Sociological Linguistics

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 1999 12:33 PM

Joat wrote:

> What proto-people spoke like 200,000 years ago is, to coin a phrase,
> irrelevant.  We'll never know.  It's even more irrelevant to Indo-European,
> which was not spoken by slope-browed pre-sapient hominids.

Pat responds:

So you do not believe fully modern man was present 200K BP? You are
definitely in the minority here.

Pat commented:

>> What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
>> been like in the far distant past.

Joat asked:

> -- you have a time machine?

Pat responds:

We do not need a time-machine to reconstruct IE, do we?

Pat commented:

>> As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

Joat answered:

> -- since you're the one attempting a revision of the consensus, YOU prove
> that they aren't lost... if you can.

> So far, all I've seen is _a priori_ assertions.

Pat responds:

Any extant language has traces of the language from which it is derived if
it is not an invention like Klingon or Esperanto.

My website is dedicated to showing that these traces allow us to find the
common elements that constituted the earliest language.

What is an a priori assumption, is to assert that the traces that lead to
this early language have been irretrievably lost whithout offering any
argument against the methodology that is employed on my website.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St.
Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803 and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/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)