Re: NATLANG:Proto-Pontic
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, October 19, 2003, 19:09 |
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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.
Somewhere on my HDD, I've got a document I made which started as a
family tree of PIE, and spread to become something of a family tree
of Nostratic and other families. I'll dig it out if there's any
interest.
Paul
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