The *PIE sounds and the changes in the daughter languages have
not been agreed upon.

There should be quantitative metics e.g. like R^2 for
statistical fitting.  Among the factors

1. how many rules
2. how many words are explicable with these rules
3. how many starred forms are needed
4. how good are the semantics
etc

Richard Wordingham wrote:

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com,
"H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...> wrote:
>
>
> richard.wordingham@... wrote:
>
> > Dear Mark,
> >           I look for Swadesh
lists at www.rosettaproject.org .
There
> > are 2 lists there for Latin,
but I can't view them with my home
browser.
> >
> > I'm rather sceptical of Swadesh
lists for reconstructed languages.
> > How do we know we have the
_usual_ word for a meaning?  For
example,
> > is PIE for 'red' *h1rudHro- or
*h1reudH- ?
>
> This has to be made more
explicit, I think. There should be
some kind of
> a calculation that shows what is
being maximized, or what
> is being minimized and why the
given set of sound changes is
superior to
> others.
The problem here is not which is
the correct reconstruction - see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybal
ist/message/17119 for a summary and
Pokorny root no. 1627 (e.g. via
http://flaez.ch/cgi-bin/pok.pl )
for the details, in particular the
languages which have reflexes for
both forms.
Another example is the pair
*pah2ur- and *h2ngni- of PIE words
for 'fire'.
A possible Germanic issue is the
word for 'die' - *daujan (> E. die)
or *sterban (> E. starve).
Richard.
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