Actually, Gerry, I was thinking about expanding the selection beyond Bunaba and Burarra and try to include lexical examples from as many Australian languages as I can find information for and then deposit it (the spreadsheet) in the files section of the group web site, if you have no objections.  That way, folks like Piotr, Dr. Hubey, etc. can take a crack trying to point out any relationships, if they were interested.  It would be helpful if I could provide grammatical structure information as well as lexical data, but, assuming I can find that kind of information (which I rather doubt at this point), and the time and guidance to format it properly, the “document” then turns into a 3-dimensional database instead of a 2-dimensional spreadsheet.  Most people don’t have Access (Microsoft’s “low-end” database application) installed, so it would be a moot point.

 

If anybody is interested, please let me know.

 

Andy Howey

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Howey [mailto:andyandmae_howey@...]
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 22:38
To: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Nostratica] English-Bunaba-Burarra word list

 

Sheesh!  I spend 2-1/2 hours preparing a word list for you, and you can’t access it.  Darn! J

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Geraldine Reinhardt [mailto:waluk@...]
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 13:08
To: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Nostratica] English-Bunaba-Burarra word list

 

Andy,

 

Thanks for your trouble but I don't have Excel on my machine.  I appreciate your effort though.  Your credentials are noteworthy:  if you in fact see no relationship between the two languages, then you are the expert (plus the owner of Excel ;-)

 

Gerry

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From:
Andrew Howey

 

To: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 12:25 PM

Subject: [Nostratica] English-Bunaba-Burarra word list

 

Gerry:

Here is the word list you requested.  It is a modified Swadesh list.  I had to dump it into an Excel spreadsheet because it uses IPA characters that don't show up in an ASCII text file.  I hope you find it useful.  Once again, you are dealing with languages from two different families, the linguistic relationship of which is presently uncertain.

By the way, I've never claimed to be an expert on Australian languages.  The information that I've presented is the result of web-based research.  In my introduction to the group back in December or January, I stated what my linguistic qualifications are.  Just to repeat and clarify, I am a retired U.S. Army cryptologic "linguist" specializing in German and Russian.  By virtue of knowing those to languages, I can somewhat follow closely related languages (i.e. Dutch, Low Saxon, Frisian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, etc.)  I've had some exposure to French and Italian, but I don't claim any fluency in them.  I have no formal linguistic training and do not claim to be a linguist.  Just an FYI.

Andy Howey