Re: Lepanto


Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Are you competent to distinguish between Ruhlen's good things and his
flaws?

I spoke of your book, which I know (and estimate), whereas I have
not yet looked at Ruhlen.

Have you consulted the literature exposing the inadequacies of his
"methodology"?

He advocates mass comparison, following Greenberg, who considers
the sheer numbers of similar words significant. I myself have not yet
an opinion on Proto-World. My approach in paleo-linguistics is
a different one: I hope that early language left patterns in recent
languages, and try to find them. A single word left feeble traces,
while groups of words would have left more traces, as a single deer
leaves a few traces, while you can hardly oversee the traces left by
a herd of game ...

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