NW Coast disputes summary
Yuri Kuchinsky
Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
clarifying my position sufficiently. I'm afraid he still betrays basic
misunderstandings of what this debate is all about. He probably missed the
long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
already extended over a few months.
Cheers,
Yuri.
==========================
SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
==========================
PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
supposed to be impassable.
The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks especially
weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
relevant" somehow...
Greg is a Scholar. Yuri is not a Scholar. He's a scholar. And here lies a
major cause of misunderstandings.
So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area. Heresy!
Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
that there's a DIVIDE there!
PART 2: AMERICAN INDIANS IN HAWAII
Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America. America was a
major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
anthropological connection there. The only logical conclusion, also
supported by genetic evidence among other things: some American Indians
from NW Coast came to Hawaii perhaps 1800 bp, and influenced the
Polynesian civilisation. If logs can do it, the Indians could do it too.
Occupation time-depth argues strongly against the reverse movement.
Psychic Connections are excluded if possible.
PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
"know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
sometimes), or
b) something even more weird is going on (a canoe-load of deaf-mute
settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
about anything!?! What cheek!
So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
We're having fun, folks!
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
Paul Edson
summarize what the standard method is for proving a connection between two
geographically distant languages? Knowing what the accepted methodology is
would help this newbie evaluate the arguments a bit more finely.
Thanks,
Paul Edson.
Eva Kifri
>
> Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
> various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
> clarifying my position sufficiently. I'm afraid he still betrays basic
> misunderstandings of what this debate is all about. He probably missed the
> long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
> kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
>
> So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
> already extended over a few months.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Yuri.
>
Yuri, a number of people (Greg, Tony, Ross and others) have patiently
explained to you basic linguistics, the logical implications of your claims
and more. You have been remarkable in your ability to ignore other people's
statements. You have failed, to date, to read even one sentence objectively
that was written by anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with you.
> ==========================
>
> SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
>
> ==========================
>
>
> PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
>
> Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
> that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
> Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
> supposed to be impassable.
Baloney. For more than 100 years people have been trying to link american
languages
with altaic, sanscrit, Indo-European, Turkic, Tungus, Polynesian, Oceanic,
Japanese,
Uralic, Mongol, Turkish, Chinese, Tibetan,Tokharian, Italo-Celtic but none of
these
proposals has persuasive linguistic evidence to back it up.
However, there are 2 dialects of Yupik (eskimo) spoken in Siberia.
Some evidence for a chukchi-eskimo connexion.
Several people working on Dene-Caucasian connexions (linking Na-Dene,
Sino-Tibetan
and North Caucasian)
The questions are not being ignored.
Complete references are available if anyone is interested.
> The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks especially
> weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
> marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
> The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
> map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
> from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
> Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
> relevant" somehow...
>
> Greg is a Scholar. Yuri is not a Scholar. He's a scholar. And here lies a
> major cause of misunderstandings.
Baloney.
> So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area. Heresy!
> Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
> that there's a DIVIDE there!
No, it's because the evidence isn't there.
>
> PART 2: AMERICAN INDIANS IN HAWAII
>
> Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
> enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America. America was a
> major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
> out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
> pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
> some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
Again , misrepresenting what others have said. The racist presumptions seem
to be your baggage not anyone else's.
> Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
> Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
> parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
> The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
> anthropological connection there.
The evidence is at best underwhelming.
>The only logical conclusion, also
> supported by genetic evidence among other things: some American Indians
> from NW Coast came to Hawaii perhaps 1800 bp, and influenced the
> Polynesian civilisation. If logs can do it, the Indians could do it too.
> Occupation time-depth argues strongly against the reverse movement.
> Psychic Connections are excluded if possible.
>
>
> PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
>
> Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
> any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
> between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
> Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
> "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
> doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
See above. People have looked. And looked. And are looking. Your parallels
,Hill-Tout's and Campbell's actually, aren't there. The transcriptions that
you
are using are not comparable. Before you can even try to compare you must have
all the words transcribed in the same system. It has been pointed out to you
that
what cambell transcribes as [h] for nw coast is not the same sound represented
by
the austronesian [h]. Garbage In - Garbage Out. If you really want to persuade
anyone, get modern
transcriptions and compare like sounds with like.
Your work is no more compelling than most of the proto-world comparisons.
For an example of how easy it is to create bogus relationships by poking around
int he
dictionaries check out http://www.zompist.com/proto.html where Mark
Rosenfelder
has chinese/Quechua comparisons. He also has a discussion of statistical
likelihood
of chance similarities.
> Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
> close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
>
> a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
> sometimes), or
or a1) the scholars have looked and that something that you so
desperately want just isn't there
>
> b) something even more weird is going on (a canoe-load of deaf-mute
> settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
>
> Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
> investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
> up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
> then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
> imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
> Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
> about anything!?! What cheek!
Because the parallels that you have shown aren't better than random chance.
that's why. Even a child can spot the parallels between the oceanic languages
and then between them and other austronesian languages. You need you NW coast
languages to fall in between these groups and they just don't. You are picking
and
choosing words from any language you can find. By this means I am sure that we
can demonstrate an equally close
connnexion between dutch and canonese. If we are allowed to take any scrap from
any indo-european
languagge to compare with any scrap from any sino-tibetan language I am sure
that
good parallels can be found- and when lacking we'll just postulate a dialect
(which
may no longer exist- but it could've 2000 years ago-right?) showing
the required agreements.
> So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
>
> 1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
> 2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
So you have changed your hypothesis now to "some linguistic contact"?
That's quite different from the earlier version in which austronesian speakers
left the
austronesian homeland (ne asia according to you) for the nw coast, left some
speakers there
and headed into polynesia via Hawaii.
> The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
> still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
Greg, and Ross, And Tony have grasped the logic just fine. It's you who seem to
have trouble
with the linguistic implications of your own -or should I say Heyerdahl's own-
hypothesis.
-eva
> We're having fun, folks!
>
> Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
>
> But scientists, who ought to know
> Assure us that it must be so.
> Oh, let us never, never doubt
> What nobody is sure about.
> -- Hilaire Belloc
> -- end of forwarded message --
From e...@idiom.com Fri Feb 19 13:50:05 1999
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Yuri wrote:
>
> Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
> various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
> clarifying my position sufficiently. I'm afraid he still betrays basic
> misunderstandings of what this debate is all about. He probably missed the
> long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
> kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
>
> So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
> already extended over a few months.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Yuri.
>
Yuri, a number of people (Greg, Tony, Ross and others) have patiently
explained to you basic linguistics, the logical implications of your claims
and more. You have been remarkable in your ability to ignore other people's
statements. You have failed, to date, to read even one sentence objectively
that was written by anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with you.
> ==========================
>
> SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
>
> ==========================
>
>
> PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
>
> Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
> that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
> Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
> supposed to be impassable.
Baloney. For more than 100 years people have been trying to link american
languages with altaic, sanscrit, Indo-European, Turkic, Tungus, Polynesian,
Oceanic, Japanese,Uralic, Mongol, Turkish, Chinese, Tibetan,Tokharian,
Italo-Celtic but none of these proposals has persuasive linguistic
evidence to back it up.
However, there are 2 dialects of Yupik (eskimo) spoken in Siberia.
Some evidence for a chukchi-eskimo connexion.
Several people working on Dene-Caucasian connexions (linking Na-Dene,
Sino-Tibetan and North Caucasian)
The questions are not being ignored.
Complete references are available if anyone is interested.
> The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks especially
> weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
> marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
> The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
> map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
> from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
> Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
> relevant" somehow...
>
> Greg is a Scholar. Yuri is not a Scholar. He's a scholar. And here lies a
> major cause of misunderstandings.
Baloney.
> So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area. Heresy!
> Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
> that there's a DIVIDE there!
No, it's because the evidence isn't there.
>
> PART 2: AMERICAN INDIANS IN HAWAII
>
> Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
> enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America. America was a
> major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
> out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
> pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
> some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
Again , misrepresenting what others have said. The racist presumptions seem
to be your baggage not anyone else's.
> Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
> Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
> parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
> The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
> anthropological connection there.
The evidence is at best underwhelming.
>The only logical conclusion, also
> supported by genetic evidence among other things: some American Indians
> from NW Coast came to Hawaii perhaps 1800 bp, and influenced the
> Polynesian civilisation. If logs can do it, the Indians could do it too.
> Occupation time-depth argues strongly against the reverse movement.
> Psychic Connections are excluded if possible.
>
>
> PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
>
> Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
> any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
> between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
> Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
> "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
> doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
See above. People have looked. And looked. And are looking. Your parallels
,Hill-Tout's and Campbell's actually, aren't there. The transcriptions that
you
are using are not comparable. Before you can even try to compare you must
have all the words transcribed in the same system. It has been pointed out to
you that what cambell transcribes as [h] for nw coast is not the same sound
represented by the austronesian [h]. Garbage In - Garbage Out.
If you really want to persuade anyone, get modern
transcriptions and compare like sounds with like.
Your work is no more compelling than most of the proto-world comparisons.
For an example of how easy it is to create bogus relationships by poking around
int he
dictionaries check out http://www.zompist.com/proto.html where Mark
Rosenfelder
has chinese/Quechua comparisons. He also has a discussion of statistical
likelihood
of chance similarities.
> Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
> close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
>
> a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
> sometimes), or
or a1) the scholars have looked and that something that you so
desperately want just isn't there
>
> b) something even more weird is going on (a canoe-load of deaf-mute
> settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
>
> Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
> investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
> up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
> then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
> imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
> Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
> about anything!?! What cheek!
Because the parallels that you have shown aren't better than random chance.
that's why. Even a child can spot the parallels between the oceanic languages
and then between them and other austronesian languages. You need you NW coast
languages to fall in between these groups and they just don't. You are picking
and
choosing words from any language you can find. By this means I am sure that we
can demonstrate an equally close connnexion between dutch and canonese.
If we are allowed to take any scrap from any indo-european
languagge to compare with any scrap from any sino-tibetan language I am sure
that
good parallels can be found- and when lacking we'll just postulate a dialect
(which
may no longer exist- but it could've 2000 years ago-right?) showing
the required agreements.
> So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
>
> 1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
> 2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
So you have changed your hypothesis now to "some linguistic contact"?
That's quite different from the earlier version in which austronesian speakers
left the
austronesian homeland (ne asia according to you) for the nw coast, left some
speakers there and headed into polynesia via Hawaii.
> The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
> still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
Greg, and Ross, And Tony have grasped the logic just fine. It's you who seem to
have trouble
with the linguistic implications of your own -or should I say Heyerdahl's own-
hypothesis.
-eva
Harlan Messinger
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7akedl$a5$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
>
>PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
>
>Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
>that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
>Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
>supposed to be impassable.
>
>weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
>marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
>The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
>map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
>from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
>Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
>relevant" somehow...
Nobody believes there to be any genetic relationship between Spanish and
Basque. This is because there is no evidence of genetic commonality between
the two languages. Do you believe this implies racism on the part of those
who deny a Spanish-Basque connection? Do you believe that those who deny a
connection between Spanish and Basque also deny that there was contact
between the ancestors of the speakers of the two languages, that somehow
they could have surmounted the geographical barriers between them?
The motives you attribute to people for not agreeing with you are beyond
wild.
Doug Weller
yu...@globalserve.net said...
>
> Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
> enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America. America was a
> major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
> out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
> pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
> some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
>
>
the pottery got there (Thanks Eva!). I have very clearly said I DO NOT KNOW
how/when it got
there, and don't believe there is enough evidence to be certain. This upsets
Yuri so much he has to lie about my position. He's made the claim before,
I've repeated what I've just said, and yet here it is again. You have to give
it to him, he certainly has no shame!
I expect the rest of Yuri's post is as accurate, or rather inaccurate.
Anyone have any idea why Yuri continually refers to himself in the 3rd person?
Doug
--
Doug Weller Moderator, sci.archaeology.moderated
Submissions to: sci-archaeol...@medieval.org
Doug's Archaeology Page: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
Brian M. Scott
> So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
> already extended over a few months.
If you'd really wanted brevity, you could have removed the lies, straw
men, and rhetorical effects. The result (if you'd kept the same
organization and titles) would have been something like this:
> SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
> PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
Yuri recognizes that travel between Siberia and North America has been
possible for a very long time and says that there may be language
connections in that area.
> PART 2: AMERICAN INDIANS IN HAWAII
Yuri believes that some American Indians from the NW Coast came to
Hawai'i around 1800 years ago and influenced Polynesian civilization.
He adduces evidence from Goldman (cultural connections) and Badner
(artistic parallels). Occupation time-depth argues strongly against the
reverse movement.
> PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
Yuri believes that he's found linguistic parallels between NW Coast
languages and Polynesian languages and offers two provisional
hypotheses:
> 1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
> 2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
<end edited summary>
See how it's done, Yuri? Everything else was sound effects and
posturing. Now for a few brief comments.
Part 1: The possibility of linguistic relationships between N. Amer. and
Asian languages is old news; it has its adherents in the linguistic
community, and people are working on the possibility, but so far as I
can tell the results are as yet fairly meagre.
Part 2: It's been pretty thoroughly demonstrated that the evidence in
Goldman hurts your case more than it helps, and the uselessness (from an
archaeological standpoint) of Badner's discussion has also been made
clear.
Part 3: The linguistic parallels don't hold up under investigation.
Provisional hypothesis 2 isn't a hypothesis, but rather an observation;
moreover, while it may be true for Yuri, this is a consequence of his
linguistic innocence. The first provisional hypothesis is
scientifically useless: one can with equal justification say that there
may be connections between Basque and Dyirbal. Until some possible
connections are actually found, it's just wishful thinking.
If you wanted to do something useful to advance the discussion, you
should have given us a clear statement of your current hypothesis. It's
perfectly acceptable for it to have some blanks, but it needs to have
enough meat to give it some real consequences.
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
> Is it true that the Basque, Welsh and Cornish (Cornwall - extreme SW UK)
> languages are 'unconnected' to any others?
No relationship between Basque and any other documented language has
withstood scrutiny, and there have been lots of attempts. Welsh and
Cornish are closely related to Breton and a little more distantly to the
Gaelics (Irish, Scottish, Manx) among living languages; they are all
members of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages,
as was Gaulish. Since these languages are Indo-European, they are also
related (albeit more distantly) to (among others) the Germanic, Romance,
and Slavic languages, Lithuanian, Greek, Sanskrit (and many modern
languages of India), Persian, Armenian, and the extinct Tocharian and
Hittite languages.
Brian M. Scott
tkavanag
<snip>
> The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine
Way to go, Yuri, Saki to 'um.
tk
Anthony West
Doug Weller wrote in message ...
>In article <7akedl$a5$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 19 Feb 1999 19:35:16
GMT,
>yu...@globalserve.net said...
>>
>Anyone have any idea why Yuri continually refers to himself in the 3rd
person?
>
I can come pretty close, I think.
Yuri has retreated to a fantasy world in which he is a great scholar. It's
what Usenet does for him. In his fantasies, people talk about him in the 3rd
person, the way illustrious scholars are talked about, as citations and
subjects of study in themselves. The trouble is, Yuri is not a scholar --
not because it's not his job title, but because his mind is too chaotic. So
no one will ever talk about him that way. Except himself.
When we see a fellow on a bus with a wild glare in his eyes, cursing
fiercely at people who aren't there, or even at innocent strangers who are
there, smiling perhaps at him and offering to help him, we understand there
is a problem. He is talking to himself.
In this case, a NG is the bus. So Yuri is posting to himself. As he says,
"We're having fun, folks!" But it is the only fun he is capable of having
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Henry Polard
>
> any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
> between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
> Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
> "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
> doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
>
> close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
>
> a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
> sometimes), or
>
> settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
>
> Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
> investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
> up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
> then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
> imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
> Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
> about anything!?! What cheek!
By "investigate" does Yuri mean that he did original fieldwork, like a
true scientist, with native speakers of Pacific Northwest Languages and
Hawaiian, that showed that the "Standard Reference Books" were worthless?
Bravo! Please, Yuri, tell us about Yuri's original fieldwork! Prove that
merely looking in Standard Reference Books is bad science, and that Yuri
practices true science.
Many of Yuri's opponents will no doubt disparage Yuri's efforts by saying
that he is merely doing library research in what he erroneously call the
true reference books (which, of course, are idiotically rejected by the
Capital-S Scholars). Yuri, please prove them wrong and show that the real
world, as shown by data from actual speakers of actual languages as Yuri
has recorded them with an accuracy that is beyond that of the Standard
Reference Books, confirms that indeed, as Yuri posted:
"1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia."
without the weaseling "may" and "seemed," which I find troubling as they
are unworthy of Yuri.
As a defender of science, surely Yuri must do no less.
Regards,
--
Henry Polard || My dictionary puts the cart before the horse.
Ross Clark
>
[a whole lot of stuff]
Amazing.
Piled up a vast heap of straw men, doused them with abuse from his
modified water cannon, put a match to the lot. Wow. It was spectacular
for a few minutes. But now that the flames have died down....
We know *even less* about Yuri's hypothesis than we did before.
Amazing.
Ross Clark
GKeyes6988
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
>Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
>various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
>clarifying my position sufficiently.
Translation: Greg provided an analysis of Yuri's wavering and elusive
hypothesis which he can't deal with, so he won't. Instead he'll pretend Greg
didn't say anything, and imply that his post had no more content than a simple
character assasination. This is untrue, but Yuri knows that Truth is more
important than truth.
> I'm afraid he still betrays basic
>misunderstandings of what this debate is all >about.
Translation: Greg and others (mostly others, really) pretty much shot Yuri's
belief that the Polynesian languages came from the NW coast out of the water.
What's worse, it was becoming clearer that Yuri often had no idea what Greg
and others were talking about. Oceanic -- Austronesian -- proto-forms --
cognates -- how confusing!
