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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Proto-????
In-Reply-To: smryan@netcom.com's message of Mon, 9 Jan 1995 14:42:54 GMT
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Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 20:19:52 GMT
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In article <smryanD257JI.9Iv@netcom.com> smryan@netcom.com (Player) writes:

>Have Proto-whatever been developed for other families besides IE?

Certainly.  Proto-Semitic, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Miwok,
Proto-Kartvelian...

I assume that this question arose out of the habit, common among those who are
not familiar with the field from within, of slamming Indo-Europeanists for
their supposed reluctance to examine external relationships, and concomitant
claims about other families therefore being ignored.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
