bones and flesh

[George Thompson]

In a message dated 12/8/99 10:39:44 PM Eastern Standard Time, kekai at JPS.NET
writes:

>
>  The "old masters" in my view were a highly biased bunch of folk who had,
>  to put it mildly, ulterior motives.

First of all, I can't imagine at all what dark motives might have driven
Saussure to posit the existence of such a harmless set of things as sonant
coefficients.  But the important point is that his methodology worked,
regardless of his motives.  He recognized the necessity for the existence of
a set of phonemes in PIE. Confirmation of the real world existence of these
phonemes in a real world language, Hittite, came only after Saussure's death.
 It was a remarkable achievement, don't you think?

>
>  Besides, Hubey makes sense to me mathematically while the
>  pseudo-linguistics of reconstruction does not.

I have watched Mark Hubey demonstrate on a number of scholarly lists that he
does not know the languages that he discusses so vehemently, nor does he know
linguistics.  How can you distrust the reconstructions of a Saussure, who at
least knew the languages he worked with, while trusting in Hubey's
mathematics?  I can sympathize with your distrust of speculative
reconstructions, but who is being more *speculative* here, Saussure or Hubey?

Since the motives of Indologists are tainted in your eyes, I will not
recommend the handbook on historical linguistics written by H.H. Hock.
Instead, I'll recommeend one written by a person who has no interest in
Indology whatsoever, and who also happens to be very good and very clear.
See R. L. Trask's *Historical Linguistics* [1996]. Of course, you should know
that Trask is familiar with Hubey's linguistics, and has persuasively
disposed of it on other scholarly lists.

On the other hand, perhaps you can recommend something to the list that sets
forth the principles that you work with in your comparisons of Munda,
Dravidian, and Indo-Aryan.

In any case, if we cannot find some common ground from which to begin our
discussions, they will continue to be fruitless.

Best wishes,

George Thompson
>