He probably missed the
>long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
>kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
Translation: So I, Yuri, will pretend that the other junk I cribbed from
Heyerdahl supports the case instead.
>So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
>already extended over a few months.
Translation: So I, Yuri, will ignore the gaping holes blown in my thesis and my
self-demonstrated lack of knowledge and try to salvage some tiny shred of
credibility from all of this.
>Cheers,
>
>Yuri.
>
>==========================
>
>SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
>
>==========================
>
>
>PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
Translation: I, Yuri, believe the following, though it has nothing in
particular to do with Austronesians as my heading implies.
>Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
>that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
>Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
>supposed to be impassable.
Translation: I, Yuri, have known since before I started reading any of this
stuff that there must have been transpacific contact other than what is
recognized. I'm just barely smart enough not to explain the faith-based
reasons for this belief, because I know people would take it the wrong way.
>The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks especially
>weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
>marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
>The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
>map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
>from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
>Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
>relevant" somehow...
I, Yuri, am perfectly aware that various of my crtitics (and numerous in-print
scholars), Greg Keyes included, have often spoken of the likelyhood of
persistent, long term contact along the north Pacific rim. However, in the
pursuit of Truth, it is sometimes neccesary to exagerate for affect, even if
infidels might mistake this for a lie.
>
>Greg is a Scholar. Yuri is not a Scholar. He's a scholar. And here lies a
>major cause of misunderstandings.
Translation: I, Yuri am different from everyone else. I know the Truth, and so
needn't be bothered with little things like learning basic facts about
Austronesian languages when that it what I am arguing about. I, Yuri, recieve
my knowledge only from inspirational sources, and from the vast, infinite
resources of my great BRAIN.
>So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area. Heresy!
>Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
>that there's a DIVIDE there!
Translation: I, Yuri, will repeat my "exagerated" assertion. This makes it
more real in the vast depths of my great BRAIN, and thus makes it more real to
objective reality.
>PART 2: AMERICAN INDIANS IN HAWAII
Translation: I, Yuri, read Heyerdahl and BELIEVED.
>Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
>enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America.
Translation: No one believes me, Yuri, the chosen of Heyerdahl, so they must be
bad to the core. Furthermore I, Yuri, believe that anyone who did not sail
across ocean must not have been very smart. Ipso facto, anyone who doesn't
believe that Native Americans sailed across vast seas believes that Native
American weren't very smart. None of them will say this, but since I know the
first part is true, the second part must be.
P.S. Only ancient Native Americans were very smart. The modern ones are dumb
and evil, as I, Yuri, am proving on another thread. Perhaps this is because
the smart Native Americans were from somewhere else -- like Asia, or the Middle
east, and weren't really Native Americans at all.
America was a
>major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
>out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
>pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
>some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
Translation: I, Yuri, will continue to "exagerate"
>Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
>Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
>parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
>The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
>anthropological connection there.
Translation: I, Yuri, read Heyerdahl, and Believed. I, Yuri, then found some
of Heyerdahl's sources, a few of which "idependently" confirmed what Heyerdahl
said. I, Yuri, saw no contradiction in this. I, Yuri, convinced before, was
now doubly convinced that the Truth I had always held so dear was really True.
The only logical conclusion, also
>supported by genetic evidence among other things: some American Indians
>from NW Coast came to Hawaii perhaps 1800 bp, and influenced the
>Polynesian civilisation. If logs can do it, the Indians could do it too.
>Occupation time-depth argues strongly against the reverse movement.
>Psychic Connections are excluded if possible.
I, Yuri, reveal the Truth, asserting things various and unproven, but Yes!
Proven, because I, Yuri, have accepted them in my heart.
>PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
Translation: I, Yuri, know next to nothing about linguistics or the languages
in question. People who do have the temerity to question Yuri, the chosen of
Heyerdahl. Disgraceful!
>Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
>any of the above.
Translation: The field of linguistics seems to have considered and rejected
these truths I hold self evident a hundred years ago. I, Yuri, know nothing
of linguistics, Austronesian languages, or the languages of Native America, but
I reject all of the work done since that time -- with the exception of those
who cite these sacred texts, non-linguists all.
>They "know for sure" there are no linguistic >connections
Translation: I "know for sure" that there must have been connections, because
Heyerdahl said there were. I know there must be linguistic connections because
there were artistic ones: I know there were artistic connections because there
were linguistic ones! Disputing or even disproving either of these seperatly
means nothing, because asserted together they are indisputable!
>between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
>Standard Reference Books, and they are not there.
I, Yuri, avoided this trap by keeping myself as ignorant as possible. I don't
even know why linguists say what they say, how they work, or pretty much
anything else. I, Yuri, don't want to know. I, Yuri, kept my mind pure for
Heyerdahl, and lo, Heyerdahl remained pure in my mind.
And all Good Scholars
>"know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
>doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
>
>Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
>close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it?
I Yuri, who am not a Scholar but a scholar, noticed that Heyerdahl included a
linguistic argument in his book. I, Yuri, not a Scholar (but desperatly
wanting to be taken for one) now pretend it was MY idea to "test" Heyerdahl's
hypothesis linguistically, because I know He will forgive me. To that end, I,
Yuri, went to Heyerdahl's century-old sources -- and nowhere else, wanting to
remain pure for Heyerdahl -- untouched by the evil scholarships and cunning
linguists of the 20th century -- and proceeded to cite uncritically what I
found there.
> Either
>
>a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
>sometimes), or
>
>b) something even more weird is going on (a canoe-load of deaf-mute
>settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
Translation: I, Yuri, cannot possibly consider the third alternative, which is
that I'm completely wrong, that Heyerdahl took me in, and that Heyerdahl is
wrong -- because I Yuri, have kept myself pure for Heyerdahl, filling myself
only with His good thoughts and His citations, rejecting all others --
especially when I, Yuri, don't understand them.
>Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
>investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
>up.
Translation: I, Yuri, felt it too difficult to do my own work, by perhaps
cracking a few dictionaries, but I want credit as a scholar for reiterating
Heyerdahl's sacred sources, so give it to me, dammit!. I cited these sources,
then proved my purity by demonstrating my utter lack of linguistic knowledge.
>So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the >screeching really begins
>then!
Translation: I, Yuri, was saddened that no one was impressed by my Purity.
They only wanted to discuss the linguistic merits of my arguments. Intolerable!
> Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
>imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
>Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
>about anything!?! What cheek!
Translation: I, Yuri, was apalled by the behaviour of the unclean.. However
much they might know about language, they have not seen the pure and blinding
truth, so cannot understand that the only way to truly understand languages is
to KNOW NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT THEM.
>So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
Translation: I Yuri, offered Heyerdahl's hoary hypothesis.
>1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
>2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
Translation I, Yuri then pretend later -- when it all starts coming apart --
that there were always two provisional hypotheses, because I, Yuri, am SMART.
>The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
>still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
>We're having fun, folks!
I, Yuri, was forced to pretend to abandon wholesale chunks of Heyerdahl's
hypothesized linguistic connection. I, Yuri, also repeatedly embarrased myself
by proving that I knew nothing about linguistics, much less NW coast or
Austronesian linguistics. Greg is to blame for this, and Ross, and Tony, and
Mike, and Brian, and Miguel, and others, so I, Yuri, will pretend my mistakes
were somehow their fault and claim I, Yuri, have been misunderstood. Then
maybe I, Yuri, can duck out of this whole conversation for two or three months,
at which point -- having never substantivly addressed the actual linguistic
objections to my cribbed-from-Heyerdahl thesis -- I,Yuri can triumphantly bring
it back, claiming that it was all "proven" months ago. Meanwhile, my (mine,
Yuri) legions of lurking fans (and those I, Yuri will convert with the
ground-breaking book I, Yuri, am working on) are plotting my ascendence, after
which they will all be sorry!
(end translation)
-- Greg Keyes
mukker
Peter T. Daniels
The easier but less reliable method is to find a number of words in the
languages you're investigating where the sounds show regular
correspondences. For example, for nearly every word in Hebrew with a
/b/, there's an Arabic word with /b/. For nearly every Hebrew word with
a /p/, there's an Arabic word with /f/. But -- for many Hebrew words
with /t/, there's an Arabic word with /t/, but for many other Hebrew
words with /t/, there's an Arabic word with /T/ (i.e. "th"). If we add
in Aramaic, though, we find that for the very same words where Arabic
has /T/ and Hebrew has /t/, Aramaic has /S/ (i.e. "sh"). These are
regular correspondences, repeated across hundreds of words, and they're
found in all the other Semitic languages as well, mutatis mutandis.
What you *don't* find in related languages is /y/ corresponding
sometimes to /k/, and sometimes to /j/, and sometimes to /g/, ..., with
no discoverable explanation for the variation in *each and every* case.
(Sometimes, though, the regular correspondences do turn out to be rather
odd-looking; a standard example is that Armenian /erk-/ corresponds
exactly to /dw-/ in the rest of Indo-European!)
Even better than regular phonological correspondences, though (since
they conceivably *could* be the result of massive borrowing), is "shared
morphological innovation" -- that is, some new paradigm (set of noun or
verb endings, for instance) gets invented [that's a whole nother topic,
these days called "grammaticalization"], and passed on to daughter
languages. Languages that show very similar paradigms are very, very
likely to be related.
And best of all is shared suppletive paradigms (were you watching when I
suggested Yuri look for some of these?). That simply means related
word-sets where different bases have gotten associated with each other.
If we knew nothing of German except that it rendered 'good' and 'better'
as "gut" and "besser", we would be virtually certain that it was related
to English.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Peter T. Daniels
> PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
> Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
> investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
> up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
> then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
> imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
> Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
> about anything!?! What cheek!
I must have missed something -- when did Yuri go and investigate? All
I've seen is some snippets from his Standard Reference Books, those by
Hill-Tout and, recently, Campbell.
(He could at least get some more up-to-date Standard Reference Books.
Maybe if he were to deconstruct the same ones that the Scholars use, the
Scholars would have to concede he had a point.)
GKeyes6988
>languages are 'unconnected' to any others?
Basque looks to be related to a few extinct Iberian languages, and there have
been lots of attempts to connect it elsewhere. Last I looked no one had made a
really good case for what it's affiliations might be, but I'm not really up on
this, and someone else can answer that question better.
Welsh and Cornish are both Celtic languages, related most closely to Breton
(which went to the continent, I think, from Cornwall) , to the extinct Celtic
languages of Gaul and England, than to Manx, Scots Gaelic, and Irish. They
are a branch of the Indo-European languages, and thus more distantly related to
such languages as Latin, English, German, Sanskrit, Russian, Greek, etc. etc.
-- Greg Keyes
Peter T. Daniels
> But -- for many Hebrew words
> with /t/, there's an Arabic word with /t/, but for many other Hebrew
> words with /t/, there's an Arabic word with /T/ (i.e. "th"). If we add
> in Aramaic, though, we find that for the very same words where Arabic
> has /T/ and Hebrew has /t/, Aramaic has /S/ (i.e. "sh").
Damn, I wrote that backwards. Arabic /T/ corresponds to Aramaic /t/ and
Hebrew /S/.
So the first part of the example should be: for many Hebrew words with
/S/, there's an Arabic word with /s/ (shalom ~ salaam), but for many
other Hebrew words with /S/, there's an Arabic word with /T/ (shor ~
thawr).
George Black
Kuchinsky) wrote:
large snip of platitudes
>
>So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
>
>1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
No
>2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
Been well and truely replied to by people with linguistic knowledge. Ain't no
such animal.
>The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
>still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
There he goes. Erecting strawmen.
The 'logic' claimed does not exist. None of the 'proof' stands up to review
here.
What would happen to the whole muddled package were it subject to scrutiny
within the varied fields of expertise ????
Tomorrow is only a day away.
George
GKeyes6988
>
>Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
>
>>Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
>>various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
>>clarifying my position sufficiently.
>>misunderstandings of what this debate is all >about.
>>long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
>>kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
>>already extended over a few months.
>
>>
>>Yuri.
>>
>>==========================
>>
>>SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
>>
>>==========================
>>
>>
>>PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
>>Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
>>that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
>>Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
>>supposed to be impassable.
>>>The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks especially
>>weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
>>marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at all.
>>The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually, the
>>map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous coastline
>>from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
>>Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
>>relevant" somehow...
<snip>
A couple of quick questions.
1. What has the fact that Siberia and Alaska are near one another (and the
granted probability of long-term low-level exchange between the two areas) to
do with the Austronesian languages thousand of miles to the south of this area?
Languages which, I might add, are entirely unattested north of Taiwan?
2. What does the proximity of Siberia and Alsaska have to do with a southward
voyage from the NW coast of America to Hawai'i?
-- Greg Keyes
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
wrote:
>>Is it true that the Basque, Welsh and Cornish (Cornwall - extreme SW UK)
>>languages are 'unconnected' to any others?
>
>Basque looks to be related to a few extinct Iberian languages, and there have
>been lots of attempts to connect it elsewhere. Last I looked no one had made a
>really good case for what it's affiliations might be
The only language Basque is definitely related to is Aquitanian,
known from Roman-period (mostly funerary) inscriptions from SW
France. The inscriptions are actually in Latin, but the
onomastic material proves beyond any doubt that the Aquitanian
language was closely related to modern Basque.
No connection is known to exist between the Iberian language(s)
and Basque. The Iberian inscriptions (mainly from Mediterranean
Spain) show a language which is quite similar to Basque in
phonology and phontactics, but Basque has proved to be of no
value at all in elucidating Iberian grammar or vocabulary, which
remain largely unknown.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
m...@wxs.nl
Amsterdam
Yuri Kuchinsky
> Yuri, a number of people (Greg, Tony, Ross and others) have patiently
> explained to you basic linguistics, the logical implications of your
> claims and more. You have been remarkable in your ability to ignore
> other people's
> statements. You have failed, to date, to read even one sentence
> objectively
> that was written by anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with you.
Thanks for the rant, Eva, but it is quite meaningless.
: In sci.archaeology Yuri Kuchinsky <yu...@globalserve.net> wrote:
> > PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
> >
> > Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting meme
> > that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves the
> > Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans are
> > supposed to be impassable.
> Baloney.
You don't have a clue.
> For more than 100 years people have been trying to link american
> languages with altaic, sanscrit, Indo-European, Turkic, Tungus,
> Polynesian, Oceanic, Japanese, Uralic, Mongol, Turkish, Chinese,
> Tibetan,Tokharian, Italo-Celtic but none of these proposals has
> persuasive linguistic evidence to back it up. However, there are 2
> dialects of Yupik (eskimo) spoken in Siberia. Some evidence for a
> chukchi-eskimo connexion. Several people working on Dene-Caucasian
> connexions (linking Na-Dene, Sino-Tibetan and North Caucasian) The
> questions are not being ignored. Complete references are available if
> anyone is interested.
Well, if things are happening in this area, and people are looking for
connections, then I guess you should be SO HAPPY that I went out and
looked for them in the MOST OBVIOUS PLACE, where for some reason NOBODY
ELSE BOTHERED TO LOOK? So how come you're crying on my shirt then?
> > Greg is a Scholar. Yuri is not a Scholar. He's a scholar. And here lies a
> > major cause of misunderstandings.
> Baloney.
You don't have a clue.
> > So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area. Heresy!
> > Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
> > that there's a DIVIDE there!
> No, it's because the evidence isn't there.
So, you've already looked in the Standard Reference Books, and it's not
there? How nice... I compliment you on your enterprise.
> > Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
> > Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
> > parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
> > The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
> > anthropological connection there.
>
> The evidence is at best underwhelming.
Your objectivity level is at best underwhelming, yes.
> > PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
> >
> > Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
> > any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
> > between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
> > Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
> > "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
> > doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
>
> See above. People have looked. And looked. And are looking.
Not looking hard enough.
> Your parallels ,Hill-Tout's and Campbell's actually, aren't there.
That's because you're biased.
> The transcriptions that you are using are not comparable. Before you
> can even try to compare you must have
Get yourself a clue.
This is truly dumb. So you suggest we throw away the work of pioneering
scholars because their transcriptions are not to your liking? Too dumb...
> all the words transcribed in the same system.
Doh!
> It has been pointed out to you that what cambell transcribes as [h]
> for nw coast is not the same sound represented by the austronesian
> [h].
You're too clued out. Couldn't even get this elementary matter correct?
I've already explained all this to you in a separate post.
> Garbage In - Garbage Out.
Garbage? That's mostly the contents of your head.
> If you really want to persuade anyone,
Not you. I could care less what you think.
> get modern transcriptions and compare like sounds with like. Your work
> is no more compelling than most of the proto-world comparisons. For an
> example of how easy it is to create bogus relationships by poking
> around in the dictionaries check out http://www.zompist.com/proto.html
> where Mark Rosenfelder has chinese/Quechua comparisons. He also has a
> discussion of statistical likelihood of chance similarities.
I don't see any connection there with what I'm doing. Red herring.
> > Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
> > close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
> >
> > a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
> > sometimes), or
> or a1) the scholars have looked and that something that you so
> desperately want just isn't there
So, you've already looked in the Standard Reference Books, and it's not
there? How nice... I compliment you on your enterprise.
> > Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
> > investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
> > up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
> > then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
> > imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
> > Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
> > about anything!?! What cheek!
> Because the parallels that you have shown aren't better than random
> chance.
Only in your dreams.
> that's why. Even a child can spot the parallels between the oceanic
> languages and then between them and other austronesian languages. You
> need you NW coast languages to fall in between these groups and they
> just don't.
I don't need nothing.
> You are picking and choosing words from any language you can find. By
> this means I am sure that we can demonstrate an equally close
> connnexion between dutch and canonese.
> If we are allowed to take any
> scrap from any indo-european languagge to compare with any scrap from
> any sino-tibetan language I am sure that good parallels can be found-
> and when lacking we'll just postulate a dialect (which may no longer
> exist- but it could've 2000 years ago-right?) showing the required
> agreements.
