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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: original Nostratic word challenge
In-Reply-To: meus0001@maroon.tc.umn.edu's message of 29 Mar 1995 23:19:47 GMT
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In article <3lcpuj$2cm@epx.cis.umn.edu> meus0001@maroon.tc.umn.edu
(William E Meuse) writes:

>Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom.com) wrote:

>: Hall's Proto-Romance *has* shown some things about Vulgar Latin that accord
>: Certainly, in my opinion, which I believe that I share with the majority of
>: historical linguists, the possibility of reconstruction correlates with the
>: existence of the thing reconstructed.  So I would answer your last question
>: "No."

>The dissimilarity of "Proto-Romance" to actual Latin is an excellent argumant
>showing the fallibility of these proto languages. But "Nostratic", supposedly
>made up from tracing back several of these proto languages, is not only more
>farfetched, but I believe it contains deliberately falsified information. The
>words are eerie sounding, almost like some kind of incantation. Remembering
>that it was concocted by the Soviets as an attempt to provide some "insight"
>into the state of the human race at an earlier evolutionary stage, it's
>interesting they would name it after Noah, whose speech would undoubtedly have
>been more like "Semitic".

I'm not going to take up the challenge, because I am not a Nostraticist.  I
will, however, correct a couple of misunderstandings evident in this first
paragraph.

First, the "fallibility" of proto-languages has been recognized for 50 years or
more by historical linguists:  We, at least, recognize what we can and cannot
reconstruct.

Second, Nostratic was not "concocted by the Soviets."  The first mention of the
idea is in a 1903 paper by Holger Pedersen on Old Turkish runes, in the
_Deutsche Morgenlaendische Gesellschaft_.  The suggestion was taken up most
seriously by A. Cuny, a French linguist, and it had a great deal of influence
on E. Benveniste's theories of PIE root structure.  It was taken up by Illic^-
Svitych in the 1960s, and moved from there to acceptance by a small group (two
or three) of Soviet linguists.  Hardly a Soviet conspiracy.

Third--OK, another one came up--the name is not derived from "Noah" but from
the Latin _nostras, nostratis_ "fellow countryman", and came from Pedersen's
desire to do away with certain racist notions about which languages could or
could not be related to each other.
-- 
Rich Alderson		[Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alderson@netcom.com	 proselytizing comment below --rma]

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