Re: CHAT: proto-language

   Date:         Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:57:27 PST
   From: Danny Wier <dawier@...>

   Here's the website for anyone who might be curious:

   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803

   The basis for the language is that words can be traced back to ninety CV
   monosyllables (thirty consonants and three vowels.

Short summary: Pat Ryan is a kook of the first water. He has been
polluting Usenet and various mailing lists with incessant propaganda
for at least 10 years, always remaining utterly impervious to all
reasoned arguments (of which there have been many) against his ideas.

He `reconstructs' forms in his Proto-Language by banging up to five of
his monosyllables together, makes an intuitive leap from a combination
of their vague senses to a specific meaning, and then `derives' words
in various attested and reconstructed languages by removing random
parts of the string and doing impressionistic derivations to get
dictionary forms from the remainder.

But, of course, the problem with Mr. Ryan is that he insists that his
fevered fantasies are built on sound scientific work. He would have a
nice conlang if he was a bit more systematic in constructing words
from his basic syllables and stopped pretending that it had any basis
in reality.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)