Re: General Rule

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com,
"H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:

> I found it. Thanks to Richard. I

agree with this

> statement totally:
> ------------------------
>
> Something here is not right. I

can't imagine Proto-Nostratic
speakers

> needing so many words for

"turning". Obviously the majority
can be

> described as:
> velar stop-vowel-(d/l/r/n)- in

other words they could could
derived by

> common and well-known changes

from something like

>
> *kVl-
>
> or
>
> *kWVl-
> ---------------------------------

--

>
> I have been working on these

myself. There is something
seriously wrong

> with the way
> things are done. That calls for

some kind of an overhaul of the
methodology.

>
> In fact, I have been reading and

thinking about these for years and
I

> have come to
> certain conclusions myself. Here

is a simple way to look at things
in

> the sense of
> "why is this insufficient".

Suppose you collect all the roots
of various

> languages,
> as done, for example, by Bomhard

(which by the way is excellent).
There

> is still
> a problem. The problem is that

although patterns were used to
create

> these roots,
> there are still patterns in the

result. There are patterns in
patterns

> and there is
> no reason to call a halt to the

search for patterns because all
science

> is based
> on patterns, and none of the

sciences have yet come to a halt
because

> none of
> them are really finished.
>
> One day it hit me. Humans used

stone tools for everything for
hundreds of

> thousands of years. Breaking,

smashing, digging, clipping,
cleaving,

> slicing,
> dicing, drilling holes, etc was

done with stone tools. So after I
had

> spent enough
> time looking through

dictionaries, including Hittite and
Akkadian, I

> realize that
> this regular sound change

business is insufficient. Then I
discovered to my

> delight that in Semitic studies

they have already given up on it

> (Saenz-Badillo,
> A History of the Hebrew

Language). A new model of sound
change is needed.

> The heuristic is still sound, but

it is still a heuristic and it is
too

> simple to totally
> explain the data.
>
> My data, the way I constructed

things, tells me that the roots
that can be

> found easily (because they are

the latest) are KR and KL. I see
that these

> are from KTh and thus using some

simple sound changes *th>{w,l,s/sh}
etc

> some of which I gave already in

various groups, I can derive most
of these

> words, maybe all accross Semitic,

IE, Turkic and even NS.
How do you avoid being badly misled
by pure coincidence? A
similar-sounding technique has been
used to argue that IE derives from
Dravidian.

> I do not claim
> that the sound changes took place

exactly like that. These are what
might be

> called changes based on something

like Parsimony Principle, Occam's
Razor,

> MDL (minimum description length),

MEM (maximum entropy method), etc.

>
> In other words they are

reasonably concise and precise
descriptions of

> observed data. Then I saw that I

can take this backwards e.g. T>K,

> and then further back P>T. The

trick is to fit the data to a
theory, a

> mathematical theory, something I

have been working on for a decade
or

> more. I am convinced that these

things done with stone are derived
from

> words for stone and can be seen

to have the same phonetic form
accross

> language families.
>
> In fact, the root kVr/kVl for

"turning" can be also found in the
form

> tVr. The earliest form for "cut"

etc PL root (pilakku, pelekus,
BALAG,

> balta
> polat, bilda.) can also be found

as PR (part, portion, parathu,
parala,

> parchala..).
>
> It looks like tVr gave rise to

kVr but this is just one aspect of
a big

> problem.
> What I cannot determine are

things like was there a single
liquid at one

> time,
> which was it if it was so, were

there two or more, why, was there a
single

> language, or was there a mixing

of 2 or more, etc. These are the
things that

> interest me, not arguing about

silly things regarding IE as if it
was

> the holy
> language of god. The reason

everything is claimed to be IE is
that it is

> the first one deeply studied as a

result of a historical accident. It
was