The UPenn IE Tree (Celtic as PIE)

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On 10 Sep 1999, Steve Long wrote:

>I don't believe the approach behind the Stammbaum can contradict the Celtic =
>PIE assumption.  Not by itself.  You do have to bring in the IE canon to do
>that.  But the existence of the three dorsal obstruents series in PIE is a
>reconstruction.  So why bring it in?  It's not part of the protocol.  Please
>don't give this approach eyes where it's blind.  That will not allow us to see
>what it is really capable of doing.

I finally understand the point you are trying to make, but it is based on a
complete misunderstanding of the purpose and mechanism of the tree presented
here by Mr. Crist.

The entirety of the tree is based on reconstructions as you are using the term
here, to see whether a mechanistic examination of all those reconstructions
could provide insights into relative chronologies of the innovations which
separate the different sub-families of Indo-European, similar to impressionis-
tic trees drawn by Indo-Europeanists after a visual inspection of the data ever
since August Schleicher in the late 1850's.

You appear to want it to be an algorithmic examination of the raw data by a
computer to see whether or not the machine could obtain the same results as 200
years of human study; it was not, nor could it be, given the state of the art
in artificial intelligence (an area to which I devoted several years study).
This explains why Mr. Crist, you, and I have been talking at cross-purposes:
We were answering a question you were not asking, our answers based on knowing
what the tree represented.

								Rich Alderson