Re: languages of pre-I.E. Europe and onwards

On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:54:32 +0000, David McCann <david@...>
wrote:

>Etruscan is spoken in Europe. All other European languages are either
>Nostratic or Dene-Caucasian (that should be good for a few more
>comments :-). The odds are that Etruscan is going to be one or the
>other. The one thing we certainly know is that it won't be Khoisan.
Er, is isolatehood out of the question a priori, then?  (Put otherwise,
Etruscan perhaps being related to Denenostrocaucasiatic but at some time
depth like forty thousand years where we can't expect a scrap of
recognisable evidence to survive?)

>Also remember cumulative probability. If the odds against a language
>having m- for "I" are 25:1, and the odds against -k for "and" are 25:1,
>the odds against both are getting a bit steep.
Not if there're fifty pairs of forms you might've chosen, from which you
picked out the two best matches.

Alex

Reply