"Victovaloke" article critical of linguistics

[David Kiltz]

On 06.08.2006, at 14:18, akoddsson wrote:

> There are some telling phrases, like the
> one about IE being of 'no practical value'.

Hails Konrad,

Yes, I think his drift is to dismiss certain ideas about the history  
of Romania which result from linguistic research. Clearly his beef is  
with the historical comparative method which, however, he never  
really mentions, far less discusses. It is understandable that a  
layman might be overwhelmed by the often bitter in-fighting over  
certain details and thereby would miss the basic concepts. I've read  
other articles by him. For instance, he seems to have difficulties to  
grasp why _iubesc_ 'to love' is considered a loan from Slavic. He  
counters the claim by saying it's recorded in an 11/12. century poem.  
The latter, of course, has nothing to do with it, it's simply the  
phonetic structure that leads to the assumption. However, I suppose  
one must seriously question the sanity of a person that claims  
'linguistics' hasn't produced anything positive in the last 200  
years. He apparently tries to dismiss Indo-European linguistics in  
particular. Nevertheless progress there has, of course, been enormous.
I wonder how much he really knows about modern phonetics, grammatical  
theory of various types, pragmatics etc.
What is actually disconcerting is, that the unsuspecting reader might  
believe some of those ravings.
As for the practical value of Indo-European linguistics - I always  
found that to be enormous. It helped me learn languages so much  
faster and more efficiently.

I quite agree with you on evolutionary theory and the progress of  
science/scholarship.
Gabriel Gheorghe is an engineer by training, it would appear. Of  
course, that is a rather different trade.
At any rate, on a nicer note, I do love roses too.

Best,

David


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