is basically in this shape. See Claus Schonig's article.]

The actual situation is better explained by reference to, for example,
dialect geography, according to which the spread of linguistic features generally moves  from the centre outward toward the margins, resulting in clear differences between the  dialects of one zone and another as well as clear and consistent isoglosses. Thus, for  example, when
a feature which is not the result of internal development within a
language is found in areas far apart from one another, it should be regarded as a  preserved common, primitive, element, whereas novel linguistic features have succeeded in  diffusingthemselves in the territory between such areas.
---------------

So that is what I am wondering about. Do Nostraticists still continue to use the same model
(e.g. Newtonian physics) even when they are faced with data that it does not work (e.g.
quantum physics and relativity theory). Or is there a change in the way Nostraticists view
data e.g. are they looking for a new model (quantum) or still doggedly sticking to the
same old model (Newtonian) which does not work?

And, the real question: is the word for "1st" from another language "one", or were
PIEands truly inventive people and had two roots for "1" and loaned one of these
to the other language?

This is a question about "model" and "philosophy" of language, IE and Nostratic.





Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 5:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Nostratica] Cardinal and Ordinal Integers



> If Germanic (English) f comes from PIE p, then it seems English first is cognate with the other *p words but then if Old English did not have it how did it get the f back? Apparently German does not have f either.

*furista- (OE fyrst), which is cognate to those *p- words continued to exist in Germanic with the meaning 'foremost in importance' or 'coming before all others'. *airista- was more common in West Germanic in the meaning 'first in serial order', but the two were very similar semantically and in English <first> has ousted <erst>. Similar shifts are frequent. In Polish, Slavic *vUtorU 'second' (archaic Pol. wtóry) has been replaced by <drugi>, previously meaning 'other'.

Piotr


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M. Hubey
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