Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!portc01.blue.aol.com!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.sgi.com!howland.erols.net!netcom.com!netcom12!alderson
From: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Cognate words among the Altaic languages
In-Reply-To: petrich@netcom.com's message of 30 Sep 1996 21:50:15 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.96Oct1123031@netcom12.netcom.com>
Sender: alderson@netcom12.netcom.com
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
References: <52pfan$436@nyheter.chalmers.se>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 19:30:31 GMT
Lines: 18

In article <52pfan$436@nyheter.chalmers.se> petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
writes:

>"Nostratic" was a term coined by Holger Pedersen, who some decades back noted
>some similarities among several Eurasian language families and proposed a
>super-family he called by that name, using Latin noster "our".

Correction:  The name is derived from _nostras, nostratis_ "(our) countryman"
(which is, yes, a derivative of _noster_, but let's use the derivation that
Pedersen did).

Comment:  "some decades" = "nearly 100 years ago".  The earliest paper in which
I've found mention of Nostratic was published in 1903.
-- 
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_
