IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Patrick C. Ryan]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Dear John and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. John E. McLaughlin" <mclasutt at brigham.net>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 8:07 AM

[ moderator snip ]

<JMcL>
> ...and Shoshoni, Panamint, and Comanche /nahnia/; Lushootseed /da?/
> (Proto-Salish *n > d)...

> Let's make it even more explicit.  /n/ occurs in about 90% of the world's
> languages.  About 99% of the world's languages have any kind of nasal (I'll
> assume this is 100% in the calculations below).  Within these languages, /n/
> accounts for, on a rough average, for 5-10% of the consonants occurring in
> the words of any lexicon.  Nasals account for 10 to 20% of the consonants.
> Let's assume that there are 500 unrelated language families and isolates in
> the world.  That means that in 23 to 45 of these unrelated language families
> the word for 'name' will have an /n/ (500 x (.05 or .1) x .9) and that in 50
> to 100 of them it will have any nasal (500 x (.1 or .2)).  That's based on
> pure chance.  It doesn't take much rocket science (or linguistic skill) to
> find "compelling" evidence from around the world linking very disparate
> language families based on chance correspondences.  That's especially true
> if one finds W in the word for X in language families A, B, G, and R, then
> finds Y in the word for Z in language families B, H, N, M, and R.  We now
> have a "language family" consisting of A, B, G, H, N, M, and R!  The mass
> comparativists would be most pleased.

<PR>

"Within these languages, /n/
accounts for, on a rough average, for 5-10% of the consonants occurring in
the words of any lexicon."

For this to be meaningful, it needs to be demonstrated that it is equally
likely for /n/ to occur in words of any category.

In addition, the size of the lexicon should be factored in.

But, a more serious objection is that this is simplistic. No comparativist I
know would base a hypothesis for relationship on a comparison of IE
*en(o)mn. and a single word in any presently "unrelated" language that
simply had an /n/ in it somewhere.

But it is also simplistic in another way.

No consideration of the regular correspondence of many words is taken into
consideration. One swallow, a bird. Fifty swallows, a summer.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ek,
at ek hekk, vindga meipi, nftr allar nmu, geiri undapr . . . a ~eim meipi er
mangi veit hvers hann af rstum renn." (Havamal 138)