Nice rant, but quite meaningless.
> > So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
> >
> > 1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
> > 2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
> So you have changed your hypothesis now to "some linguistic contact"?
> That's quite different from the earlier version in which austronesian
> speakers left the austronesian homeland (ne asia according to you)
> for the nw coast, left some speakers there and headed into polynesia
> via Hawaii.
It may have happened this way, but there's not enough evidence yet to
conclude this.
> > The result? Everyone agrees that Yuri has three heads, or something. Greg
> > still cannot grasp the simple logic of any of this.
>
> Greg, and Ross, And Tony have grasped the logic just fine. It's you
> who seem to have trouble with the linguistic implications of your own
> -or should I say Heyerdahl's own- hypothesis.
Nice rant, but quite meaningless. Your bias and intolerance are perfectly
clear now. It seems that you're simply incapable of following this
discussion.
Regards,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -O- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku -O- Toronto
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehoods without a
terrible squirming of the horrid little population that dwells under
it -=O=- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Yuri Kuchinsky
: In article <7akedl$a5$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 19 Feb 1999 19:35:16 GMT,
: yu...@globalserve.net said...
: > Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
: > enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America. America was a
: > major People Trap, according to Scholars -- you get in, but you never get
: > out. (For example, Doug Weller knows that there's tons of ancient American
: > pottery on the Galapagos, but he also "knows" that it was the Martians, or
: > some such, who brought it there over the centuries.)
: This is a lie, and not for the first time.
Easy go, Douggie, lest you dig yourself even deeper in the deep hole
you're in already.
: I have never said that I know how
: the pottery got there (Thanks Eva!). I have very clearly said I DO NOT KNOW
: how/when it got
: there, and don't believe there is enough evidence to be certain. This upsets
: Yuri so much he has to lie about my position. He's made the claim before,
: I've repeated what I've just said, and yet here it is again. You have to give
: it to him, he certainly has no shame!
But what is the balance of probabilities, Doug? What is the likeliest
scenario?
You really have no basis for dismissing the strong probability that it was
Native Americans who brought American pottery to Galapagos. Only your
racist preconceptions can account for your refusing to accept the most
probable scenario.
Yours,
Yuri Kuchinsky
: Part 1: The possibility of linguistic relationships between N. Amer. and
: Asian languages is old news; it has its adherents in the linguistic
: community, and people are working on the possibility, but so far as I
: can tell the results are as yet fairly meagre.
Well, my results are quite promising.
: Part 2: It's been pretty thoroughly demonstrated that the evidence in
: Goldman hurts your case more than it helps,
This is absurd. You don't have the slightest clue.
: and the uselessness (from an
: archaeological standpoint) of Badner's discussion has also been made
: clear.
This is just plain wrong.
: Part 3: The linguistic parallels don't hold up under investigation.
False.
: Provisional hypothesis 2 isn't a hypothesis, but rather an observation;
: moreover, while it may be true for Yuri, this is a consequence of his
: linguistic innocence.
False.
: The first provisional hypothesis is
: scientifically useless:
False. It outlines some promising leads for further research.
: one can with equal justification say that there
: may be connections between Basque and Dyirbal.
Red herring.
: Until some possible
: connections are actually found,
They are found!
: it's just wishful thinking.
You're in denial.
: If you wanted to do something useful to advance the discussion, you
: should have given us a clear statement of your current hypothesis. It's
: perfectly acceptable for it to have some blanks,
ROTFL!
I can already see the usual gang of hyenas pissing all over those blanks
and having a lot of fun in their usual perverted ways...
: but it needs to have
: enough meat to give it some real consequences.
I've proposed only what can be defended at this time. In this situation of
extreme hostility and bias, this is the only reasonable course of action.
You have only yourself and your pals to blame that I'm being very careful
in what I propose.
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
Not mine, thank you very much. I repeat I do not have to make a decision
on this one. Insufficient evidence. More work on the site by qualified
archaeologists might convince me.
And your claim that I 'know' it was Martians or whoever is still a lie, no
matter how much you try to weasel out of it.
GKeyes6988
>From: m...@wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
>Date: 2/20/99 5:53 AM EST
>Message-id: <36d19291...@news.wxs.nl>
Thanks, Miguel -- I stand corrected.
-- Greg Keyes
Yuri Kuchinsky
[Yuri:]
: > PART 3, LINGUISTIC SLEUTHS REDUX
: >
: > Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
: > any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic connections
: > between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
: > Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
: > "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference Books
: > doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
: >
: > Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
: > close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it? Either
: >
: > a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
: > sometimes), or
: >
: > b) something even more weird is going on (a canoe-load of deaf-mute
: > settlers from NW Coast arrive to Hawaii?).
: >
: > Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a). So he goes and
: > investigates, and -- lo and behold! -- all kinds of parallels are turning
: > up. So he posts about this to sci.lang, and the screeching really begins
: > then! Sounds like a whole bunch of stuck pigs down there! How dare you to
: > imply that the Scholars could ever miss anything like this, and that the
: > Standard Reference Books don't include everything that there's to know
: > about anything!?! What cheek!
: By "investigate" does Yuri mean that he did original fieldwork, like a
: true scientist, with native speakers of Pacific Northwest Languages and
: Hawaiian, that showed that the "Standard Reference Books" were worthless?
Charles Hill-Tout was the leading scholar of Salish in his own time. So I
feel proud to bring his unique research back to life after 100 years.
: Bravo! Please, Yuri, tell us about Yuri's original fieldwork!
Hill-Tout did more original fieldwork than anyone else in his generation.
Yuri Kuchinsky
> Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
> >Scholars (with capital S) "know" that the American Indians were not smart
> >enough to ever manage to get themselves outside of America.
>
> Translation: No one believes me, Yuri, the chosen of Heyerdahl, so
> they must be bad to the core. Furthermore I, Yuri, believe that
> anyone who did not sail across ocean must not have been very smart.
> Ipso facto, anyone who doesn't believe that Native Americans sailed
> across vast seas believes that Native American weren't very smart.
> None of them will say this, but since I know the first part is true,
> the second part must be.
But Greg, you don't believe that Native Americans were competent mariners,
in spite of massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. Does this make
you a racist? Perhaps not, not as such. But you sure do sound like a
racist. Otherwise, why deny the obvious?
You seem to be saying that denial of Native American technological
competence in this area is somehow not important. But surely this is
special pleading? See more about special pleading below.
...
> >Yuri cited Goldman about close cultural connections between NW Coast and
> >Polynesia. Cited Badner for extremely detailed and close artistic
> >parallels. Most Scholars never heard about any of this, or so it seems.
> >The evidence from many areas is overwhelming: there's a close
> >anthropological connection there.
>
> Translation: I, Yuri, read Heyerdahl, and Believed. I, Yuri, then
> found some of Heyerdahl's sources, a few of which "idependently"
> confirmed what Heyerdahl said. I, Yuri, saw no contradiction in this.
> I, Yuri, convinced before, was now doubly convinced that the Truth I
> had always held so dear was really True.
He is totally clued out, just like I thought...
Greg has misssed the long foreplay to this linguistic debate, and now he's
making a fool of himself. Oh, well...
Greg, I know that, like every Good Scholar, you have pathological hatred
of Thor Heyerdahl. The very mention of the name is liable to bring
palpitations, red spots on your face, and perhaps even terminal apoplexy.
This is dangerous stuff, and this is the reason, being a nice guy that I
am, that I've not mentioned the Name of Infamy even once in my post. But
OTOH you have mentioned Heyerdahl the whopping 21 times in your reply!
Wow! This must be some kind of a record. Talking about obsessive ideas!
Perhaps you're some kind of a masochist that you mentioned the name of
this Demon Heyerdahl so often? It gives you some kind of a cool rash?
Think about your health, Greg, and don't take such risks in the future.
Now, on a serious note, I would like to inform you that neither Badner or
Goldman have ANY CONNECTIONS WHATSOEVER with that Evil Demon. Relax Greg!
They can be put safely as Clean, and untainted by the Satanic Heyerdahlian
contagion. So get yourself clued in in a hurry. Use dejanews to catch up
on the discussion.
[snip much more repetitive blather]
And here's that file about Special Pleading. Enjoy.
Yuri.
http://ftp.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html
Fallacy: Special Pleading
_________________________________________________________________
Description of Special Pleading
Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards,
principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she
has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate
justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the
following form:
1. Person A accepts standard(s) S and applies them to others in
circumtance(s) C.
2. Person A is in circumstance(s) C.
3. Therefore A is exempt from S.
The person committing Special Pleading is claiming that he is exempt
from certain principles or standards yet he provides no good reason
for his exemption. That this sort of reasoning is fallacious is shown
by the following extreme example:
1. Barbara accepts that all murderers should be punished for their
crimes.
2. Although she murdered Bill, Barbara claims she is an exception
because she really would not like going to prison.
3. Therefore, the standard of punishing murderers should not be
applied to her.
This is obviously a blatant case of special pleading. Since no one
likes going to prison, this cannot justify the claim that Barbara
alone should be exempt from punishment.
From a philosophic standpoint, the fallacy of Special Pleading is
violating a well accepted principle, namely the Principle of Relevant
Difference. According to this principle, two people can be treated
differently if and only if there is a relevant difference between
them. This principle is a reasonable one. After all, it would not be
particularly rational to treat two people differently when there is no
relevant difference between them. As an extreme case, it would be very
odd for a parent to insist on making one child wear size 5 shoes and
the other wear size 7 shoes when the children are both size 5.
It should be noted that the Principle of Relevant Difference does
allow people to be treated differently. For example, if one employee
was a slacker and the other was a very prodictive worker the boss
would be justified in giving only the productive worker a raise. This
is because the productive of each is a relevant difference between
them. Since it can be reasonable to treat people differently, there
will be cases in which some people will be exempt from the usual
standards. For example, if it is Bill's turn to cook dinner and Bill
is very ill, it would not be a case of Special Pleading if Bill asked
to be excused from making dinner (this, of course, assumes that Bill
does not accept a standard that requires people to cook dinner
regardless of the circumstances). In this case Bill is offering a good
reason as to why he should be exempt and, most importantly, it would
be a good reason for anyone who was ill and not just Bill.
While determing what counts as a legitimate basis for exemption can be
a difficult task, it seems clear that claiming you are exempt because
you are you does not provide such a legitimate basis. Thus, unless a
clear and relevant justification for exemption can be presented, a
person cannot claim to be exempt.
There are cases which are similar to instances of Special Pleading in
which a person is offering at least some reason why he should be
exempt but the reason is not good enough to warrant the exemption.
This could be called "Failed Pleading." For example, a professor may
claim to be exempt from helping the rest of the faculty move books to
the new department office because it would be beneath his dignity.
However, this is not a particularly good reason and would hardly
justify his exemption. If it turns out that the real "reason" a person
is claiming exemption is that they simply take themselves to be
exempt, then they would be committing Special Pleading. Such cases
will be fairly common. After all, it is fairly rare for adults to
simply claim they are exempt without at least some pretense of
justifying the exemption.
Examples of Special Pleading
1. Bill and Jill are married. Both Bill and Jill have put in a full
day at the office. Their dog, Rover, has knocked over all the
plants in one room and has strewn the dirt all over the carpet.
When they return, Bill tells Jill that it is her job to clean up
after the dog. When she protests, he says that he has put in a
full day at the office and is too tired to clean up after the dog.
2. Jane and Sue share a dorm room.
Jane: "Turn of that stupid stereo, I want to take a nap."
Sue: "Why should I? What are you exhausted or something?"
Jane: "No, I just feel like taking a nap."
Sue: "Well, I feel like playing my stereo."
Jane: "Well, I'm taking my nap. You have to turn your stereo off
and that's final."
3. Mike and Barbara share an apartment.
Mike: "Barbara, you've tracked in mud again."
Barbara: "So? It's not my fault."
Mike: "Sure. I suppose it walked in on its own. You made the mess,
so you clean it up."
Barbara: "Why?"
Mike: "We agreed that whoever makes a mess has to clean it up.
That is fair."
Barbara: "Well, I'm going to watch TV. If you don't like the mud,
then you clean it up."
Mike: "Barbara..."
Barbara: "What? I want to watch the show. I don't want to clean up
the mud. Like I said, if it bothers you that much, then you should
clean it up."
_________________________________________________________________
Yuri Kuchinsky -=- Toronto -=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
Oh, what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to believe
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
>
>
> http://ftp.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html
>
>
Nice to see I managed to get you to acknowledge the author of
your last post, even if you couldn't bring yourself to do it
directly. Good people at Nizkor. PC I'm sure. You wouldn't like them.
But as always, you see the mote in other people's eyes but not the beam in
yours. As it says:
Special Pleading is a fallacy in which a person applies standards,
principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she
has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate
justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the
following form:
This is most obvious in the way you deplore name-calling and then in the next
breath call people names.
But it is also a thread that runs through all your posts. Others wouldacoulda,
you explore possibilities and the balance of probability. Etc.
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7amol2$m5m$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
>Eva Kifri (e...@idiom.com) wrote on 19 Feb 1999 21:51:58 GMT:
>
>> Yuri, a number of people (Greg, Tony, Ross and others) have patiently
>> explained to you basic linguistics, the logical implications of your
>> claims and more. You have been remarkable in your ability to ignore
>> other people's
>> statements. You have failed, to date, to read even one sentence
>> objectively
>> that was written by anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly agree with you.
>
>Thanks for the rant, Eva, but it is quite meaningless.
>
from me!
[snips]
>> For more than 100 years people have been trying to link american
>> languages with altaic, sanscrit, Indo-European, Turkic, Tungus,
>> Polynesian, Oceanic, Japanese, Uralic, Mongol, Turkish, Chinese,
>> Tibetan,Tokharian, Italo-Celtic but none of these proposals has
>> persuasive linguistic evidence to back it up. However, there are 2
>> dialects of Yupik (eskimo) spoken in Siberia. Some evidence for a
>> chukchi-eskimo connexion. Several people working on Dene-Caucasian
>> connexions (linking Na-Dene, Sino-Tibetan and North Caucasian) The
>> questions are not being ignored. Complete references are available if
>> anyone is interested.
>
>Well, if things are happening in this area, and people are looking for
>connections, then I guess you should be SO HAPPY that I went out and
>looked for them in the MOST OBVIOUS PLACE, where for some reason NOBODY
>ELSE BOTHERED TO LOOK? So how come you're crying on my shirt then?
>
Your connections were among one of the many places that real researchers
looked. Cf. my post on Irving Rouse. They found nothing. That's why nobody
bothers with your shirt or your ideas any more. They've been systematically
refuted. Eva's summary is concise and sound.
>> > So Yuri is saying there may be language connections in that area.
Heresy!
>> > Impossible! Because the Scholars (who forgot to look at the map) "know"
>> > that there's a DIVIDE there!
>
>> No, it's because the evidence isn't there.
>
>So, you've already looked in the Standard Reference Books, and it's not
>there? How nice... I compliment you on your enterprise.
>
She's also read Hill-Tout herself -- and laughed at it. It is quite a funny
book to a linguist.
It's not "heresy" we are accusing you of; perhaps "absurdity" would be a
better term.
We are familiar with the Swadesh list tool that Greg Keyes pulled out on you
the other day. It demonstrated rapidly that the Standard Reference Books
appear to be quickly confirmed by a 15-minute browse through a Swadesh list.
Only a fool runs and hides from such facts.
>> > Lingustic Scholars, like all the other Good Scholars, never heard about
>> > any of the above. They "know for sure" there are no linguistic
connections
>> > between Polynesia and NW Coast -- since they've already looked in the
>> > Standard Reference Books, and they are not there. And all Good Scholars
>> > "know" that anything that is not included in the Standard Reference
Books
>> > doesn't exist! (Just ask Tony West.)
>>
>> See above. People have looked. And looked. And are looking.
>
>Not looking hard enough.
>
That's precisely the source of your mistake -- "looking hard enough." If you
Look Hard Enough at the cracks on your ceiling, you will be able to see an
image of the Virgin Mary in it. If you really want to.
Thor Heyerdahl occupies the same place in your mental life that the Virgin
Mary does in other people's and so you go around "looking hard" at things
until you see what you want to see. That's not what scientists do. They have
a variety of guides to judgement as to when they really have looked hard
enough at A and now it's time to look at B.
>> Your parallels ,Hill-Tout's and Campbell's actually, aren't there.
>> The transcriptions that you are using are not comparable. Before you
>> can even try to compare you must have
>
>This is truly dumb. So you suggest we throw away the work of pioneering
>scholars because their transcriptions are not to your liking? Too dumb...
>
Not throw them away, if you wish. But correct what they did wrong -- their
spelling -- since it is easy to do that now, before you look at any of their
analyses. At the moment, you have no idea what any word on any of their
lists /'rili sa:undz laik/ in ASCII IPA. So you have nothing to compare with
anything else, in a manner acceptable to a sci.NG.
>> all the words transcribed in the same system.
>
>Doh!
>
I know you feel stupid, Yuri. But preparing a standardized orthography for
these two gentlemen is really not beyond you. You will, however, have to
check each item they wrote against what contemporary researchers have found
those words to be, before you can succeed.
>> It has been pointed out to you that what cambell transcribes as [h]
>> for nw coast is not the same sound represented by the austronesian
>> [h].
>
>You're too clued out. Couldn't even get this elementary matter correct?
>I've already explained all this to you in a separate post.
>
And your explanation was not supported by any citations from current studies
in any of those languages. You made it all up, because it sounded impressive
to you, and you hoped it would sound impressive to others. It does not.
>> get modern transcriptions and compare like sounds with like. Your work
>> is no more compelling than most of the proto-world comparisons. For an
>> example of how easy it is to create bogus relationships by poking
>> around in the dictionaries check out http://www.zompist.com/proto.html
>> where Mark Rosenfelder has chinese/Quechua comparisons. He also has a
>> discussion of statistical likelihood of chance similarities.
