Re: NATLANG:Proto-Pontic

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Bennett" <paul-bennett@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: NATLANG:Proto-Pontic


> On 19 Oct 2003 at 12:18, Roger Mills wrote:
>
> > If you google for "Nostratic" you'll get a mixed bag of pure wacko and
the
> > occasional genuine scholar (mostly Russians).
>
> Yes, there's a wide swath of hackery and quackery among long-range
> reconstructionists. There is serious scholarly work going on, as
> well, it's just usually very well hidden. I used to be a member of
> two email lists, one on PIE and the other on Nostratic, that seemed
> to be populated largely by the serious, scholarly types, and indeed
> included at least one member of Conlang-l among their number.
>
> In the Nostratic list, one interesting reconstruction that I recall
> was of verbal personal inflection in Uralic (or Ural-Altaic?) and
> Eskimo-Aleut. That was around the time I left that list, so I don't
> know how much further research in that area has progressed.

Well, I know both PIE and Proto-Uralic have accusative -m.  That's an
interesting coincidence.  I would say that they are probably related, though
reconstructing a proto-language is out of the question.

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