Hallo!

On Wed, 9 Dec 2009 17:43:54 +0000, David McCann wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 23:25 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> 
> > > Actually a lot do:
> > > -i plural in IE (demonstratives), Uralic, Chukotian (pronouns)
> > > -k diminutives in IE, Uralic, Altaic
> > > -m 1st person
> > > -n genitive in IE (pronoun), Uralic and Altaic (nouns and pronouns)
> > > -s plural in IE and Mongolian
> > > -s desiderative/future in IE and Altaic
> > 
> > At least some of them are likely to be valid.  But the problem is that
> > we are dealing with short morphemes, which incurs the possibility of
> > chance resemblances.
> 
> I think you have a rather hazy idea of "chance". Let us assume that the
> average language has 25 consonants and 5 vowels. The number of languages
> where /dog/ means "dog" should be about 6000/(5*25^2) = 2, which is what
> we get. The number of languages with both -m 1st person and -t 2nd
> person should be about 6000/(25^2) = 10, out by two orders of magnitude.

I know how chances work.  And indeed, while a match in one morpheme can
be written off as chance, that no longer works if half a dozen morphemes
match - and that's why I find it hard to believe that Indo-European and
Uralic should *not* be related.  You need not convince me.

> I think I shall stop here. It's not really glossopeia, and neither of us
> stands a snowball's chance in hell of convincing the other.

Yes.  Let's end this fruitless debate here.

> > > The "splitters" in this case treat everything as unrelated until
> > > conclusively proven otherwise. I'd say this is rooted in a 19th-century
> > > concept of multi-linear human evolution.
> > 
> > Which is now championed primarily by racists and nationalists.  Most
> > scientists in the field now consider multiregionalism disproven.
> 
> I thought I'd implied that it was false. It was always dubious in the
> light of genetics: convergent evolution results in converging phenotypes
> but diverging genotypes.

Exactly.  The genetic evidence clearly rules out multiregionalism.
Enough said about that; it's the same as with luminiferous aether,
except that the latter has less potential of ideological abuse.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
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