>
>I don't see any connection there with what I'm doing. Red herring.
>
That is the heart and soul of what you are doing: creating a
pseudoscientific system, like astrology, whose rules are so generous in
permitting chance similarities to slip through that you can read whatever
you want to in its "findings."
>> > Yuri, who is not a Scholar, asked a simple question, If there are such
>> > close cultural connections, what about the linguistic side of it?
Either
>> >
>> > a) the Scholars are missing something (has been known to happen
>> > sometimes), or
>
>> or a1) the scholars have looked and that something that you so
>> desperately want just isn't there
>
>So, you've already looked in the Standard Reference Books, and it's not
>there? How nice... I compliment you on your enterprise.
>
At least she has more than one Standard Reference Book, and knows how to
find still others as she needs them. What it comes down to is that you have
only *really read* one writer in your life, and that is Heyerdahl. You have
nothing else to refer to. You are trapped inside his bibliography, like a
fly in amber.
>> > Yuri's unScholarly intuition led him to prefer a).
You have no intuition at all. You merely regurgitate the one book you read,
over and over and over. That's the opposite of intuition.
>> You are picking and choosing words from any language you can find. By
>> this means I am sure that we can demonstrate an equally close
>> connnexion between dutch and canonese.
>> If we are allowed to take any
>> scrap from any indo-european languagge to compare with any scrap from
>> any sino-tibetan language I am sure that good parallels can be found-
>> and when lacking we'll just postulate a dialect (which may no longer
>> exist- but it could've 2000 years ago-right?) showing the required
>> agreements.
>
>Nice rant, but quite meaningless.
>
That's what you do, Yuri: make up imaginary languages as your "real"
evidence is torn to shreds.
>> > So Yuri offers two provisional hypotheses,
>> >
>> > 1. Some Austronesian connections may be there on the NW Coast;
>> > 2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and
Polynesia.
>
>> So you have changed your hypothesis now to "some linguistic contact"?
>> That's quite different from the earlier version in which austronesian
>> speakers left the austronesian homeland (ne asia according to you)
>> for the nw coast, left some speakers there and headed into polynesia
>> via Hawaii.
>
>It may have happened this way, but there's not enough evidence yet to
>conclude this.
>
For sure. First you have to work on finding linguistic evidence for your
provisional hypotheses. Since Heyerdahl tried that in American Indians in
the Pacific and failed miserably and conclusively, you need to get new
evidence. Evidence outside his bibliography.
Are you capable of escaping?
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Anthony West
Doug Weller wrote in message ...
>GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
>>
>your last post, even if you couldn't bring yourself to do it
>directly. Good people at Nizkor. PC I'm sure. You wouldn't like them.
>
>But as always, you see the mote in other people's eyes but not the beam in
>yours. As it says:
>
> principles, rules, etc. to others while taking herself (or those she
> has a special interest in) to be exempt, without providing adequate
> justification for the exemption. This sort of "reasoning" has the
> following form:
>
next
>breath call people names.
>
>But it is also a thread that runs through all your posts. Others
wouldacoulda,
>you explore possibilities and the balance of probability. Etc.
>
It is as predictable as gravity that Yuri loves to pompously accuse others
of faults that are intrinsic to his entire system, that are the bread and
butter of his behavior. He wants NO rules to be applied to him that are
normally applied to scholars -- yet he wants to be called a scholar anyway.
Special pleading.
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7ampsp$o3d$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
>Brian M. Scott (BMS...@stratos.net) wrote on Fri, 19 Feb 1999
20:33:38 -0500:
>
>: Part 1: The possibility of linguistic relationships between N. Amer. and
>: Asian languages is old news; it has its adherents in the linguistic
>: community, and people are working on the possibility, but so far as I
>: can tell the results are as yet fairly meagre.
>
>Well, my results are quite promising.
>
method or come up with valid findings.
>: Part 3: The linguistic parallels don't hold up under investigation.
>
>False.
>
>: Provisional hypothesis 2 isn't a hypothesis, but rather an observation;
>: moreover, while it may be true for Yuri, this is a consequence of his
>: linguistic innocence.
>
>False.
>
True to a linguist's eye. False to a lunatic's.
>: The first provisional hypothesis is
>: scientifically useless:
>
>False. It outlines some promising leads for further research.
>
What would that further research consist of? Lay out a research design for
us, please.
>: one can with equal justification say that there
>: may be connections between Basque and Dyirbal.
>
>Red herring.
>
Exactly the same case.
>: Until some possible
>: connections are actually found,
>
>They are found!
>
They were recognized by linguists to be invalid and have been discarded. You
need to produce new ones.
>I've proposed only what can be defended at this time. In this situation of
>extreme hostility and bias, this is the only reasonable course of action.
>You have only yourself and your pals to blame that I'm being very careful
>in what I propose.
>
So. You regard carefulness in one's proposals as something we should regret?
Yuri, it is good that you should try to be more careful. I hope we can
continue to help you become more careful in your thinking.
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7amv1l$rh9$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
>Henry Polard (pol...@wenet.net) wrote on Fri, 19 Feb 1999 20:15:43 -0700:
>
[snip]
>: By "investigate" does Yuri mean that he did original fieldwork, like a
>: true scientist, with native speakers of Pacific Northwest Languages and
>: Hawaiian, that showed that the "Standard Reference Books" were worthless?
>
>Charles Hill-Tout was the leading scholar of Salish in his own time. So I
>feel proud to bring his unique research back to life after 100 years.
>
>: Bravo! Please, Yuri, tell us about Yuri's original fieldwork!
>
>Hill-Tout did more original fieldwork than anyone else in his generation.
>
you don't want to do any. But that you like a fellow named Hill-Tout,
because he did original fieldwork 100 years ago.
Do you like anybody else who has done original fieldwork in Salishan
languages? 90 years ago? 70 years ago? 50 years ago? 30 years ago? 1o years
ago? Now? Do you even know any of their names? Do you want to know?
If original fieldwork is *good* when Hill-Tout does it, shouldn't it be
*better* when many other people do it?
Please tell us what you know about original field workers in Salishan today.
In what way have they recently demonstrated that the Standard Reference
Works are useless?
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Henry Polard
(Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
> Henry Polard (pol...@wenet.net) wrote on Fri, 19 Feb 1999 20:15:43 -0700:
>
<snip>
>
> : By "investigate" does Yuri mean that he did original fieldwork, like a
> : true scientist, with native speakers of Pacific Northwest Languages and
> : Hawaiian, that showed that the "Standard Reference Books" were worthless?
>
> Charles Hill-Tout was the leading scholar of Salish in his own time. So I
> feel proud to bring his unique research back to life after 100 years.
>
> : Bravo! Please, Yuri, tell us about Yuri's original fieldwork!
>
> Hill-Tout did more original fieldwork than anyone else in his generation.
But Yuri, Hill-Tout does not equal Yuri, and his generation does not equal
THIS gerneration. So Please, Yuri, tell us about Yuri's original
fieldwork! - in THIS generation! Show how you are the leading scholar of
Salish and Hawaiian in THIS generation, so that even the corrupt Capital-S
scholars will be grateful at being convinced of the truth.
Don't disappoint us, Yuri - don't tell us that Yuri's research is limited
to the Standard Reference Books as Standardised By Yuri. Show us how you
worked with the real world - with living speakers of Hawaiian and the NWC
language. With such credibility, even the corrupt Capital-S scholars will
bow before you.
Peter T. Daniels
> > But what is the balance of probabilities, Doug? What is the likeliest
> > scenario?
> >
> > You really have no basis for dismissing the strong probability that it was
> > Native Americans who brought American pottery to Galapagos. Only your
> > racist preconceptions can account for your refusing to accept the most
> > probable scenario.
> >
> > Yours,
>
> Not mine, thank you very much. I repeat I do not have to make a decision
> on this one. Insufficient evidence. More work on the site by qualified
> archaeologists might convince me.
>
> And your claim that I 'know' it was Martians or whoever is still a lie, no
> matter how much you try to weasel out of it.
Seems like it was months ago I mentioned that "I don't know" is the
commonest answer in science ... and that Yuri doesn't understand it.
What's Yuri doing in sci.skeptic? If that's what its name suggests, then
he would be one of their targets, not one of their contributors.
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>I've proposed only what can be defended at this time.
True, in a sense: from a scientific standpoint you've proposed nothing
at all.
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>Eva Kifri (e...@idiom.com) wrote on 19 Feb 1999 21:51:58 GMT:
>> For more than 100 years people have been trying to link american
>> languages with altaic, sanscrit, Indo-European, Turkic, Tungus,
>> Polynesian, Oceanic, Japanese, Uralic, Mongol, Turkish, Chinese,
>> Tibetan,Tokharian, Italo-Celtic but none of these proposals has
>> persuasive linguistic evidence to back it up. [...]
>Well, if things are happening in this area, and people are looking for
>connections, then I guess you should be SO HAPPY that I went out and
>looked for them in the MOST OBVIOUS PLACE, where for some reason NOBODY
>ELSE BOTHERED TO LOOK?
Look again, Yuri: the list of failed attempts includes Polynesian and
more generally Oceanic. Your claim that no one else bothered to look
doesn't stand up.
>Not you. I could care less what you think.
Inadvertent honesty!
>> For an
>> example of how easy it is to create bogus relationships by poking
>> around in the dictionaries check out http://www.zompist.com/proto.html
>> where Mark Rosenfelder has chinese/Quechua comparisons. He also has a
>> discussion of statistical likelihood of chance similarities.
>I don't see any connection there with what I'm doing.
We know. If you knew what you were doing, you'd see the connection.
Brian M. Scott
GKeyes6988
"STONE OVEN, EARTH OVEN"
Polynesian:
Tongan ?UMU
Samoan UMU
Hawa'ain IMU, UMU
Tahitian UMU
PPN *QUMU
Other Oceanic
East Fijian LoVo (1)
Rotuman KOUA
Raga ------
Kwamera NUMUN (2)
Kwaio UMU
Kiribati TE UM
Marshallese UMw
Panopaean UUMw
Tolai UBU
Motu AMU
Dami ------
Kilivala KUMKUMLA
Woleaian UMwU
POC *QUMUN
Other Austronesian:
Atayal lhUPUNG
Rukai TAGAGENe
Indonesian TUNGKU
Sundanese HAWU
Roti LA?O
Da'a -----
Isnag -----
Malagasy LAUFAURA (from French)
(NW Coast)
Kwakw'ala K?EBUDE?AS (Looks like this is from K?EBUD, "to bake, roast".)
Puget Salish (NO WORD IN DICTIONARY)
(DXwLeshucid)
Comments:
I have to admit I picked this one because it has to do with on of Heyerdahl's
assertions about Polynesians. He supposed that since Polynesians had earth
ovens -- and by his accounting the peoples of Melanesia didn't -- they (the
Polynesians) must have come from somewhere other than Near Oceania. Of course,
this isn't actually true -- earth ovens are present in Western Oceania, as well
as in Lapita sites. In fact, in New Ireland they predate Lapita considerably
(Kirch 213).
As can be seen from the above list, in Oceania, whether "earth oven" or "stone
oven", the term is the same and well attested.
The "other Austronesian" list is a sampling. I don't see any obvious cognates
(with the pissible exception of Sundanese HAWU, which looks a little strange to
me), but will be happy to be corrected.
(1). The V here represents a voiced bilabial fricative, something like
Castilian "V".
(2) The initial N is a fossilized article (Lichtenberk:270)
References:
Grubb, David
1977 A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA. National
Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service paper # 34.
Hess, Thom
1976 DICTIONARY OF PUGET SALISH. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Kirch, Patrick Vinton
1997 THE LAPITA PEOPLES. Blackwell Publishers.
Lichtenberk, Frantisek "The Raw and the Cooked: Proto-Oceanic Terms for Food
Preparation.
(in)
Pawley, A.K. and M.D. Ross, eds.
1994 AUSTRONESIAN TERMINOLOGIES: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE. Pacific Linguistics
Series C -127. The Australian National University.
Tryon, Darrell T. ed.
1995 COMPARATIVE AUSTRONESIAN DICTIONARY: AN INTRODUCTION TO AUSTRONESIAN
STUDIES. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
GKeyes6988
<snip>
>Now, on a serious note, I would like to inform you that neither Badner or
>Goldman have ANY CONNECTIONS WHATSOEVER with that Evil Demon. Relax Greg!
>They can be put safely as Clean, and untainted by the Satanic Heyerdahlian
>contagion.
<snip>
I'll take your word for it. My mistake!
-- Greg Keyes
Yuri Kuchinsky
: In article <7amvel$rh9$2...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 20 Feb 1999 18:38:13
: GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
: >
: >
: > http://ftp.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html
: >
: >
: Nice to see I managed to get you to acknowledge the author of
: your last post, even if you couldn't bring yourself to do it
: directly. Good people at Nizkor. PC I'm sure. You wouldn't like them.
You don't have the first clue, Douggie, as per usual. Are you trying to
inform me about Nizkor??? I've been their supporter for a long time
already.
Doh!
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=- Toronto -=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such
an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature -=O=- Samuel Johnson
Yuri Kuchinsky
: In article <7amv1l$rh9$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>, yu...@globalserve.net
: (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:
Are you trying to tell us that library research is not important???
Here's another ignorant lout with a grudge against science. Clockwork
Orange all over again...
Yuri Kuchinsky
<36CF68...@worldnet.att.net>...
> Doug Weller wrote:
> > > But what is the balance of probabilities, Doug? What is the likeliest
> > > scenario?
> > >
> > > You really have no basis for dismissing the strong probability that it was
> > > Native Americans who brought American pottery to Galapagos. Only your
> > > racist preconceptions can account for your refusing to accept the most
> > > probable scenario.
> > >
> > > Yours,
> >
> > Not mine, thank you very much. I repeat I do not have to make a decision
> > on this one. Insufficient evidence. More work on the site by qualified
> > archaeologists might convince me.
> >
> > And your claim that I 'know' it was Martians or whoever is still a lie, no
> > matter how much you try to weasel out of it.
>
> Seems like it was months ago I mentioned that "I don't know" is the
> commonest answer in science
Sure is, Peter, and rightly so. There's much that scientists don't know
and can't explain. Especially archaeologists...
> ... and that Yuri doesn't understand it.
You're confused. Yuri may actually understand these things much better
than you suppose. Maybe even better than you?
You and Doug seem to be working under a misapprehension that to say "I
don't know" is somehow an ironclad guarantee of objectivity. But this is
silly, of course. Because when evidence is plentiful and clear, to say "I
don't know" may be a clear sign of bias and dishonesty, as well!
Let's take the Dreyfuss Affair, for example. This was the scandal that
shook up the whole of French society 100 years ago, and that laid bare
pervasive French anti-Semitism. By January 11, 1898, it was obvious to
Zola, as well as to any objective observer, that Dreyfuss was innocent and
that it was Major Esterhazy who was the guilty party. Dreyfuss was an
innocent man who was in prison doing life sentence and whose only fault
was that he was Jewish, and a convenient scapegoat.
That's when Zola wrote his famous "J'accuse letter". After much
controversy, Dreyfuss was eventually fully exonerated.
Now, suppose that at the height of this scandal, when all the evidence is
already crystal clear, an Observer X says , "I'm not sure, Dreyfuss may be
guilty after all -- I don't know". Would this be a sign of Observer X's
objectivity? Of course not! More likely, this would constitute evidence of
either Observer X's incompetence, or of Observer X's anti-semitism!
Do you get my point?
Well this is the same thing as in the case of Doug Weller and the
Galapagos pottery. Doug Weller says "I don't know", in spite of the
balance of probabilities clearly pointing to Native Americans making trips
to Galapagos and bringing pottery there. I say this is an indication of
Doug Weller's racist bias.
See more about Dreyfuss Affair below.
Regards,
Yuri.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/essays/january98/rosenblatt_1-13.html
J'ACCUSE
January 13, 1998
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript
______________________________________________________________
Reflections upon a letter that toppled a government, freed a man,
and brought honor to a nation.
______________________________________________________________
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: On January 13, 1898, a French newspaper
published a letter from the French writer Emile Zola under the
headline "JAccuse"--I accuse. He was writing the president of
France about a man convicted of treason, a man named Alfred
Dreyfus. NewsHour regular Roger Rosenblatt is here to tell us more
about that letter. Why did Emile Zola write that letter, Roger?
ROGER ROSENBLATT: He wrote it to cure an injustice, to scold a
nation, and to try to shame it into doing the right thing. There
was no question that Dreyfus was always innocent. It went back to
the whole history of the case. But Zola, who was not a political
man, rose to the occasion, and a hundred years ago today that
letter was published in the papers, and it brought down a
government, it eventually freed Dreyfus, and it did honor for
France. It took a while.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about the case.
ROGER ROSENBLATT: It starts--and Ill stumble my way through the
history--long before the case, itself, came to the fore in 1870 at
the Treaty of Frankfurt, which ended the Franco-Prussian War in
which war the German military humiliated the French military and
German annexed Alsace. For the next 20 years, France was seeing
spies in the trees. Everywhere there was somebody capable of
treason. In 1894, it was discovered that a bordeleau, a schedule, a
memorandum, had been given over to the German high command by some
French traitor, giving French positions, defense positions. Who
could have done it? They landed on this captain, a 35-year-old
captain, who had two disabilities. One, he was Jewish, and,
therefore, made himself available to the anti-Semitism, which was
rife in France, particularly in the military at the time. The
other, he was Alsatian.
