minor quibble: the value of precision

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I have little to add to Stefan Georg's posting on the
Altaic problem.  We will for a time at least disagree
about how likely he is to find anything to indicate
that the Altaic connections are really spurious or
borrowing-based, but  once he is done with his digging,
I am pretty sure one of us will concede.  Again, since
we seem to agree on methods, I dont think we can possibly
say much more w/o LOOKING AT ACTUAL DATA, something we
both of course love to do (though Stefan knows the
Altaic data far better than I do, of course) but which
for some reasons, unlike in every other science, the
vast majority of historical linguistics who claim
the right to pass judgement on such theories seem
not to want to do.
 
AMR