Re: Shofar--Dravidian?

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 09/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:00:37 GMT

Jacques Guy wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >
> > Jacques Guy wrote:
> > > There might be fine articles there, but I am no expert in
> > > any of those languages (show me one expert in all 50 or so languages
>
> > Then how could you have possibly been a suitable reviewer?
>
> Faut pas faire l'âne pour avoir du son. Bon, ça fait rien,
> je vais comme si ici on était à la maternelle. You'd need to
> have each chapter reviewed by one or two experts in the field.

You'd need to have a few chapters reviewed by someone familiar with
their content. Since almost everything in the book is either Semitic or
Indo-European (which was certainly a disappointment when I finally had a
glance at the book -- apparently the arbitrary limit was set at 500 CE
to avoid dealing with Japanese, Korean, and Mayan), either a Semitist or
an Indo-Europeanist would have been appropriate. There are even people
who are good at both.

> Try that for size. Next, pick one. Say (I just opened the book
> at random) on Ancient North Arabian. So what sort of an opinion
> is he going to form on (open at random again) Sanskrit? on
> Avestan? On Phoenician? on Urartian? On Gothic? On Sabellian
> languages? On Epi-Olmec? On Old Tamil? On Classical Armenian?
> On Ugaritic? Enough random samples. Well, come to think of

Since this would be the very first coherent (one hopes) grammatical
treatment of the Ancient North Arabian corpus, one might have very high
hopes for it. And anyone who could evaluate it could also evaluate the
chapters on Phoenician and Ugaritic.

Mutatis mutandis for Sanskrit, Avestan, Gothic, and Armenian.

> it, I could have had a closer look at the Chinese
> chapter. So what? You want to know? Well, try and figure
> out Wenyan out of pinyin without any tones marked. No

You have no idea how difficult it is to get Sinologists to put the tone
markings into their pinyin. Neither Boltz nor Mair saw any need for them
in their WWS chapters, but Bill persisted. Evidently Woodard wasn't
clever, or insistent, enough to get it done.

> characters at all either! Now, hey, how's this: "Yao yi tianxia
> yu Shun" and this: "yi zhi yi yang". If the author did
> not want to write his Chinese examples properly, at least
> he could have used reconstructed Middle Chinese. Why,
> even modern Cantonese. But using Putonghua written _without_
> tones? Se fout du monde ou quoi? Might as well have
> the examples in the chapter on Akkadian all in undotted
> modern Moroccan Arabic (yeah, Moroccan Arabic, I know what
> I'm writing).

No, Cambridge's typesetter probably didn't have undotted modern Moroccan
Arabic type available.

> But back to this "you're no expert" business.
>
> To realize that the chapter entitled Epi-Olmec
> is utter humbug the last thing you need is being an
> expert on Olmec. To realize that the chapter on Sumerian
> is a mess, you only need to try to read and understand it.
> Just like to realize that Fischer's decipherment of the Phaistos
> Disk is complete bunkum you need only know either a little
> Greek or a little cryptology. Comme on dit chez nous, une tête
> bien faite vaut mieux qu'une tête bien pleine.

A discussion of the first and last chapters is not adequate as an
evaluation of the other 48.

> > > Too bad if a couple of bad
> > > apples spoil the rest.
>
> > Too bad if the taster doesn't taste all the apples! Outcome: a dead
> > king.

Hm. It looks like I'm well on the way to a review of the book after
nothing but a glance in the bookstore and what you've said about it.

> You are just trolling. When given a 1600-word limit you don't
> review an 1100-page book treating some 50 languages by
> writing 30 words about each. Actually.... there is another
> way: a zero-word review. I got another book to review,
> with a 1600-word limit too. I read it, and wrote back
> "This is not worth your attention. Spend the space on something
> interesting instead". Shortest review I have written so far:
> 0 words. It was accepted, too.

Did you return the book? and the £100 fee? 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net
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