The combination was perfect to make him a scapegoat. So in
September 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was arrested. A couple of months
later there was a secret court martial led by a chief investigator
named Du Pati Du Plame. The head of the war office was named
Mercier at the time. And with witnesses lying and with so-called
handwriting experts saying he wrote this bordeleau, this
memorandum, on January 5th in 1895, there was a ceremony of
degradation for those who remember the movie, Emile Zola, with Paul
Muny, Dreyfus standing in the courtyard, the epaulets stripped from
his shoulders, medals taken away, and he was made to stand in shame
before the whole country. The press then joined in, said that, of
course, a Jew would turn on the country and so forth, so the press
has an interesting sideline history in this, which then became
central. All the way along Zolas interest had been increasing in
this, and I should say that Dreyfus was sentenced to a life term in
Devils Island--no fun. Then in 1898, the real culprit, a guy named
Major Esterhazy, was discovered. He was court-martialed, but the
military because they would stonewall, they would cover up, found
him innocent. And at that point that was on January 11, 1898, two
days later, Zola came out with "JAccuse," this letter to Felix
Fore, the president of France and to all of France to call it to
shame. Afterwards, he was--he, Zola, was convicted of libel, and
he--rather than serve time in jail, he went over to England.
Eventually, he came back--he died in 1902, but in time both to see
the government fall and to see Dreyfus exonerated. And in 1906,
Dreyfus was entirely exonerated by the Supreme Court. But it took
all that time. He died--he, Dreyfus, died in 1935.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why is this so important, Roger, not only in
France, where there are huge celebrations today about this letter,
but for many other people and many other countries too?
ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, Elizabeth, its just a great document. Its a
class document. It may be the best piece of journalism ever
written, certainly, and one of the most powerful. First of all, it
says a lot about the press. The press was as anti-Semitic and as
inflaming of anti-Semitism as any other institution in France,
including the military. Yet, it was the press too that allowed Zola
to publish this letter, and the press, which then turned in favor
of Dreyfus after the letter made its case. Second, its just a
wonderful statement of honor and justice on the face of it. It is
also a statement of the power of the individual or the potential
power of the individual who can go up against the state, as Zola
did. And, finally--and this pleases you and me and all of us in
this odd trade--it shows that the power of the word can do
everything. When all this case is over, when people forget,
Dreyfus, certainly nobody would remember that the president of
France was Fore, or all the names of all the corrupt generals, when
all of that is gone. What they will remember and do remember is
this letter. They remember the words, so it is a powerful,
wonderful document in behalf of civil liberties and freedom.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you very much, Roger.
______________________________________________________________
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he
read made him mad -=O=- George Bernard Shaw
Yuri Kuchinsky
<MPG.113900d9d...@news.demon.co.uk>...
> In article <7amp32$m5m$2...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 20 Feb 1999
> > But what is the balance of probabilities, Doug? What is the likeliest
> > scenario?
> >
> > You really have no basis for dismissing the strong probability that it was
> > Native Americans who brought American pottery to Galapagos. Only your
> > racist preconceptions can account for your refusing to accept the most
> > probable scenario.
> I repeat I do not have to make a decision
> on this one.
Nobody said you have to, Doug. And yet you made a judgement for which
you're responsible. You volunteered an opinion.
> Insufficient evidence.
This is your judgement. And I say it was based on racist preconceptions,
since the evidence clearly favours trips to Galapagos by Native Americans.
> More work on the site by qualified
> archaeologists might convince me.
Now, perhaps you can indicate what additional evidence, as excavated by
"qualified archaeologists", may be "sufficient", and may persuade you? Why
do you think the evidence is "insufficient" as of now?
> And your claim that I 'know' it was Martians or whoever is still a lie, no
> matter how much you try to weasel out of it.
Truth hurts, doesn't it, Doug?
Just like with the Dreyfuss Affair, as I already wrote to Peter, I
consider your judgement on the same level as of an observer who's saying,
"I don't know, he may be guilty after all." That's what many anti-semites
said at the time.
Yours,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they
contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and
lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing
degree === Bishop Diego de Landa on his dealings with the Mayans.
Yuri Kuchinsky
> AUSTRONESIAN WORD OF THE DAY.
>
> "STONE OVEN, EARTH OVEN"
[snip]
> Comments:
> I have to admit I picked this one because it has to do with on of
> Heyerdahl's assertions about Polynesians. He supposed that since
> Polynesians had earth ovens -- and by his accounting the peoples of
> Melanesia didn't
I think you're misrepresenting Heyerdahl, Greg. Please provide the
citation for where he said this.
> -- they (the Polynesians) must have come from somewhere other than
> Near Oceania.
Perhaps earth oven is not a good argument for NWC origin of Polynesians.
But obviously by the same token neither can it be a good argument for
their origin in Near Oceania.
> As can be seen from the above list, in Oceania, whether "earth oven"
> or "stone oven", the term is the same and well attested.
>
> The "other Austronesian" list is a sampling. I don't see any obvious
> cognates (with the pissible exception
Pissable? I think you hit the nail on the head here.
> of Sundanese HAWU, which looks a little strange to me), but will be
> happy to be corrected.
Once again, your word list is quite meaningless, and proves absolutely
nothing. If you want to _begin_ to make any kind of a serious argument,
you'll need to find out about the words for owen in a few NWC languages
and compare them.
Yours,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku -=O=- Toronto
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
>
> : In article <7amvel$rh9$2...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 20 Feb 1999 18:38:13
> : GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
> : >
> : >
> : > http://ftp.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html
> : >
> : >
> : Nice to see I managed to get you to acknowledge the author of
> : your last post, even if you couldn't bring yourself to do it
> : directly. Good people at Nizkor. PC I'm sure. You wouldn't like them.
>
> You don't have the first clue, Douggie, as per usual. Are you trying to
> inform me about Nizkor??? I've been their supporter for a long time
> already.
>
>
mind, I won't judge them by the company you keep.
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
> I say this is an indication of
> Doug Weller's racist bias.
>
>
disguise for my real feelings.
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
>
> Just like with the Dreyfuss Affair, as I already wrote to Peter, I
> consider your judgement on the same level as of an observer who's saying,
> "I don't know, he may be guilty after all." That's what many anti-semites
> said at the time.
>
>
you say, Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky
<19990220055651...@ng142.aol.com>...
>
> >
> >Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
> >
> >>Greg has posted a very long and rambling post where he accuses me of
> >>various vague and ill-defined but ominously sounding sins, and of not
> >>clarifying my position sufficiently.
> >> I'm afraid he still betrays basic
> >>misunderstandings of what this debate is all >about.
> >He probably missed the
> >>long introduction to this latest linguistic discussion where I posted all
> >>kinds of evidence for cultural connections between BC and Polynesia.
> >>So I will try to summarise briefly my view of this very long debate that
> >>already extended over a few months.
> >
> >>Cheers,
> >>
> >>Yuri.
> >>
> >>==========================
> >>
> >>SUMMARY IN THREE PARTS
> >>
> >>==========================
> >>
> >>
> >>PART 1: AUSTRONESIANS ON NW COAST
>
> >>Isolationism is the major intellectual fallacy, a devious distorting
meme
> >>that bedevils the Scholars. The Scholars constructed for themselves
the
> >>Iron Curtain that separates America from the Rest of the World. Oceans
are
> >>supposed to be impassable.
> >>>The area from which this intellectual Munroe Doctrine looks
especially
> >>weird is the Siberia-Alaska divide that -- lo and behold! -- for
> >>marine-oriented peoples ever since Adam and Eve was not a divide at
all.
> >>The Scholars all forgot to look at the map -- what a goof! Actually,
the
> >>map indicates that in this area THERE IS NO DIVIDE. A continuous
coastline
> >>from Siberia to America! Oops, missed it! But never mind the map, the
> >>Scholars all agreed among themselves to agree that the map is "not
> >>relevant" somehow...
>
> <snip>
> A couple of quick questions.
>
> 1. What has the fact that Siberia and Alaska are near one another (and the
> granted probability of long-term low-level exchange between the two areas)
It's not Siberia that is relevant here, Greg. It's NE Asia. We're talking
about ancient marine-oriented cultures along the Pacific Rim.
> to
> do with the Austronesian languages thousand of miles to the south of this area?
> Languages which, I might add, are entirely unattested north of Taiwan?
You're too clued out, my dear friend. There's plenty of evidence that
Austronesians were in Japan, for example. Modern Japanese still has many
Austronesian elements, which are reputed to be remnants of its ancient
Austronesian languages.
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7apv5a$lm7$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
>gkeye...@aol.com (GKeyes6988) wrote on 21 Feb 1999 18:47:01 GMT:
>
>> AUSTRONESIAN WORD OF THE DAY.
>>
>> "STONE OVEN, EARTH OVEN"
>
>[snip]
>
>nothing. If you want to _begin_ to make any kind of a serious argument,
>you'll need to find out about the words for owen in a few NWC languages
>and compare them.
>
Austronesian languages and also from Kwakw'ala. It supports the unity of
Polyneisan within Oceanic and makes it less likely that Polynesian has
(previously unknown) closer ties to Kwakw'ala than to the sister
Austronesian languages of Polynesian. That's pretty good work, for one word
comparison.
And it is not Keyes who needs to _begin_ to make a serious argument, but
Yuri. *He* is the person who thinks he can overturn the existing taxonomy of
Austronesian with "a few NWC languages." He it is who will need to find such
words and compare them.
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7apees$6d6$2...@whisper.globalserve.net>...
[snip]
>Are you trying to tell us that library research is not important???
>
>Here's another ignorant lout with a grudge against science. Clockwork
>Orange all over again...
>
>Yuri.
>
"Here's another ignorant lout with a grudge against science. Clockwork
orange all over again ... Yuri."
At least you admit what you are, Yuri.
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
Anthony West
Yuri Kuchinsky wrote in message <7aq04s$lm7$3...@whisper.globalserve.net>...[snip]
>There's plenty of evidence that
>Austronesians were in Japan, for example. Modern Japanese still has many
>Austronesian elements, which are reputed to be remnants of its ancient
>Austronesian languages.
>
sample can get. What others exist?
Tony West
Philadelphia aaw...@critpath.org
tkavanag
> Are you trying to tell us that library research is not important???
Library research is indeed very important. But it usually does not not
stop with publications from a century ago; rather it includes an
informed summary of the most current research.
tk
George Black
Sometimes highly intelligent, often well read and dilligent in searching for
anything that will bolster their cherished systems.
Generally harmless but each page from their books has, generally, one or more
'proofs' advanced.
Each of these points take a paper (at least) to point out the failings of
each 'proof'
Only the most dedicated can keep up with, not only the current thread, but
also be able to recognise the onset of other and earlier refuted 'proofs'.
The speed at which they move from discipline to discipline. Linguistics.
Pottery. Art, Culture, Mythology, Tools, foodstuffs, Migration patterns and
more.
Upon confrontation in one field they simply move to another topic until,
confronted again, they move on until the inevitiable return to the original
subject.
Perhaps on a future dig these people should be taken along to fill in for the
many highly trained experts that they could surely replace. At a lower
cost.:-)))
.
On the Net they begin from an 'underdog' appeal. Then advocate some wild
theory of American Indian origin or ability.
And give as reference sources as recent as 1920 while ignoring the mountains
of modern work available from the last decade.
To this end they will point to their 'vilification' by the authorities and
that at best they have snubbed the 'research'. At worst they have either been
laughed at or simply ignored.
Then they predict that their writings will be ill recieved or ignored and
then proceed to attack the thick headed bigotry of the people in Universities
and Museums..
Frequently they imply that they (the archaeologists) are not only hopelessly
conservative and jealous of any scholarly input by amateurs but also that they
are actually dishonest and will, when faced with conflicting evidence,
suppress or even destroy it.
And shouting about the professionals incompetence, ignorance and unethical
behaviour these crackpots take pride in any real or imagined approval they can
gain from such a forum as sci.archaeology where their biased attitude toward
professional archaeologists comes to the surface.
Tomorrow is only a day away.
George
Yuri Kuchinsky
: In article <7apsoa$iag$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 21 Feb 1999 21:10:34
: GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
: > I say this is an indication of
: > Doug Weller's racist bias.
: >
: Proven, of course, by all my posts attacking racists. These are all a clever
ROTFL!
As if racists have never been known to attack other racists? We see this
happen all the time with the followers of Farrakhan, who have been often
described as racists, but who are always exposing racism in others.
BTW I'm not actually saying that you're a racist, just that you've been
influenced by racist preconceptions.
Yuri.
--
Yuri Kuchinsky | "Where there is the Tree of Knowledge, there
------------------------| is always Paradise: so say the most ancient
Toronto ... the Earth | and the most modern serpents." F. Nietzsche
--- my webpage is at: http://globalserve.net/~yuku ---
Yuri Kuchinsky
: In article <7apuht$k8h$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>, on 21 Feb 1999 21:41:17
: >
: > Just like with the Dreyfuss Affair, as I already wrote to Peter, I
: > consider your judgement on the same level as of an observer who's saying,
: > "I don't know, he may be guilty after all." That's what many anti-semites
: > said at the time.
: >
: >
: Yawn. Are you trying to label me an anti-semite now?
Actually not, but you've always had trouble with reading comprehension.
No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
Hittites? I've never seen you say one good thing about them, or their
culture. Any theories involving Hittite technological competence have
always been dismissed by you with utmost contempt.
: Careful with what you say, Yuri.
Paul Edson
month's worth of this "dispute".
In Lyovin, _An Introduction to the Languages of the World_ the author states
that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between the
words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong in
the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
academic standard. True or False?
As far as I can tell, Yuri has yet to produce a table or list of
correspondences between a single NW language and a single Austronesian
language, or between several of each treated individually, rather than as a
loose group, or between any NW language and a reconstructed
Proto-Austronesian. True or False?
In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
False?
In linguistics, as in most disciplines, it is therefore incumbent upon the
developer of a theory to provide sufficient linguistic evidence within the
traditional research and evaluation frameworks of the field for that theory
to be fairly evaluated. True or False?
Assertion is not evidence. True or False?
Paul Edson
Brian M. Scott
> No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
> sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
> Hittites?
I hate to perpetuate this contemptible slur, but it should be pointed
out that Hittite is an Indo-European language, not a Semitic one.
Brian M. Scott
Peter T. Daniels
> : Yawn. Are you trying to label me an anti-semite now?
>
> Actually not, but you've always had trouble with reading comprehension.
>
> No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
> sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
> Hittites? I've never seen you say one good thing about them, or their
> culture. Any theories involving Hittite technological competence have
> always been dismissed by you with utmost contempt.
Now, Yuri, what does anti-Hittitism have to do with anti-Semitism?
> : Careful with what you say, Yuri.
Yet another word Yuri doesn't know!
Doug Weller
bg...@torfree.net said...
>
> No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
> sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
> Hittites? I've never seen you say one good thing about them, or their
> culture. Any theories involving Hittite technological competence have
> always been dismissed by you with utmost contempt.
>
>
all manner of good things to South America. What would be the point of having
preferences among ANE -- or any -- ancient cultures?
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
My opinions as an interested and reasonably well-informed amateur:
>In Lyovin, _An Introduction to the Languages of the World_ the author states
>that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
>must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between the
>words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong in
>the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
>establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
>academic standard. True or False?
True, though there are a few well-known dissenters. It should also be
said that there are relationships that are widely accepted even though
the correspondences haven't been worked out in great detail, sometimes
owing to a lack of material.
>As far as I can tell, Yuri has yet to produce a table or list of
>correspondences between a single NW language and a single Austronesian
>language, or between several of each treated individually, rather than as a
>loose group, or between any NW language and a reconstructed
>Proto-Austronesian. True or False?
True.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
>Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
True.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
>inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
>False?
I'll leave this to someone more familiar with the linguistics journals
than I.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, it is therefore incumbent upon the
>developer of a theory to provide sufficient linguistic evidence within the
>traditional research and evaluation frameworks of the field for that theory
>to be fairly evaluated. True or False?
Or to make a good case for some new framework.
>Assertion is not evidence. True or False?
True. (Well, I suppose that it's evidence of someone's opinion!)
Brian M. Scott
Peter T. Daniels
> >In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
> >Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
>
> True.
>
> >In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
> >inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
> >False?
>
> I'll leave this to someone more familiar with the linguistics journals
> than I.
We could say that such things become paragraphs in articles on other
things, or chapters in books.
GKeyes6988
MAN, MALE
(Polyesian)
Hawaiian KANE
Rapa Nui TANGATA
Tahitian TAANE
Mele Fila TAANE
Tahitian TAANE
Tongan TANGATA
PPN *TA?ANE
Other Oceanic
West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
East Fijian TANGATA
Rotuman FAA
Raga ATAMwANI
Kwamera IERMAN
Kwaio WANE
Kiribati TE MMwAANE
Marshallese MAE
Panopaean OOL
Tolai TUTANe
Motu TAU
Dami TAMO
Kilivala TAU
Woleaian MwARE
Takia TAMOL
POC MWAQANE, TA(U) - MWAQANE
Other Austronesian:
Atayal MAMALHIKU
Rukai SAOVALAY
Indonesian LAKI-LAKI
Sundanese LALAKI
Roti TOU-K
Da'a LAngGI
Isnag LALAAKI
Malagasy LEHILAHI
Uma TO-MANE
(NW Coast)
Kwakw'ala BEGWANEM
Puget Salish S.TUBSH
(DXwLeshucid)
Comments: Long-time followers of these threads will see the significance of
this one. Aside from being the word for "Man, Male" this is also the name of a
Polynesian deity.
Thanks to Ross Clark for the Proto-Oceanic term. The *Ta(u) prefix probably
meant "person".
General note RE Yuri's response to the last word, OVEN: If the only response
to these lists are "it ain't so" or "this means nothing", I see no point in
replying. Those informed in linguistics will see the point exactly -- most of
those who aren't will too. Any COGENT criticism or questions will be
addressed.
