Ural-Altaicist (fuit That's *so* MULAN!!)

>    John Cowan <cowan@...> Subject:      Re: That's *so*
>    MULAN!! To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>
>   On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Leo Caesius wrote:
>
>   >     While I'm not a Ural-Altaicist (where have all the good Ural-
>   Altaicists > gone?  Have they all unsubscribed?)
>
>   Gone to flowers, every one....When will they ever learn?
>
>   (Or do you just mean Altaicists?  The notion that the Uralic and Altaic
>   languages are *specially* related, as opposed to through some macro-
>   phylum, is pretty well exploded these days.)
While I be far from denying the probable veracity of this statement, do you
have any particlar reference?

I wouldn't call my own brain-child Boreasiatic
(PIE-Uralic-Altaic-Japanese?-Korean?) a macro-phylum a-la Greenberg, but
has anybody in a position suggested anything like that?  In  spite of
obvious nexions the even more obvious Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis explodes
an attempt to include Drav into Boreas, but as any reader of

      Author: Dixon, Robert Malcolm Ward
       Title: The rise and fall of languages
Publication: Cambridge, 1997
    Material: 169 s.

knows reality can be way more complicated (yet more interesting and
absolutely more plausible) than anything in the long-rangers wildest
fantasies...

If the facts don't fit the theories, it's not the facts that need changing.



/BP 8^)>
--
  B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se mailto:melrochX@mail.com (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                    -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)