rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, H.M.Hubey wrote:
 
> Historical linguistics is circular, especially as it is based mostly on
> IE.
> IT says;
>
> 1. The set of languages, {x,y,z...} constitutes a family because of
> 'regular
> sound correspondences'.
> 2. 'Regular sound correspondences' indicate a 'language family'.
 
Could you give us a couple of examples of recognized language families
that have been established on the basis of this kind of reasoning?
There are a few, but it's not the standard methodology at all.
Not Indo-European, for sure, which was first proposed and established
on the basis of extensive correspondences in morphological paradigms.
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html