I do intend to add more NW coast languages when I get the lexicons -- despite
Yuri's protestations, I did cite forms form two of Hill-Touts favorites last
time, and I do so again. Yuri will doubtless play hide-the-language forever,
but HT thought these languages were related to Austronesian ones -- well, they
are or they aren't. Meanwhile, anyone interested is obviously free to add
whatever languages they want, including Yuri, who seems to want credit for
"looking" for Austronesian languages on the NW coast but as yet hasn't shown
that he can do anything other than cite antique documents where the comparisons
were already made for him. What's so odd is that I'm providing him with just
the sort of word lists he needs to prove his thesis -- in fact, I offered to
take requests. All Yuri (or anyone else) need do is go out and find the NW
coast words I haven't provided. Odd how he wants me to do ALL of his footwork
rather than just most of it. But I suspect that's one of his major reasons for
posting to these NGs -- laziness. We'll know we when we see the book , won't
we? Assuming we do see it.
By the way -- and this goes for all of my posts -- fair use on the internet is
one thing. Citing me without permission (or plagiarizing me without citing me,
which Yuri has done here a time or two) in a published book is another. My
literary agent takes a dim view of this. In any event, in this instance, I
advise going to my sources, as I often have to use makeshift orthography, and a
late-night mistake (Kwamera for Kwaio, or something like that) is far from an
impossibility. Anyway, you should always check sources, as our continuing
examination of Heyerdahl has shown pretty clearly.
References:
Grubb, David
1977 A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA. National
Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service paper # 34.
Hess, Thom
1976 DICTIONARY OF PUGET SALISH. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Tryon, Darrell T. ed.
GKeyes6988
>From: "Paul Edson" <ped...@erols.com>
>Date: 2/22/99 12:03 PM EST
>Message-id: <7as2gs$ijq$1...@winter.news.rcn.net>
>
>A few true/false questions here, after having read back through nigh on a
>month's worth of this "dispute".
>
>that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
>must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between the
>words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong in
>the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
>establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
>academic standard. True or False?
True. The Swadesh list is often a starting place for this -- a list of a
hundred terms like "one", "ear", "dog" and other basic words which seem to be
replaced by borrowing more reluctantly than other terms. Then you move on to
other vocabulary and bundles of vocabulary and grammer. Or maybe you start
with grammer. Mostly, the keyword is "systematic".
>As far as I can tell, Yuri has yet to produce a table or list of
>correspondences between a single NW language and a single Austronesian
>language, or between several of each treated individually, rather than as a
>loose group, or between any NW language and a reconstructed
>Proto-Austronesian. True or False?
True. In fact, treating all of the NW coast languages as a group and all of
the Austronesian languages as a group makes the whole process pretty silly. The
odds of any two languages having exactly the same word for exactly the same
thing is small but finite (this is demonstrable). When you compare five or ten
languages on the one hand and hundreds on the other (comparing Kwakw'ala,
Salish, Nootka, Kutenai, Tsimshian etc. to all of the Austronesian languages)
the odds of a chance resemblance (especially given the lattitide fpr what a
resemblance constitutes in Hill-Tout and Campbell) becames very high indeed.
What Yuri needs to do is systematically compare language A to language B --
Kwakw'ala and Hawai'ian, Nootka and Roti -- to look for correspondances.
However, what he seems to be maintaining now is that the NW coast languages are
not genetically related to Austronesian ones, but merely have Austronesian
loans -- apparently from all over Austronesia, rather than from any given
Austronesian language. So Nootka has maybe ten Austronesian words, and
Kwakw'ala another ten, and so on, and no regular sound correspondances need
exist, because they are loans from different "waves" from hypothetical,
unattested (when I say unattested, this means we don't have the languages,
another thing Yuri doesn't seem to understand) NE Asian Austronesian language.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
>Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
True, especially when the relationship is hypothesized as above, or some
variant therof. However, it's possible to say with some certainty whether two
languages are genetically related within a relativly recent frame. The longer
the separation, the more the two will diverge in vocabulary and grammer, and
the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between chance resemblances and
real relationships. It helps when you have more than one language.
At a time depth of two thousand years, the relationships are usually pretty
obvious, and Yuri has Polynesian in the NW two thousand years ago. Compare
Sanskrit and Latin or German -- languages which have been separated for a lot
longer than 2,000 years -- and you will see pretty obvious similarities.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
>inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
>False?
Depends. If there is a long standing hypothesis that, say, Austronesian and
Japanese are related genetically, and something has been published about it,
then someone taking another tact (by, say, using proto-Japanese forms, more
vocabulary, etc.) might be published arguing against previously proposed
similarities. It's not so much proving a negative as demonstrating that the
reasoning and/or data that established the putative relationship is flawed.
There are often fairly casual observations published which suggest
relationships which in turn generate interest in deeper comparisons -- which
then don't turn up anything. This might get a small paper, but I wouldn't
count on it.
Usually these casual propositions just drop out of the picture when they don't
pan out. I can think of a number of examples of this in the field I'm most
familiar with, the languages of the SE United States. I worked for a while to
test Mary Haas' proposed Gulf-Siouan connection. I couldn't come up with
anything to support the two words she managed to "reconstruct" for proto-Gulf
Siouan. Lot's of other people tried this, too. Had I (or one of them)
suceeded, we would have been published. An article that says nothing but, "I
compared five hundred words and came up with nothing solid" isn't real likely
to be published, no.
>In linguistics, as in most disciplines, it is therefore incumbent upon the
>developer of a theory to provide sufficient linguistic evidence within the
>traditional research and evaluation frameworks of the field for that theory
>to be fairly evaluated. True or False?
True.
>Assertion is not evidence. True or False?
True.
>Paul Edson
Yuri Kuchinsky
: A few true/false questions here, after having read back through nigh on a
: month's worth of this "dispute".
So you think this is not a real dispute, Paul? Well this shows where
you're coming from, I guess...
: In Lyovin, _An Introduction to the Languages of the World_ the author states
: that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
: must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between the
: words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong in
: the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
: establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
: academic standard. True or False?
True. But who's said anything about "proving" anything? Comprehension
problems? You too?
: As far as I can tell, Yuri has yet to produce a table or list of
: correspondences between a single NW language and a single Austronesian
: language, or between several of each treated individually, rather than as a
: loose group, or between any NW language and a reconstructed
: Proto-Austronesian. True or False?
See above.
: In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
: Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
Maybe.
: In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
: inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
: False?
Maybe.
: In linguistics, as in most disciplines, it is therefore incumbent upon the
: developer of a theory to provide sufficient linguistic evidence within the
: traditional research and evaluation frameworks of the field for that theory
: to be fairly evaluated. True or False?
I've offered a tentative hypothesis. Is this not allowed?
The blinkered state of these linguists is quite remarkable. Don't you
people have any clue about the proper methodology? Don't you have any idea
about all the work going on now with identifying _possible relationships_
of Austronesian with a number of other languages that were often
overlooked previously? Such as Japanese, Ainu, Thai, etc.?
Well here's some reading for you then. All this has been turned up from a
very brief perusal of the Net.
Please note the frequent use of such expressions as "probably", "suggests
a paradigm", "possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN", "The best candidates for
...", etc. And enjoy.
Yuri.
[begin quotes]
MURAYAMA Nanarou has written that there appears a positive sign in
successfully establishing comparative language study between Ainu language
and Austronesian languages. He suggests a paradigm that an ancient
Japanese language was spoken widely on Japanese islands, and that later
these people were separated -- pushed towards south west and north east by
a continental [Altaic-speaking] peoples invading through Kyushu. [grammar
corrected]
http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage1.htm
-=-
More about the work of Murayama, and related work of Russian linguists:
http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10a.htm
http://humanities.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/ainu.htm
-=-
From sci.lang FAQ:
TAI-KADAI: Thai, Lao, and other languages of southern China and
northern Burma. Possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN.
http://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/studi-cd/ZUSATZ/FAQS/SCI/MSG00002.HTM
-=-
The best candidates for language families having a close relationship with
Austronesian ones are probably to be drawn from the Thai-Kadai and
Austroasiatic groups, and perhaps with Miao-Yiao.
http://www.lexicon.net/opoudjis/Work/Oceanic_guide.html
-=-
MAHDI, W. (Germany) - Some Linguistic and Philological Data
Towards a Chronologization of Austronesian Activity in India and
Sri Lanka
Yuri Kuchinsky -=- Toronto -=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
A formalist is someone who cannot understand a theory unless it is
meaningless.
-- S. Gorn's Compendium of Rarely Used Cliches
Yuri Kuchinsky
: Yuri Kuchinsky wrote to Doug Weller:
: > No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
: > sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
: > Hittites?
: I hate to perpetuate this contemptible slur, but it should be pointed
: out that Hittite is an Indo-European language, not a Semitic one.
I'll take your word for it, Brian. But this still doesn't quite get Doug
off the hook. Because what about all the other _semitic-speaking_ peoples
of ANE? According to Doug, it was TOTALLY BEYOND THEM to contribute
ANYTHING to any other civilization of the world that was relatively
distant from them. He just dismisses any possibility of this off-hand.
This sure sounds a little antisemitic to me...
Yours,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
This sign was seen in a Paris hotel elevator:
"Please leave your values at the front desk."
Paul Edson
>So you think this is not a real dispute, Paul? Well this shows where
>you're coming from, I guess...
Yes, I suppose it does. I include the quote marks around "dispute" because
it actually bears more resemblance to poor Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Only Yuri doesn't have any Sancho Panza, apparently, and Don Quixote didn't
merely hypothesize that the windmills were giants--he actually had the guts
to ride at the things with his lance up and ready.
>True. But who's said anything about "proving" anything? Comprehension
>problems? You too?
>
>I've offered a tentative hypothesis. Is this not allowed?
>
These two bits, when put next to each other, exemplify the unfairness of
your rhetorical stance, Yuri. It is not I that is having comprehension
problems.
From Merriam-Webster's WWW dictionary:
HYPOTHESIS 1 a : an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument b
: an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the
ground for action
2 : a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or
empirical consequences
Notice that both of these definitions clearly delineate "hypothesis" from
"claim" or "assertion". A hypothesis exists to be tested, not to be written.
A hypothesis without the attempt to prove or disprove is merely an
assertion.
I'm interested in your claim, Yuri, and my world would be a richer place if
it were true that there was a demonstrable connection between the NW coast
Native Peoples and the Oceanic peoples. Just remember that when one puts a
hypothesis out on public view, one can expect it to be attacked from all
sides. That's what hypotheses are for.
Paul.
GKeyes6988
East Fijian ought to be TANGANE, not TANGATA -- a typo on my part.
I left out Samoan:
Samoan TAANE.
Thanks to Jacob Love for pointing these out to me, and for informing me that
Samoan also has the form TANGATA.
-- Greg Keyes
Brian M. Scott
>MAN, MALE
>Rapa Nui TANGATA
>Tongan TANGATA
> PPN *TA?ANE
>West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
>East Fijian TANGATA
>Rotuman FAA
This is F < MW, AA < AQA?
>Kwamera IERMAN
Is this the same word with a new prefix?
>Panopaean OOL
I *hope* that one's not cognate!
>POC MWAQANE, TA(U) - MWAQANE
>Thanks to Ross Clark for the Proto-Oceanic term. The *Ta(u) prefix probably
>meant "person".
Does it have anything to do with the -TA in the Fijian, Tongan, and
Rapa Nui words, or is that coincidental?
Brian M. Scott
GKeyes6988
>Date: 2/23/99 1:29 PM EST
>Message-id: <36d2f018...@news.csuohio.edu>
>
>On 23 Feb 1999 07:26:33 GMT, gkeye...@aol.com (GKeyes6988) wrote:
>
>>MAN, MALE
>
>>Rapa Nui TANGATA
>>Tongan TANGATA
>> PPN *TA?ANE
>
>>West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
>>East Fijian TANGATA
>
>>Rotuman FAA
>
>This is F < MW, AA < AQA?
>
>>Kwamera IERMAN
>
>Is this the same word with a new prefix?
My guess is no. There is another word, IAKwEIN, that looks more likely cognate
to me. It's not the main term in Tryon, but given in a footnote because it is
less often used.
I should point out that my goal here isn't to list only cognates -- I have a
standard list that I give the terms for, regardless, and then add a few others
of interest.
>>Panopaean OOL
>
>I *hope* that one's not cognate!
Nope. Paneopaean also has MwANE, given as "archaic".
>>POC MWAQANE, TA(U) - MWAQANE
>
>>Thanks to Ross Clark for the Proto-Oceanic term. The *Ta(u) prefix
>probably
>>meant "person".
>
>Does it have anything to do with the -TA in the Fijian, Tongan, and
>Rapa Nui words, or is that coincidental?
It accounts for the initial /t/ in PPN *TA?ANE, obviously. Tongan has a form
TAHA which means "person". Further afield, we have
Tagalog TAA?O, Konjo TUA, Tsou cOU, Da'a TAU, all meaning "person". As a
prefix, POC *TA(U) seems to have become opaque in Polynesian, so maybe it
does show up again.
These are guesses. I haven't gone to the comparative phonology to see if they
make sense. This is a question for someone with a deeper knowledge of the
subject than I have, like Ross Clark.
-- Greg Keyes
>Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>I've offered a tentative hypothesis.
No, Yuri, you haven't. You've confused a definite hypothesis
tentatively advanced with a watercolor wash of vague suggestions
confidently asserted. 'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
from the seacoast of Bohemia' is a hypothesis, albeit one that I
wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. 'There may be words of
Austronesian origin in some NC languages' is not.
[*] Robber Czechs - a most resilient people.
Brian M. Scott
GKeyes6988
Greg Keyes wrote:
>>>Thanks to Ross Clark for the Proto-Oceanic term. The *Ta(u) prefix
>>probably
>>>meant "person".
(Brian)
>>Does it have anything to do with the -TA in the Fijian, Tongan, and
>>Rapa Nui words, or is that coincidental?
(Greg)
>It accounts for the initial /t/ in PPN *TA?ANE, obviously. Tongan has a form
>TAHA which means "person". Further afield, we have
>Tagalog TAA?O, Konjo TUA, Tsou cOU, Da'a TAU, all meaning "person". As a
>prefix, POC *TA(U) seems to have become opaque in Polynesian, so maybe it
>does show up again.
>
>These are guesses. I haven't gone to the comparative phonology to see if
>they
>make sense. This is a question for someone with a deeper knowledge of the
>subject than I have, like Ross Clark.
I note there is a PPN *TANGATA. Which (I'm guessing) makes Hawai'an KANAKA a
cognate.
-- Greg Keyes
GKeyes6988
>Date: 2/23/99 2:39 PM EST
>Message-id: <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>
>
>On 23 Feb 1999 16:57:24 GMT, yu...@globalserve.net (Yuri Kuchinsky)
>wrote:
>
>>I've offered a tentative hypothesis.
>
>No, Yuri, you haven't. You've confused a definite hypothesis
>tentatively advanced with a watercolor wash of vague suggestions
>confidently asserted. 'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
>from the seacoast of Bohemia' is a hypothesis, albeit one that I
>wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole
Ah, when I think back to the wonderful days I've spent on the Bohemian coast,
sipping Budvar, eating knedlicky, watching the big ships come in . . .
. 'There may be words of
>Austronesian origin in some NC languages' is not.
>
>[*] Robber Czechs - a most resilient people.
Indeed!
>Brian M. Scott
>
>
>
>
>
>
GKeyes6988
>Date: 2/23/99 11:57 AM EST
>Message-id: <7aumlk$jla$1...@whisper.globalserve.net>
>
>Paul Edson wrote:
>
>: A few true/false questions here, after having read back through nigh on a
>: month's worth of this "dispute".
>
>So you think this is not a real dispute, Paul? Well this shows where
>you're coming from, I guess...
>
>: In Lyovin, _An Introduction to the Languages of the World_ the author
>states
>: that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
>: must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between
>the
>: words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong
>in
>: the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
>: establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
>: academic standard. True or False?
>
>True. But who's said anything about "proving" anything? Comprehension
>problems? You too?
Hmm. I suppose most of us thought when you made statements like the following,
you were alluding to haven "proven" something.
(Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:)
.As the very minimum, the information I've .already presented should be
.sufficient to conclude that some linguistic .contact existed in ancient
.past between the NW Coast and Polynesia. So .this is my definite claim.
.The nature of this contact is yet to be .determined.
-- Greg Keyes
Harlan Messinger
Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
>'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
>from the seacoast of Bohemia'
"Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
>
>[*] Robber Czechs - a most resilient people.
>
>Brian M. Scott
Eric Stevens
>A couple of corrections to MAN/MALE:
>
>East Fijian ought to be TANGANE, not TANGATA -- a typo on my part.
>
Maori uses TANGATA for 'man, human being' and has now been extended to
include 'people', as in 'tangata whenua' the people of the land.
Eric Stevens
Chaos is found in the greatest abundance wherever order is being
sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organised.
-: Ly Tin Wheedle
Rodger Whitlock
>Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
>>'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
>>from the seacoast of Bohemia'
>
>"Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
Shhhh! Don't spill the beans to you-know-who. If you do, we will all miss
a dissertation on the stylistic resemblances of Bohemian sea-going canoes
to those of the Northwest coast. We might even get a squib on why the use
of similar diacritics for writing the Czech and Northwest coast languages
is sure evidence for prehistoric contact. To say nothing of the amazing
fact that both Hawaiian and Czech use vowels and consonants.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Doug Weller
GMT, yu...@globalserve.net said...
>
> I'll take your word for it, Brian. But this still doesn't quite get Doug
> off the hook. Because what about all the other _semitic-speaking_ peoples
> of ANE? According to Doug, it was TOTALLY BEYOND THEM to contribute
> ANYTHING to any other civilization of the world that was relatively
> distant from them. He just dismisses any possibility of this off-hand.
