Philip Lieberman/Neanderthal Speech - sci.lang

Viesti keskustelusta Philip Lieberman/Neanderthal Speech

Paul L. Allen

Lisäasetukset 5 tammi 1999, 10:00

Uutisryhmät: sci.lang

Lähettäjä: p...@sktb.demon.co.uk (Paul L. Allen)

Päivämäärä: 1999/01/05

Aihe: Re: Philip Lieberman/Neanderthal Speech

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In article <36924126.39608...@montclair.edu>
"H.M.Hubey" <hub...@montclair.edu> writes:

> b_m_sc...@my-dejanews.com wrote:

> > Are you sure that you understand what you originally wrote? Your
> > assertion that certain Neanderthal characteristics are still
> > recognizable in Kabardian and San *is* an assertion about how much - or
> > rather, how little - these languages have changed. You've defined a
> > binary measure of degree of change: little enough that we can detect
> > characteristics of such-and-so age, or enough that we cannot.

> This is getting beyond reason.

Indeed. You seem to be a renaissance fuckwit - equally ignorant in
many specialities.

> If two languages arose independently and at random the cross-correlation
> should be zero.

This is, of course, total shite (as we've come to expect). If two languages
arose independently at random then they will almost certainly share some
characteristics by pure chance. That's the nature of random distributions.

> IF there is any correlation at all, it indicates a nonrandomness.

This is still total shite.

> There is not much more to say.

Actually, there is. Even if two languages arose independently and somehow
the dice fell so that they had no correlation whatsoever (a very implausible
event) then they could still gain some correlation through interaction -
either directly or through a third party.

> If Neandertal speech was poor in vowels

If. It's a big if.

> and there are languages which are poor in vowels that could easily be
> considered correlation.

No, you clueless fuckwit, that could easily be considered *coincidence*.
You need a lot more than just that to establish a linguistic relationship.

> IC is what Gell-Mann calls "frozen accidents".

Gell-Mann, the well known linguist. Of course, he's obviously crap at
physics because Peter T. Daniels has a much better theory about quarks and
boson interaction. Or maybe it was bosun interactions (I can't remember if
he likes sailors or not). Gell-Mann has a good ear, is a good mimic and
has made a hobby of linguistics. His nobel prize is in a *different*
field - the one which is his profession and in which he's an acknowledged
expert.

> One way to deal with this is via the Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov methods.
> ONe obtains a partial differential equation for the probability density
> of the process. IT is of the diffusive type so one can easily imagine
> this process taking place in a high dimensional space, resembling a kind
> of fluid flow.

You can imagine all you like. But to get anyone here to believe you,
you'll first have to show that your model is both credible and matches
known data. It looks very much to me like you've invented a model and
now you're busy trying to force the data to fit. In fact, you appear
to be an archetypal net kook. Perhaps you'd care to discuss your theories
with Archimedes Plutonium - I'm sure you two would get on well together.

Then maybe you could learn how to drive your newsreader so you don't
double-space everything when you post.

--Paul

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