Piorokrat wrote:
> news:sblb101kdfsqj3uuji1p2jrfs1j96v3hlu@4ax.com...
>> In <buuke4$o53$0@pita.alt.net>, "Uncle Davey"
>> <noway@jose.com> wrote:
>>>> How tall would the Tower of Babel have been if it had
>>>> been completed? (Note: I recommend you use the
>>>> archaeological record to justify your answer.)
>>> This is a mere irrelevance. Kindly posit a common ancestor
>>> of Indo European and Finno-Ugric.
>> And thus we see the Uncle Davey method of argumentation in
>> all its glory: He must assign others arguments to defend
>> (whether they assert them or not), but he himself need never
>> defend anything.
> Nice try, Jack, but I'm afraid unless you can show me what the
> common ancestor between Finno-Ugric and INdo-European, then
> evolution doesn't apply to the origins of these language
> families.
Rubbish. Our inability to reconstruct a common ancestor of FU
and IE, or even to prove that one existed, does not imply that
they had none. You carefully avoid mentioning the other
possibility, favored by most historical linguists, that the
families have diverged beyond the reach of current techniques.
You also confuse monogenesis with evolution. Evolution of
language is a demonstrable fact; it's especially clear within IE,
thanks to the existence of a relatively long written record.
Monogenesis is not demonstrable (unless you're a nutcase like
Ruhlen), though I suspect that a majority of linguists think it
likely.
[...]
Brian
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