proto-proto-proto...

[Baker, John]

I don't understand the work by Mark Pagel et al. to use mass comparison, but I would love to hear what people who actually know about the subject think.


John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of W Brewer
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 10:42 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: proto-proto-proto...

An Indo-Europeanist's view of proto-Eurasiatic, and the myriad other mass
comparison schemes or recent decades.
Step one: Assume all the world's languages descend from a single ancestor
language.
Step two: Prove step one.
Step three: Discover that the comparative method, internal reconstruction,
typology are useless beyond 6,000 BC.
Step four: To save the deductive enterprise, resort to mass comparison,
loosening up criteria until incredibly spectacular results come pouring in.
Step five: As funding dries up; create new project name, GOTO step one.

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org