From: Richard Wordingham
Date: 2003-02-25
>wrote:
>
> Richard Wordingham wrote:
>
> > --- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>
> > > The *PIE sounds and the changes in the daughter languages haveagreed
> > > not been agreed upon.
> >
> > I think you'll find the basic correspondences are pretty well
> > upon. The arguments are about origins (i.e. in pre-IE), detailsand
> > phonetics.This is what I had in mound when I mentioned arguments about
>
>
> Yes. What if there is a different set of sounds for *PIE ?
> > > There should be quantitative metics e.g. like R^2 forWell, if we have 4 segments per word, that's 52 segments explained.
> > > statistical fitting. Among the factors
> > > 2. how many words are explicable with these rules
>
> What good does it do to have 13 rules to explain 13 words?
> > > 3. how many starred forms are neededFurthermore,
> >
> > I don't understand this factor. Please expand on what you have in
> > mind.
>
> They posit PIE words from which attested ones are derived.
> like thein
> old elements table there are holes and they too have to be filled
> with starred forms.PIE is not attested; it is inferred. Therefore all PIE words should
> The more you have to create the worse your system.
> I can probably create a protolanguage for any 3 languages e.g.Chinese,
> Latinnumber of
> and Swahili (Swadesh 100 list) if I was allowed to create any
> protowordsIn this case, you will have protowords wherever the reconstruction
> and as many sound change rules I wanted. Clearly, there are better
> systems and worse
> systems and we want to know which is which.
> > > Richard Wordingham wrote:You know, I trust, that that wasn't how it was done, though the end
> >
> > > > Another example is the pair
> > > > *pah2ur- and *h2ngni- of PIE words
> > > > for 'fire'.
> Now, to create *PIE all the languages that are presumably IE were
> selected and
> then the protoforms constructed.
> To create Nostratic the same things have tofire)
> be done. That means Turkic yan (to catch fire), yak (to set on
> cannot bepossible, and
> ignored especially when it is obvious that this yak> ag is
> that -niThe latter
> is likely a suffix from Georgian/Kartvelian or one of the CAucasian
> languages
> e.g. the Abkhazians name for themselves is either Apswa or Apsni.
> may be the name for them given by Georgians. If there is a homelandfor
> fire-worship it is in the South Caucasus, where there were naturalfires
> because of surface oil and leaking gas. And these words show up inthat
> region.*h1ngni- is what would emerge from studying accepted IE languages,
> This is just a simple example of problems to be encountered. Therehas to be
> an objective and principled way to judge the various proposals.Richard.