Excluding data

[Larry Trask]

On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Roslyn M. Frank wrote:

> [LT]

>> As I've pointed out before, the first goal is to identify those words
>> with the strongest claims to being native and ancient -- not to make
>> sure we include every word which might conceivably be native and
>> ancient, since any attempt at this must inevitably sweep up an awful lot
>> of words which are not ancient.  First things first.

> Who is "we"? I thought that Jon was doing one version of this
> project(using a computer as an aid) and you were doing another
> (using paper)?! Or at least I think that something to that effect
> was stated in an earlier mailing.

Well, `we' here is anybody who is interested in reaching any conclusions
about the nature of the Pre-Basque lexicon.  If you want to work on the
modern lexicon, that's a different matter, of course.  But I've only
ever been talking about the ancient lexicon, and, as far as I know,
that's been the only topic of discussion on this list.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk