Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Large scale classification of languages
Message-ID: <petrichDCIrBt.BsI@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <806423001snz@meden.demon.co.uk> <DC8IB7.LBE@cup.hp.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 1995 07:55:04 GMT
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Sender: petrich@netcom4.netcom.com

In article <DC8IB7.LBE@cup.hp.com>,
Eric Brunner Contra <brunner@cup.hp.com> wrote:

>Sigh. You wrote "Amerind". So asside from the somewhat trendy suggestion
>that Athabascans are Caucasians, problematic in itself,

	That's part of the Dene-Caucasian or Sino-Caucasian hypothesis, 
according to which Basque, the North Caucasian langs, Sino-Tibetan, and 
Na-Dene are distantly related.

... just what are the
>basis for asserting that Proto-Algonquin is somehow "Amerind", in some
>same (and useful) sense as say, Iroquoian, Ute-Aztecan, etc? 

	This person was asserting no such thing; what you claim makes as 
much sense as to assert that (say) Proto-Germanic or Proto-Slavic is the 
same as Proto-Indo-European (I use IE examples, because IE has been the 
best-studied).
-- 
Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster	Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
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