> This sure sounds a little antisemitic to me...
>
>
As so often, you claim someone (me, this time) has said something they have
never said. Yuri, you're a pathetic liar. But go ahead, prove me wrong. Find
a post on dejanews where I've said the above.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
> >'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
> >from the seacoast of Bohemia'
>
> "Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
It's Shakespeare.
What pun?
Brian M. Scott
> Rotuman /f/
> regularly reflects Oceanic *t.
[...]
> I don't have the materials
> here to check, but I'm pretty sure IERMAN is from something like
> *ATAMWA'ANE, somewhat scrunched by the high-powered sound changes in
> South Vanuatu languages.
This is the first time I've really seen anything on Austronesian
languages. I think I may have to go looking: if nothing else, there
seem to be some very interesting sound changes. (Too many languages,
never enough time.)
Brian M. Scott
Brian M. Scott
> Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
> >'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
> >from the seacoast of Bohemia'
> "Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
Shakespeare, 'The Winter's Tale', III, iii: Antigonus says 'our ship
hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia'. One of the classic examples
of a rare failure in Shakespeare's general knowledge, to which allusion
is almost always made with the phrase 'the seacoast(s) of Bohemia'.
Brian M. Scott
Mike Wright
>
> Paul Edson (ped...@erols.com) wrote on Mon, 22 Feb 1999 12:03:59 -0500:
>
> : A few true/false questions here, after having read back through nigh on a
> : month's worth of this "dispute".
>
> So you think this is not a real dispute, Paul? Well this shows where
> you're coming from, I guess...
The "dispute" seems to be that Yuri claims to be saying something, but no one
else has been able to figure out what that might be.
> : In Lyovin, _An Introduction to the Languages of the World_ the author states
> : that in order to prove a genetic relationship between two languages, one
> : must "demonstrate that there are recurring sound correspondences between the
> : words of the two languages which have roughly the same meaning and belong in
> : the basic vocabulary." This assessment of what is required in order to
> : establish a genetic connection matches relatively closely the current
> : academic standard. True or False?
>
> True. But who's said anything about "proving" anything? Comprehension
> problems? You too?
So, if you're not interested in proving anything, what are you interested in?
The alternative seems to be that you are just interested in letting your mind
wander and then recording its wanderings for the amusement of the denizens of
various newsgroups. But your ideas really aren't that amusing.
(Have you considered that if not a single person can comprehend what you are
saying, then perhaps the communications failure is due to your inability to
express yourself clearly? On a purely statistical basis, you'd think that at
least one person would be able to figure out what it is that you are trying to do.)
> : As far as I can tell, Yuri has yet to produce a table or list of
> : correspondences between a single NW language and a single Austronesian
> : language, or between several of each treated individually, rather than as a
> : loose group, or between any NW language and a reconstructed
> : Proto-Austronesian. True or False?
>
> See above.
>
> : In linguistics, as in most disciplines, proving the negative ("Kwakiutl and
> : Hawaiian are NOT related") is nearly impossible. True or False?
>
> Maybe.
>
> : In linguistics, as in most disciplines, journals are unlikely to publish
> : inconclusive articles, such as ones attempting to prove a negative. True or
> : False?
>
> Maybe.
>
> : In linguistics, as in most disciplines, it is therefore incumbent upon the
> : developer of a theory to provide sufficient linguistic evidence within the
> : traditional research and evaluation frameworks of the field for that theory
> : to be fairly evaluated. True or False?
>
> I've offered a tentative hypothesis. Is this not allowed?
"Tentative hypothesis" seems to mean "guess". Anyone may guess. However, in
order to have one's guess taken seriously, one must show the reasoning behind
that guess. And such a guess is only a starting point. Evidence must be
accumulated and shown to support the guess. If you just want to offer a
tentative hypothesis, but do not want to support it, then why should anyone else
be interested in it?
On sci.lang, readers tend to be interested in languages and linguistics. You
have demonstrated no knowledge of either. Your only talent seems to be to make
wild guesses based on outdated materials. I don't know what the folks on
sci.archaeology, sci.anthropology, and sci.skeptic think of your imaginings.
> The blinkered state of these linguists is quite remarkable. Don't you
> people have any clue about the proper methodology? Don't you have any idea
> about all the work going on now with identifying _possible relationships_
> of Austronesian with a number of other languages that were often
> overlooked previously? Such as Japanese, Ainu, Thai, etc.?
And is this work not being conducted by linguists? Are they not following the
kinds of procedures that the linguists on this list keep recommending to you?
What is your idea of "the proper methodology"? Does it consist of anything
beyond fielding a "tentative hypothesis"?
> Well here's some reading for you then. All this has been turned up from a
> very brief perusal of the Net.
>
> Please note the frequent use of such expressions as "probably", "suggests
> a paradigm", "possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN", "The best candidates for
> ...", etc. And enjoy.
Do you not think that these suggestions are based on actual field research? Do
suppose that these suggestions are not based on actual knowledge of the
languages being considered?
> Yuri.
>
> [begin quotes]
>
> MURAYAMA Nanarou has written that there appears a positive sign in
> successfully establishing comparative language study between Ainu language
> and Austronesian languages. He suggests a paradigm that an ancient
> Japanese language was spoken widely on Japanese islands, and that later
> these people were separated -- pushed towards south west and north east by
> a continental [Altaic-speaking] peoples invading through Kyushu. [grammar
> corrected]
>
> http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage1.htm
>
> -=-
>
> More about the work of Murayama, and related work of Russian linguists:
>
> http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10a.htm
>
> http://humanities.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/ainu.htm
You can read more about some of Murayama's ideas about the Japanese language, as
well as those of some who agreed and disagreed with him in Masayoshi SHIBATANI's
_The Languages of Japan_ (Cambridge, 1990-94). (It appears, BTW, that Murayama
preferred to romanize his given name as "Shichiro", rather than as "Nanarou".
Also, his work is not "going on now", as he died in 1995.)
As far as Ainu is concerned, Shibatani says (page 5): "In terms of genetic
classification, Ainu is best described as a language-isolate. Although various
suggestions have been made relating Ainu to such language families as
Paleo-Asiatic, Ural-Altaic, and Malyo-Polynesian, or to individual languages
such as Gilyak, Eskimo, and Japanese, none of them have progressed beyond the
level of speculation." The site at
http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10b.htm doesn't discuss Murayama's
views on the relationship between the Ainu and Japanese languages (in Murayama's
1992 book, _Origin of Ainu Language_).
So, what we have here is the suggestion for a starting point of research.
Murayama thought it likely that Ainu is Austronesian, and that it forms a
substratum upon which a later Altaic superstratum was imposed. It is obvious
that a lot of research will have to be conducted. It is also obvious that there
is no way of tellling in advance whether such research will confirm Murayama's
hypothesis or not. Whether anyone actually conducts such research will depend on
how convincing Murayama's evidence is.
> From sci.lang FAQ:
>
> TAI-KADAI: Thai, Lao, and other languages of southern China and
> northern Burma. Possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN.
>
> http://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/studi-cd/ZUSATZ/FAQS/SCI/MSG00002.HTM
So, do you suppose that someone would leap into a research project simply on the
basis of that entry in the FAQ?
> -=-
>
> The best candidates for language families having a close relationship with
> Austronesian ones are probably to be drawn from the Thai-Kadai and
> Austroasiatic groups, and perhaps with Miao-Yiao.
>
> http://www.lexicon.net/opoudjis/Work/Oceanic_guide.html
The beginning of the paragraph quoted above (by John Bowden, University of
Melbourne) also says:
"There has been much speculation about wider relationships beyond the confines of
the Austronesian family. Many of these proposals (e.g links with Japanese,
Indo-European, and Semitic languages) are not at all credible. Some more serious
suggestions have been made, but little has appeared in print."
Shall we accept Bowden's judgements about the "best candidates", yet reject his
judgements aobut links with Japanese being "not at all credible"? On what basis
shall we decide?
It's really difficult to understand the point of all this. Are you trying to
show that your own speculations are worthy of attention because some linguists
make speculations? Do you suppose that those linguists would react to criticism
by saying that they have just made "tentative hypotheses" that they could not
back up with facts? And, if they did, do you suppose anyone would pay them
anymore mind than they pay you?
--
Mike Wright
http://www.mbay.net/~darwin/language.html
_____________________________________________________
"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."
-- Charles de Gaulle
Catherine Law
>
> "Harlan Messinger" <hmess...@ZZZerols.comZZZ> wrote:
> >Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
> >>'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
> >>from the seacoast of Bohemia'
> >
> >"Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
>
> a dissertation on the stylistic resemblances of Bohemian sea-going canoes
> to those of the Northwest coast. We might even get a squib on why the use
> of similar diacritics for writing the Czech and Northwest coast languages
> is sure evidence for prehistoric contact. To say nothing of the amazing
> fact that both Hawaiian and Czech use vowels and consonants.
>
> --
> Rodger Whitlock
You've just given Yuri ten more years of library research!
Ross Clark
>
> The blinkered state of these linguists is quite remarkable.
The arrogance of this Kuchinsky is quite remarkable.
Don't you
> people have any clue about the proper methodology? Don't you have any idea
> about all the work going on now with identifying _possible relationships_
> of Austronesian with a number of other languages that were often
> overlooked previously? Such as Japanese, Ainu, Thai, etc.?
I know this was intended as a rhetorical question, but unfortunately it
has an answer, and the answer is yes.
Yes, (if I may speak for Austronesian linguists in general), we are
aware of these many proposals. In fact some of us have made them.
I know it must be a bitter disappointment to Yuri to find that a "very
brief perusal of the Net" has not qualified him to lecture Austronesian
linguists on "proper methodology". (Or perhaps brief perusal of the Net
*is* what he considers proper methodology?)
Unlike Yuri Kuchinsky, we are aware that proposals like this are not
just "going on now" but have been "going on" for more than a century,
since Franz Bopp noted similarities between Austronesian and
Indo-European. Every well-established language family in the world has
wider relations that have been proposed but not conclusively
established.
And most unlike Yuri Kuchinsky, we have some concept of what to look
for, how to identify and evaluate evidence.
Sorry, Yuri. Back to the playpen.
Ross Clark
>
> Well here's some reading for you then. All this has been turned up from a
> very brief perusal of the Net.
>
> Please note the frequent use of such expressions as "probably", "suggests
> a paradigm", "possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN", "The best candidates for
> ...", etc. And enjoy.
>
> Yuri.
>
> [begin quotes]
>
> MURAYAMA Nanarou has written that there appears a positive sign in
> successfully establishing comparative language study between Ainu language
> and Austronesian languages. He suggests a paradigm that an ancient
> Japanese language was spoken widely on Japanese islands, and that later
> these people were separated -- pushed towards south west and north east by
> a continental [Altaic-speaking] peoples invading through Kyushu. [grammar
> corrected]
>
> http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage1.htm
>
> -=-
>
> More about the work of Murayama, and related work of Russian linguists:
>
> http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10a.htm
>
> http://humanities.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/ainu.htm
>
> -=-
>
> From sci.lang FAQ:
>
> TAI-KADAI: Thai, Lao, and other languages of southern China and
> northern Burma. Possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN.
>
> http://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/studi-cd/ZUSATZ/FAQS/SCI/MSG00002.HTM
>
> -=-
>
> The best candidates for language families having a close relationship with
> Austronesian ones are probably to be drawn from the Thai-Kadai and
> Austroasiatic groups, and perhaps with Miao-Yiao.
>
> http://www.lexicon.net/opoudjis/Work/Oceanic_guide.html
>
Ross Clark
>
> Brian M. Scott (sc...@math.csuohio.edu) wrote on Mon, 22 Feb 1999 12:06:21 -0500:
> : Yuri Kuchinsky wrote to Doug Weller:
>
> : > No, I don't really think you're antisemitic. But I must say, I've wondered
> : > sometimes... Indeed, why have you always been so biased against the
> : > Hittites?
>
> : I hate to perpetuate this contemptible slur, but it should be pointed
> : out that Hittite is an Indo-European language, not a Semitic one.
>
> off the hook. Because what about all the other _semitic-speaking_ peoples
> of ANE? According to Doug, it was TOTALLY BEYOND THEM to contribute
> ANYTHING to any other civilization of the world that was relatively
> distant from them. He just dismisses any possibility of this off-hand.
> This sure sounds a little antisemitic to me...
>
Yuri, this achieves a new synergy of stupidity and viciousness that I
can't remember having seen from you before. Are you sure you're not
getting help?
Ross Clark
Ross Clark
Quite right. *TANGATA is usually sex-neutral "person", but in some
languages, thanks to a universal gender-tilt tendency, comes to mean
"man", "husband", etc. *TA'ANE is specifically "male".
The final -TA is unrelated, I think. *TANGATA is reconstructible to Proto
Malayo Polynesian as *TAU-MATAQ, but I can't remember what the MATAQ
element is supposed to mean.
The Tongan TAHA is just the numeral "one".
TA is a pretty common syllable, after all.
Ross Clark
Ross Clark
>
> >(Brian M. Scott)
> >Message-id: <36d2f018...@news.csuohio.edu>
> >
> >On 23 Feb 1999 07:26:33 GMT, gkeye...@aol.com (GKeyes6988) wrote:
> >
> >>MAN, MALE
> >
> >>Rapa Nui TANGATA
> >>Tongan TANGATA
> >> PPN *TA?ANE
> >
> >>West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
> >>East Fijian TANGATA
> >
> >>Rotuman FAA
> >
> >This is F < MW, AA < AQA?
No, it's probably another version of our *TA(U), since Rotuman /f/
regularly reflects Oceanic *t.
> >
> >>Kwamera IERMAN
> >
> >Is this the same word with a new prefix?
>
> My guess is no. There is another word, IAKwEIN, that looks more likely cognate
> to me. It's not the main term in Tryon, but given in a footnote because it is
> less often used.
I'll go with Brian's guess on this one, Greg. I don't have the materials
here to check, but I'm pretty sure IERMAN is from something like
*ATAMWA'ANE, somewhat scrunched by the high-powered sound changes in
South Vanuatu languages.
Ross Clark
Harlan Messinger
>Harlan Messinger wrote:
>>
>> Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
>> >'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
>> >from the seacoast of Bohemia'
>>
>> "Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
>
>It's Shakespeare.
>
>What pun?
Robber Czechs.
--
Harlan Messinger
There are no Zs in my actual e-mail address.
Harlan Messinger
transcript of a perhaps relevant Monty Python sketch.
GKeyes6988
>> >>Kwamera IERMAN
>> >
(Brian Scott)
>> >Is this the same word with a new prefix?
(Greg)
>> My guess is no. There is another word, IAKwEIN, that looks more likely
>cognate
>> to me. It's not the main term in Tryon, but given in a footnote because it
>is
>> less often used.
Ross
>I'll go with Brian's guess on this one, Greg. I don't have the materials
>here to check, but I'm pretty sure IERMAN is from something like
>*ATAMWA'ANE, somewhat scrunched by the high-powered sound changes in
>South Vanuatu languages.
Ah-hah. Go a little north to Lewo and we get.
Lewo YERIMwENE. Thanks, Ross.
Which brings up an interesting point regarding Yuri's current belief that this
lexical resemblance must have to do with massive borrowing. Sandwiched
between
Lewo YERIMwENE
and
Kwamera IERMAN
We find
Lewo YERIMwENE
Mele-Fila TAANE
Kwamera IERMAN
Mele-Fila is one of the Polynesian outliers, formed by back-settlement that
Ross mentioned elswhere. The other inhabitants of southern Vanuatu clearly
didn't borrow their term for "Man" from Polynesian, but the terms are still
related -- at the level of Proto-Oceanic.
-- Greg Keyes
GKeyes6988
<snip>
> I'll take your word for it, Brian. But this still doesn't quite get Doug
> off the hook. Because what about all the other _semitic-speaking_ peoples
> of ANE? According to Doug, it was TOTALLY BEYOND THEM to contribute
> ANYTHING to any other civilization of the world that was relatively
> distant from them. He just dismisses any possibility of this off-hand.
> This sure sounds a little antisemitic to me...
<snip>
Yuri, you're getting sicker, or at the very least losing control.
-- Greg Keyes
GKeyes6988
"SEA, WATER OF THE SEA"
Polynesian:
Tongan TAHI
Samoan TAI
Hawa'ain KAI
Tahitian TAI
PPN * TAHI
Other Oceanic
East Fijian WAITUI
Rotuman SeSI
Raga TAHI
Kwamera NTHEI (TeSI, "ocean")
Kwaio ASI
Kiribati TAARI
Marshallese LOCeT
Panopaean SEET
Tolai TAA
Motu DAvARA
Dami MAI
Kilivala BOLITA
Woleaian SATI, TATI
POC *TASIK
Other Austronesian:
Atayal VARU
Rukai BAYO
Indonesian LAUT
Sundanese LAUT
Roti TASI
Da'a TASI
Isnag BEBAY
Malagasy RANU-MASINA
Uma TAHI?
But also terms like Malay TASIK, "Lake"
PAN *TASIK, salt water
(NW Coast)
Kwakw'ala ( no term.) DEMXI (saltwater)
DZELALH (Lake)
Puget Salish XweLCH (sea, ocean,
sound, saltwater)
(DXwLeshucid) XACHU (lake)
Comments.
Pretty important term for deep- seafaring people.
Some of the Oceanic terms are from a different root, POC* SASI, "ocean", but
the Polynesian terms go straight back to Proto-Austronesian *TASIK.
It seems odd that Kwakw'ala and Salish don't have distinct terms for ocean,
sea, saltwater, Sound etc. I'm not sure I believe it. The Polynesian
languages generally make the distinction -- for instance, Tongan TAHI (sea)
MOANA (ocean) KOOMAKI (bay). This may be a deficit in my sources -- perhaps
someone with different lexicons for these languages can find better terms.
