Re: poly: Archaeology of Language

tcmay@got.net writes:

>The AHD has pioneered in eschewing tradtional Latin/Greek etymologies in
>favor of probable PIE origins. This makes much clearer the origins and
>cognates of words which traditionally are given with their Latin or Greek
>roots, but which are also present in cognate form in the Germanic languages
>(including Dutch, Norse, Celtic, English, Frisian, and so on). Many of our
>common words have direct lineage to PIE, not Latin or Greek.

That could really help lay knowledge of linguistics if people would only
read those sections :-/ I must say, though, that derivations from Proto-
Indo-European can be really obscure at times.

>I apologize that this has little to do with the Great Ideas of
>transcendence, the Omega Point, and Manifestations of the Singularity,
>but, hey, we polymaths have a lot of interests, right?

Indeed. I was *so* fascinated as a child when I discovered there
were other families besides Indo-European. The idea of the linguistic
connection between various human groups fascinated me. I was further
entranced recently when they revealed that the trees of human language
and human genes were in close accord.

What's your opinion on higher-level groupings of languages such as
Nostratic and Amerind?
Received on Tue Dec 9 07:10:04 1997