*Leo Connolly

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

Leo Connolly makes an analogy here between language and human descent that is
worth considering:

In a message dated 7/20/01 6:26:10 AM, connolly at memphis.edu writes:

<< My biological child is by nature always my child, even if I leave all the
nurturing to other people.  While a nanny or day-care person may nurture him,
that is influence, not descent.  So too with language, and I'm as amazed as
David White that anyone should confuse the two. >>

BUT, unless something special has gone on here, your biological child is NOT
ONLY your child.  It's also someone else's.  And the relationship of that
someone else has nothing to do with "influence" or "nuture."

How could we forget the OTHER parent - especially a mother - in this analogy?
 And if the analogy holds, doesn't that at least bring up consideration of
what it would mean in terms of IE reconstruction.  (Unless we're going back
to those early cultures where - according to Robert Graves - the women of the
tribe could deny the connection between sexual relations and pregnancy.)

Take that child you mentioned and eleven of it's siblings.  Do up comparative
tables of gender, eye color, hair color, right or left-handedness, etc.

Now, RECONSTRUCT THE SINGLE "PARENT" of those kids.  Unless something special
happened - that reconstruction will not be Leo Connolly.  Though it may be
*Leo Connolly.

In fact, it will be some blending of two parents melded into one.

This is the problem - plain and simple - with Larry Trask's claim that the
comparative method cannot reconstruct a language that did not exist.  Because
it can - under these circumstances - create a single-parent *Leo Connolly
that does not exist.

Of course, one can irradicate the existence of this problem by denying the
genetic contribution of a mother.  We can call that "influence," because dad
contributed finite verbal morphology and finite verbal morphology wins when
it comes to establishing "true" genetic descent.  Looking back at Dr. White's
posts, that is pretty clearly the position he took.

So, the question remains - stronger than ever given the analogy.  Why are
some systematic correspondences denied the status of being "genetic" for no
other reason than the assumption that there can only be one parent?

Regards,
Steve Long