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<div style="direction: ltr;font-family: Tahoma;color: #000000;font-size: 10pt;">Hi Geoffrey:<br>
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Thanks for your response. I have recently become more and more skeptical about significance. People find all sorts of supposedly significant correspondences between linguistic features and all sorts of things.<br>
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An article just came out about this, it is worth reading. It is attached.<br>
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Are we really sure that the consonant correspondences we find across languages are not of the same kind?<br>
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Best,<br>
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Willem<br>
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<div style="direction: ltr;" id="divRpF69336"><font color="#000000" face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> Geoffrey Caveney [geoffreycaveney@gmail.com]<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, August 12, 2013 9:10 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> De Reuse, Willem<br>
<b>Cc:</b> List for the discussion of the Athabaskan language family and related languages<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: another correspondence: Haida q'- : Proto-Miwok *t.-<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Hi Willem:
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<div>Thank you for the reply and the feedback.</div>
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<div>As for the significant number of correspondences, please keep in mind that I am restricting my comparisons to reconstructed proto-levels of Miwok. Examining the entire comparative Miwok lexicon in Broadbent & Callaghan 1960, one finds only 6 forms with
initial *t.- at any proto-level of Miwok: Proto-Miwok <span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif">*</span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif">t/t.yy</span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif">...
'to rest', </span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font color="#000000">Proto-Eastern Miwok *</font></span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font color="#000000">t/<a href="http://t.is" target="_blank">t.is</a></font></span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:arial,sans-serif"><font color="#000000">í:nay-
'ant', </font></span><span style="font-size:13px; line-height:19.1875px; font-family:sans-serif" lang="cs">Proto-Sierra Miwok *t.o</span><span style="font-size:13px; line-height:19.1875px; font-family:sans-serif">ʔ</span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:sans-serif; line-height:19.1875px">-nge-
'to sit down', </span><span style="font-size:13px; font-family:sans-serif; line-height:19.1875px">Proto-Sierra Miwok *t.o:/lko</span><span style="font-size:13px; line-height:19.1875px; font-family:sans-serif">š- 'ear', </span><span style="font-family:sans-serif; font-size:13px; line-height:19.1875px">Proto-Sierra
Miwok *t/t.uya:ng- 'to jump', and </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:13px">Proto-Sierra Miwok *t/t.ay... 'blue jay'. So I think that to find 3 of these 6 forms corresponding to Haida forms with initial q'- is significant.</span></div>
<div><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:13px"><br>
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<div><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0); font-family:arial,sans-serif; font-size:13px">I do understand the importance of morphological comparisons, but I also think each proposal must be assessed on its own merits. Sometimes there will be more morphological comparisons
and fewer lexical comparisons, but sometimes the reverse will be true. For example, which morphological comparisons could be the basis for demonstrating the genetic relationship of the Chinese languages to the Tibeto-Burman languages? It is hard to find any,
because the morphology of the Chinese languages was so thoroughly restructured and hardly resembles Tibeto-Burman morphology at all. But there are very few historical linguists who reject the genetic relationship of Chinese and Tibeto-Burman in the Sino-Tibetan
family, because the lexical comparisons are so convincing.</span></div>
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<div><font color="#000000" face="arial, sans-serif">Geoffrey Caveney</font></div>
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