IE to ProtoSteppe

[Glen Gordon]

I had a wonderfully long response ready to send you guys but luckily
Hotmail Timed out on me and I was given the opportunity to write a more
focused email in the end...

ME (GLEN):
 Now, I can fully understand that one can have the legitimate view
 that _AT PRESENT TIME_, such things are not recoverable to a _strong
 degree_ as JS points out.

JOATSIMEON:
 -- and probably never will be, because we don't have time machines.
 Linguistic reconstruction is done by 'triangulation'.  Once you're
 back beyond the neolithic, roughly, even the language families with
 the most and earliest written sources just don't provide enough data
 points.

You are going to have to decide what kind of terminology you are going
to use: absolute or vague. The vague phrase "back beyond the neolithic,
roughly" doesn't go well with the absolute term "impossible" as in "it's
impossible to reconstruct beyond the neolithic". The word "roughly"
automatically admits to the possibility of long-range comparison because
you appear to certify that _some_ evidence is obtainable for these
hypotheses. Further, triangulation has no absolute limits of distance.
It is used for distances on Earth as well as in space. You have
successfully proved my point. Thank you. :)

ME (GLEN): conjecture is a necessary component in good research.

JOATSIMEON:
 -- not conjecture without evidence. [...]
 Carl Popper's "Non-falsifiable hypothesis" fits here.  If it can't
 be tested, it can't be meaningful.

Conjecture IS BY DEFINITION "guesswork". Look it up in a dictionary and
come back to me. What makes good conjecture from bad conjecture is the
amount of likelihood a hypothesis has and how much it explains. This is
how we can logically dismiss theories such as Pat's Sumerian Invention
Process against the likelier scenario that Sumerian evolved like any
other language from an earlier form. Or do you accept this as a credible
possibility?!

Do you realise that you're completely dismissing the field of cosmology
and quantum mechanics because of lack of "evidence". We can't take a
picture of a particle to tell whether it's a wave or a particle or both
(cf. Wave-Particle Duality) yet it's just accepted that sometimes it
behaves as one or the other. Tachyon particles aren't verified only
surmised. Gravitons, wimps, superstring theory and a 10-dimensional
universe. Are these "wild conjectures"?

These theories are NECESSARY in order to explain the world we live in
and I maintain that these conjectures (in the sense that there cannot be
physical evidence of being so) are science. Of course, they have
"evidence" in the form of mathematical equations and the like but there
isn't any undeniable physical proof. Again, we're talking about relative
probability - how much does it explain with the least amount of effort
and the most elegant simplicity (Occhim's Rasor).

ME (GLEN):
 Can we really place a limit on what we can find out or learn at any
 given time?

JOATSIMEON:
 -- yes; it's called "no evidence available".  The unwritten languages
 of prehistory are _lost_.  The data is _gone_, vanished into entropy.

This statement is only meaningful once you succinctly define "evidence".
Is IE futile then? What makes IE different? It would appear that IE is
"lost" too yet we seem to know an awful lot about it despite it's
disappearance. How funny.

ME (GLEN):
 The point is: in regards to any other competing theories out there on
 IE external links (from NWC to  Benue-Congo), what is the MOST
 probable?

JOATSIMEON:
 -- the difference between 0.000002% and 0.000001% is not meaningful.

Yes, true, only if you can measure the difference as such. You have not.
Start calculating. This is where "relative probability" is necessary. No
measurements are required. It's simply a reasoning process, weighing how
much two different hypotheses explain the data best - comparing
likelihoods. This seems to suggest that you actually accept Amerind
languages as being as likely to be closely related to IE as Uralic. The
fact that IE and Etruscan are honestly being considered to be
genetically related appears to push the time-frame of reasonable
reconstruction little by little. There are no absolutes. I wholly
question your reasoning.

--------------------------------------------
Glen Gordon
glengordon01 at hotmail.com

Kisses and Hugs