Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Ruhlen's "On the Origin of Languages": a Review (I)
Message-ID: <petrichDy9z72.G9C@netcom.com>
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References: <4vvkje$guk@news.xs4all.nl> <hubey.843096202@pegasus.montclair.edu> <ALDERSON.96Sep20110222@netcom16.netcom.com> <R.hubey.843267999@pegasus.montclair.edu>
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 06:25:50 GMT
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In article <R.hubey.843267999@pegasus.montclair.edu>,
H. M. Hubey <hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu> wrote:

>Since regularity of speech sound correspondence is not a sufficient
>condition for proving geneticity (whatever it may mean) and that
>it could simply be due to borrowing, then I don't see the whole
>purpose of any comparisons except to show that some languages
>share some words.

	However, one can look for words that are rarely replaced, either 
internally or with borrowings, and there are enough cases of languages 
with long paper trails to enable one to do so.

	One good study was that by Dolgopolsky, translated in _Typology, 
Relationship, and Time_, Kaiser and Shevoroshkin, ed.

	Dolgopolsky found that certain words, like the personal pronouns, 
"two", "tongue", "heart", "name", "water", and "dead" are seldom replaced 
(the list is from memory). I may qualify this by noting that D's 
conclusion about pronouns is true only in the absence of honorific 
considerations; honorific systems create numerous exceptions to this rule.

-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
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