References:
Grubb, David
1977 A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA. National
Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service paper # 34.
Hess, Thom
1976 DICTIONARY OF PUGET SALISH. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Marck, Jeff
1994 "Proto Micronesian Words for the Physical Environment"
(in)
Pawley, A.K. and M.D. Ross, eds.
1994 AUSTRONESIAN TERMINOLOGIES: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE. Pacific Linguistics
Series C -127. The Australian National University.
Tryon, Darrell T. ed.
1995 COMPARATIVE AUSTRONESIAN DICTIONARY: AN INTRODUCTION TO AUSTRONESIAN
STUDIES. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
GKeyes6988
<kat...@pop.enteract.com>
>Date: 2/24/99 0:58 AM EST
>Message-id: <36D395...@pop.enteract.com>
>
>Rodger Whitlock wrote:
>>
>> "Harlan Messinger" <hmess...@ZZZerols.comZZZ> wrote:
>> >Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
>> >>'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
>> >>from the seacoast of Bohemia'
>> >
>> >"Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
>>
>> Shhhh! Don't spill the beans to you-know-who. If you do, we will all miss
>> a dissertation on the stylistic resemblances of Bohemian sea-going canoes
>> to those of the Northwest coast. We might even get a squib on why the use
>> of similar diacritics for writing the Czech and Northwest coast languages
>> is sure evidence for prehistoric contact. To say nothing of the amazing
>> fact that both Hawaiian and Czech use vowels and consonants.
>>
>> --
>> Rodger Whitlock
>
>
>You've just given Yuri ten more years of library research!
Unless he changes his research strategies, this would involve him reading and
re-reading the same two or three books for ten years.
-- Greg Keyes
Justin Time
Catch you latex?
Justin Time
Peter T. Daniels
> >>
> >> Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
> >> >'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
> >> >from the seacoast of Bohemia'
> >>
> >> "Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
> >
> >
> >What pun?
>
> Robber Czechs.
Good grief. A pun not one of whose components was explicit.
Yuri Kuchinsky
: Yuri Kuchinsky wrote:
: > So you think this is not a real dispute, Paul? Well this shows where
: > you're coming from, I guess...
: The "dispute" seems to be that Yuri claims to be saying something, but no one
: else has been able to figure out what that might be.
Well, I have two kinds of critics in this thread, it seems. Some (group A)
say that I'm making all kinds of outrageous and unsupported claims. The
others (group B) are saying I'm not making any specific discernible
claims. I guess the former refute the latter (and vice versa)?
Here are my claims again, BTW. I wonder how you could have missed them,
Mike?
1. Some Austronesian connections may exist on the NW Coast;
2. Some linguistic contact seemed to exist between NW Coast and Polynesia.
: > True. But who's said anything about "proving" anything? Comprehension
: > problems? You too?
: So, if you're not interested in proving anything, what are you interested in?
Obviously you belong to Group B.
: The alternative seems to be that you are just interested in letting your mind
: wander and then recording its wanderings for the amusement of the denizens of
: various newsgroups. But your ideas really aren't that amusing.
Ad hominems.
: (Have you considered that if not a single person can comprehend what you are
: saying, then perhaps the communications failure is due to your inability to
: express yourself clearly? On a purely statistical basis, you'd think that at
: least one person would be able to figure out what it is that you are trying to do.)
No, you simply missed what I've stated repeatedly and quite clearly (see
above). Perhaps a remedial reading course may help?
: > I've offered a tentative hypothesis. Is this not allowed?
: "Tentative hypothesis" seems to mean "guess". Anyone may guess. However, in
: order to have one's guess taken seriously, one must show the reasoning behind
: that guess.
Done already. Check in dejanews.
: And such a guess is only a starting point.
Yes.
: Evidence must be
: accumulated and shown to support the guess. If you just want to offer a
: tentative hypothesis, but do not want to support it, then why should anyone else
: be interested in it?
Plentiful support is available in the sources I've cited. I've posted some
samples in sci.lang already.
: On sci.lang, readers tend to be interested in languages and linguistics. You
: have demonstrated no knowledge of either.
I feel no need to demonstrate anything to the likes of you. Myself, I'm
confindent in my linguistic abilities and competence.
: Your only talent seems to be to make
: wild guesses based on outdated materials.
Ad hominems.
: > The blinkered state of these linguists is quite remarkable. Don't you
: > people have any clue about the proper methodology? Don't you have any idea
: > about all the work going on now with identifying _possible relationships_
: > of Austronesian with a number of other languages that were often
: > overlooked previously? Such as Japanese, Ainu, Thai, etc.?
: And is this work not being conducted by linguists? Are they not following the
: kinds of procedures that the linguists on this list keep recommending to you?
And I'm saying many linguists have also been lacking in some other areas.
: What is your idea of "the proper methodology"?
Groups A and B are both wrong.
: Does it consist of anything
: beyond fielding a "tentative hypothesis"?
Yes.
: > Well here's some reading for you then. All this has been turned up from a
: > very brief perusal of the Net.
: >
: > Please note the frequent use of such expressions as "probably", "suggests
: > a paradigm", "possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN", "The best candidates for
: > ...", etc. And enjoy.
: Do you not think that these suggestions are based on actual field research? Do
: suppose that these suggestions are not based on actual knowledge of the
: languages being considered?
Do you suppose the earth rotates around the sun?
: > MURAYAMA Nanarou has written that there appears a positive sign in
: > successfully establishing comparative language study between Ainu language
: > and Austronesian languages. He suggests a paradigm that an ancient
: > Japanese language was spoken widely on Japanese islands, and that later
: > these people were separated -- pushed towards south west and north east by
: > a continental [Altaic-speaking] peoples invading through Kyushu. [grammar
: > corrected]
: >
: > http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage1.htm
: >
: > -=-
: >
: > More about the work of Murayama, and related work of Russian linguists:
: >
: > http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10a.htm
: >
: > http://humanities.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/ainu.htm
: You can read more about some of Murayama's ideas about the Japanese language, as
: well as those of some who agreed and disagreed with him in Masayoshi SHIBATANI's
: _The Languages of Japan_ (Cambridge, 1990-94). (It appears, BTW, that Murayama
: preferred to romanize his given name as "Shichiro", rather than as "Nanarou".
: Also, his work is not "going on now", as he died in 1995.)
Well, you see, you can contribute something positive too, if you try.
: As far as Ainu is concerned, Shibatani says (page 5): "In terms of genetic
: classification, Ainu is best described as a language-isolate. Although various
: suggestions have been made relating Ainu to such language families as
: Paleo-Asiatic, Ural-Altaic, and Malyo-Polynesian, or to individual languages
: such as Gilyak, Eskimo, and Japanese, none of them have progressed beyond the
: level of speculation."
But he may be wrong?
: The site at
: http://www3.alpha-net.or.jp/users/gens/epage10b.htm doesn't discuss Murayama's
: views on the relationship between the Ainu and Japanese languages (in Murayama's
: 1992 book, _Origin of Ainu Language_).
Is this comment relevant to anything? Did I mention this file before? I
don't think so.
: So, what we have here is the suggestion for a starting point of research.
: Murayama thought it likely that Ainu is Austronesian, and that it forms a
: substratum upon which a later Altaic superstratum was imposed. It is obvious
: that a lot of research will have to be conducted. It is also obvious that there
: is no way of tellling in advance whether such research will confirm Murayama's
: hypothesis or not. Whether anyone actually conducts such research will depend on
: how convincing Murayama's evidence is.
Thanks for saying the obvious.
: > From sci.lang FAQ:
: >
: > TAI-KADAI: Thai, Lao, and other languages of southern China and
: > northern Burma. Possibly related to AUSTRONESIAN.
: >
: > http://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/studi-cd/ZUSATZ/FAQS/SCI/MSG00002.HTM
: So, do you suppose that someone would leap into a research project simply on the
: basis of that entry in the FAQ?
Doh!
No, actually the FAQ is written on the basis of some research that I'm
sure already exists! Cart before the horse?
: It's really difficult to understand the point of all this. Are you trying to
: show that your own speculations are worthy of attention because some linguists
: make speculations?
You're clued out. What I've posted was far more than speculations. Among
other things, I've posted refs to detailed research by respected scholars.
The stuff that everyone missed before I brought it up. I suppose there's
no value in this? Those blinkers must be really getting in your way...
Regards,
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku -=O=- Toronto
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill
Yuri Kuchinsky
: You've just given Yuri ten more years of library research!
There's no value in library research! That's why Catherine mostly does her
research Psychically?
Yuri.
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
-- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
Jiri Mruzek
So does Tiahuanaco! Alas, both coasts are
now buried under a tidal wave of solid earth.
Jiri
GKeyes6988 wrote:
>
> > Catherine Law wrote:
>
> <kat...@pop.enteract.com>
> >Date: 2/24/99 0:58 AM EST
> >Message-id: <36D395...@pop.enteract.com>
> >
> >Rodger Whitlock wrote:
> >>
> >> "Harlan Messinger" <hmess...@ZZZerols.comZZZ> wrote:
> >> >Brian M. Scott wrote in message <36d2ea85...@news.csuohio.edu>...
> >> >>'Hawai'i was originally settled by pirates [*]
> >> >>from the seacoast of Bohemia'
> >> >
> >> >"Seacoast of Bohemia"? (pun notwithstanding!)
> >>
> >> Shhhh! Don't spill the beans to you-know-who. If you do, we will all miss
> >> a dissertation on the stylistic resemblances of Bohemian sea-going canoes
> >> to those of the Northwest coast. We might even get a squib on why the use
> >> of similar diacritics for writing the Czech and Northwest coast languages
> >> is sure evidence for prehistoric contact. To say nothing of the amazing
> >> fact that both Hawaiian and Czech use vowels and consonants.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Rodger Whitlock
> >
> >
> >You've just given Yuri ten more years of library research!
>
Yuri Kuchinsky
You seem to be embarked on a new and very ambitious linguistic project of
some sort. I know it must be taking plenty of your time, but perhaps at
some point you may wish to explain what exactly your objectives in this
area may be? Do you have any specific clear purpose in all this, or are
you just following your Psychic Intuition towards some Unknown and
Mysterious Goal?
Regards,
Yuri.
On 23 Feb 1999 07:26:33 GMT, gkeye...@aol.com (GKeyes6988) wrote:
>MAN, MALE
>Rapa Nui TANGATA
>Tongan TANGATA
> PPN *TA?ANE
>West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
>East Fijian TANGATA
>Rotuman FAA
[snip]
Yuri Kuchinsky -=O=- http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku -=O=- Toronto
Most of the evils of life arise from man's being
unable to sit still in a room || B. Pascal
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Kuchinsky) wrote:
>Myself, I'm
>confindent in my linguistic abilities and competence.
Of course you are. But it's not really for you to decide.
We have no doubts about the extent of your linguistic abilities
and competence either.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
m...@wxs.nl
Amsterdam
GKeyes6988
I'm updating these first three to include Tsimishian.
>AUSTRONESIAN WORD OF THE DAY.
>
>"STONE OVEN, EARTH OVEN"
>
>Polynesian:
>
>Tongan ?UMU
>Samoan UMU
>Hawa'ain IMU, UMU
>Tahitian UMU
>PPN *QUMU
>
>Other Oceanic
>
>
>East Fijian LoVo (1)
>Rotuman KOUA
>Raga ------
>Kwamera NUMUN (2)
>Kwaio UMU
>Kiribati TE UM
>Marshallese UMw
>Panopaean UUMw
>Tolai UBU
>Motu AMU
>Dami ------
>Kilivala KUMKUMLA
>Woleaian UMwU
>
>POC *QUMUN
>
>Other Austronesian:
>
>Atayal lhUPUNG
>Rukai TAGAGENe
>Indonesian TUNGKU
>Sundanese HAWU
>Roti LA?O
>Da'a -----
>Isnag -----
>Malagasy LAUFAURA (from French)
>
>(NW Coast)
>Kwakw'ala K?EBUDE?AS (Looks like this is from K?EBUD, "to bake, roast".)
>
>Puget Salish (NO WORD IN DICTIONARY)
>(DXwLeshucid)
Coast Tsimshian (No word), but:
(Sm'lagyax)
UUT, UUD
(to bake on hot stones or embers)
>Comments:
>I have to admit I picked this one because it has to do with on of Heyerdahl's
>assertions about Polynesians. He supposed that since Polynesians had earth
>ovens -- and by his accounting the peoples of Melanesia didn't -- they (the
>Polynesians) must have come from somewhere other than Near Oceania. Of
>course,
>this isn't actually true -- earth ovens are present in Western Oceania, as
>well
>as in Lapita sites. In fact, in New Ireland they predate Lapita considerably
>(Kirch 213).
>
>As can be seen from the above list, in Oceania, whether "earth oven" or
>"stone
>oven", the term is the same and well attested.
>
>The "other Austronesian" list is a sampling. I don't see any obvious
>cognates
>(with the pissible exception of Sundanese HAWU, which looks a little strange
>to
>me), but will be happy to be corrected.
>
>(1). The V here represents a voiced bilabial fricative, something like
>Castilian "V".
>(2) The initial N is a fossilized article (Lichtenberk:270)
>
>References:
>
>Grubb, David
>1977 A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA. National
>Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service paper # 34.
>
>Hess, Thom
>1976 DICTIONARY OF PUGET SALISH. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
>
>Kirch, Patrick Vinton
>1997 THE LAPITA PEOPLES. Blackwell Publishers.
>
>Lichtenberk, Frantisek "The Raw and the Cooked: Proto-Oceanic Terms for Food
>Preparation.
>(in)
>Pawley, A.K. and M.D. Ross, eds.
>1994 AUSTRONESIAN TERMINOLOGIES: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE. Pacific Linguistics
>Series C -127. The Australian National University.
>
>Tryon, Darrell T. ed.
>1995 COMPARATIVE AUSTRONESIAN DICTIONARY: AN INTRODUCTION TO AUSTRONESIAN
>STUDIES. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter
Dunn, John Asher
1978,1995 SM'ALAGYAX: A REFERENCE DICTINARY AND GRAMMAR OF THE COAST TSIMSHIAN
LANGUAGE.
GKeyes6988
>
>MAN, MALE
>
>(Polyesian)
>Hawaiian KANE
>Rapa Nui TANGATA
>Tahitian TAANE
>Mele Fila TAANE
>Tahitian TAANE
>Tongan TANGATA
> PPN *TA?ANE
>
>Other Oceanic
>
>West Fijian TAMATA -THOLA
>East Fijian TANGATA
>Rotuman FAA
>Raga ATAMwANI
>Kwamera IERMAN
>Kwaio WANE
>Kiribati TE MMwAANE
>Marshallese MAE
>Panopaean OOL
>Tolai TUTANe
>Motu TAU
>Dami TAMO
>Kilivala TAU
>Woleaian MwARE
>Takia TAMOL
>
>POC MWAQANE, TA(U) - MWAQANE
>
>Other Austronesian:
>
>Atayal MAMALHIKU
>Rukai SAOVALAY
>Indonesian LAKI-LAKI
>Sundanese LALAKI
>Roti TOU-K
>Da'a LAngGI
>Isnag LALAAKI
>Malagasy LEHILAHI
>Uma TO-MANE
>
>
>(NW Coast)
>
>Kwakw'ala BEGWANEM
>
>Puget Salish S.TUBSH
>(DXwLeshucid)
Coast Tsimshian 'YUUTA, YIK'YUUTA, (Sm'algyax)
GYET, GYED,GYIKGYET
>Comments: Long-time followers of these threads will see the significance of
>this one. Aside from being the word for "Man, Male" this is also the name of
>a
>Polynesian deity.
>
>Thanks to Ross Clark for the Proto-Oceanic term. The *Ta(u) prefix
>probably
>meant "person".
>
>
>General note RE Yuri's response to the last word, OVEN: If the only response
>to these lists are "it ain't so" or "this means nothing", I see no point in
>replying. Those informed in linguistics will see the point exactly -- most
>of
>those who aren't will too. Any COGENT criticism or questions will be
>addressed.
>
>I do intend to add more NW coast languages when I get the lexicons -- despite
>Yuri's protestations, I did cite forms form two of Hill-Touts favorites last
>time, and I do so again. Yuri will doubtless play hide-the-language forever,
>but HT thought these languages were related to Austronesian ones -- well,
>they
>are or they aren't. Meanwhile, anyone interested is obviously free to add
>whatever languages they want, including Yuri, who seems to want credit for
>"looking" for Austronesian languages on the NW coast but as yet hasn't shown
>that he can do anything other than cite antique documents where the
>comparisons
>were already made for him. What's so odd is that I'm providing him with just
>the sort of word lists he needs to prove his thesis -- in fact, I offered to
>take requests. All Yuri (or anyone else) need do is go out and find the NW
>coast words I haven't provided. Odd how he wants me to do ALL of his
>footwork
>rather than just most of it. But I suspect that's one of his major reasons
>for
>posting to these NGs -- laziness. We'll know we when we see the book ,
>won't
>we? Assuming we do see it.
>
>By the way -- and this goes for all of my posts -- fair use on the internet
>is
>one thing. Citing me without permission (or plagiarizing me without citing
>me,
>which Yuri has done here a time or two) in a published book is another. My
>literary agent takes a dim view of this. In any event, in this instance, I
>advise going to my sources, as I often have to use makeshift orthography, and
>a
>late-night mistake (Kwamera for Kwaio, or something like that) is far from an
>impossibility. Anyway, you should always check sources, as our continuing
>examination of Heyerdahl has shown pretty clearly.
>
>
>References:
>
>Grubb, David
>1977 A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA. National
>Museum of Man Mercury Series. Canadian Ethnology Service paper # 34.
>
>Hess, Thom
>1976 DICTIONARY OF PUGET SALISH. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
>