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From: v187ef4y@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Patrick J Crowe)
Subject: Re: More Proto-World
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Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 16:59:00 GMT
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In article <hubey.782882530@pegasus.montclair.edu>, hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu
 (H. M. Hubey) writes...
> 
>All joking aside, do you believe that humankind came from a single
>source, say about 100,000-200,000 which is more or less the
>standard belief these days?
> 
>Aside from the above belief (or nonbelief) is there any difference "in
>kind" of what the proto-world, Nostratic, etc schools do that
>is not done by the orthodox/standard schools? Or is the
>difference only one of degree?
> 
>If there is no difference "in kind" but only a "difference of
>degree" are there any statistical measures of how likely such
>apparent cognates are either real cognates or chance occurrences?
> 
>PS. This is not intended to be a question only for you, or for
>Jacques. It's just an open question. 
> 
To the first question, maybe, but maybe it doesn't matter anyway.  If
'language' arose after humans spread out over the world, there is no
Proto-World to reconstruct.

To the second, yes there is a difference between what serious P-W people
do and what gets done "by the orthodox/standard schools".  Standard
comparative work requires that systematic phonemic correspondences be
established.  P-Wers, on the other hand, will usually deal with only one
single lexical item, using forms which look similar in a handfull (or
fewer) languages.

Therefore, the third question is irrelevant.

-Pat Crowe, SUNY at Buffalo
