Re: Shall We All Leave At Once?

On 2008-05-29 01:34:39 +0100, "Agamemnon" <agamemnon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:


"Andrew" <thecroft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:200805281812038930-thecroft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2008-05-28 00:55:27 +0100, "Agamemnon" <agamemnon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

That's bollocks - as anyone who actually had any real understanding of this subject would realise. There ARE no "extant accounts of the general unadulterated historical facts" with regard to proto-Indo

General? I said GENUINE.

Sorry, my misquote. The point, though, remains valid.


European or proto-African-Semitic, and certainly not with regard to

Extant Afro-Asiatic/Semitic texts pre-date the very invention of Pro-Indo-European.

Which demonstrates nothing. If there are no extant proto-Indo-European texts you can't demonstrate borrowing except as a matter of judgement and opinion. And it also depends on which opinion you take - views on the period of origin of PIE vary by 6 millennia.


borrowings from the latter to the former. They are all prehistoric and no writings in either of these languages exist. PIE is recoverable only by the exercise of scholarly judgement and opinion.

Yes, PIE is nothing more than speculation and personal opinion whereas Afro-Asiatic/Semitic languages can be traced back to before PIE was even spoken though the just written record alone. If the Hebrew word for Earth is Eretz then it is demand fucking clear that the indo-European equivalent almost certainly derives from the earlier Semitic.

No. That doesn't follow at all. "That word looks a bit like that one" is scarcely scholarship.

It's the same scholarship which created PIE!

No it's not. There's a rather greater degree of sophistication to it that requires looking at patterns in the language rather than simple similarities between isolated words.

Let me give you one illustration of the fallacy you're deploying. Take the word "tattoo". It can mean two things in English - a design on the skin and a military march. One word with identical spelling. Under your logic it would make sense to suggest a single root, wouldn't it?

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