On Friday, April 15, 2022 at 3:21:48 PM UTC-7, Arnaud Fournet wrote:
> For those of you who hate Academia.edu:
> 0. Why Copernicus ?
>
> Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) is well-known for initiating a conceptual change in the modelization of the Solar system and, more generally, of the Universe. The Copernican model displaced the geocentric paradigm of Ptolemy, which had prevailed for centuries and initially placed the Earth at the center of the Universe. Copernican heliocentrism was developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and was first published in 1543. It established that Planet Earth was not the center around which the other celestial bodies were rotating, but that the Sun was the center of the Solar system, around which the planets – including the Earth – were rotating.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism
>
> In other words, Copernicus established that the Earth was neither the center of the Universe nor the center of the Solar system. His model was a breakaway from the previous premises embedded in the geocentric model of Ptolemy.
> In my billets d’humeur, I usually tackle concrete issues about a particular (proto)language, family or theory.
> In my Linguistic Chronicles of Copernicus, I will explain what macro-comparative endeavors should be or do and I will describe what historical and comparative linguistics in the 21st century should get rid of.
> 1. What to get rid of (urgently)
>
> 1. To oversimplify, there are two major schools currently working on Nostratic issues: (1) The American school with Joseph Greenberg (1915–2001) and Allan R. Bomhard, (2) the Russian school – aka the Starostin Circus – with [the Russian] Sergei Anatolyević Starostin (1953–2005) and [the American] John D. Bengtson, among many others. I am possibly my own third school, but for the time being, sum vox clamantis in semi-deserto. Another free electron is Václav Blažek. Another interesting figure might be Vitali Viktorović Ševoroškin.
> By an oddly improvized international Division of Labor, the American school tends to work mostly on Indo-European and its putative close relatives. Greenberg’s Eurasiatic and Bomhard’s “Nostratic” are basically extended Indo-European, even though Bomhard does not like my description of his “Nostratic” as being extended Indo-European (see below). On the other hand, the Russian school tends to work mostly on the lump of languages called Sino-NaDene-Caucasic. This Division of Labor is an over-simplication of reality, as Greenberg also worked on Amerindian and “Indo-Pacific” languages, while the Russian school produces papers, wordlists and monographs on a large variety of languages (African, etc). It can also be noted that Roger M. Blench produces sketches on lesser-known and endangered languages from Africa or India. Needless to emphasize that all these descriptive works (either by Blench or the Starostin Circus) are highly precious.
>
> 2. On the whole, the American and Russian schools agree on a number of toxic idiocies. The worst of these toxic idiocies is the notion that NE Caucasic (i.e Nakh-Daghestan) would not be related to Indo-European, its neighbor, but would allegedly be more closely related to (far-away) Sino-Tibetan. This toxic idiocy must urgently be dismissed.
> Among other objections, it must be underlined that Sino-Tibetan is not a clear and valid genetic node, in the first place. Needless to say that grafting more groups like NE Caucasic onto a probably invalid ST lump does not help.
> Quite clearly, Basque and NE Caucasic are closely related, as is shown by Bengtson (2017) – be it more or less adequately et avec plus ou moins de bonheur... – but the fact is no less clear that Euskaro-Caucasic is more closely related to IEan than to (far-away) Sino-Tibetan. Let’s put it simple: the Sino-NaDene-Caucasic lump is demented garbage..
> There are certainly several reasons why the relationship of IEan and Euskaro-Caucasic is not correctly recognized.
> The first obstacle is that Caucasology per se is not an easy field to get acquainted with and necessitates to speak or at least be able to read several languages (like Russian, German, etc). Besides, the reference work on Caucasic (NE+NW) – produced by S. Starostin and Nikolayev (Севернокавказский этимологический словарь, A Comparative Dictionary of North Caucasian Languages 1994) – is far from being reliable, especially as regards the reconstructions, which can be described as wildly overcreative, to remain polite. We can nevertheless be grateful that the materials are available and searchable at Starling.ru.
>
> 3. Another toxic idiocy, on which the American and Russian schools agree, is the number of series of stops posited for Nostratic. Even though they bicker about the phonetic nature of the series, they agree that the number should be three. I emphatically assert that this figure is doubtless false. Nostratic had two series: presumably a voiceless series and a voiced series.. The glottalized series is a fiction. For that matter, the model of “Nostratic” proposed by Bomhard is flawed from the start. Many of his proposed sets of comparanda are false, and what is worse, many potential cognates are missing. On the whole, the most acceptable data in Bomhard are those involving voiceless (his th) and voiced (his dh) stops, plus liquids or nasals, and to a lesser extent laryngeals. One reason I describe Bomhard’s “Nostratic” as being extended Indo-European is that he erroneously projects the three series of PIE onto an extended perimeter of languages. This procedure is false, as I already criticized in 2010.
> https://diachronica.pagesperso-orange.fr/TMCJ_vol_1.1_Fournet_Review_of_Bomhard_2008.pdf
> “Nostratic” as proposed by Bomhard or the Starostin Circus can be described as a dislocated Indo-Europeo-centric paradigm. It contains two major and irremediable flaws: three series, retroprojected from PIE, and the gap between Caucasic and IEan. This dislocated Indo-Europeo-centric paradigm is worse than Ptolemy’s geocentric model, because the latter did not propose a dislocated world. Removing these two major flaws is the Copernican revolution I propose and will implement, hopefully with the help of other linguists.
>
> 4. True enough, several groups currently have three series of consonants (or more). But the fact is each group (IEan, Kartvelian, NE Caucasic, etc.) developped additional series – each group on its own – out of a more simple state of language, that had only two series. One of the urgent tasks of macrocomparison is to elucidate and describe how the additional series emerged in each group of Nostratic. Once this is done (presumably I’ll do it in the coming months or years), the relationship of IEan with NE Caucasic will become crystal clear.
>
> 5. Another toxic idiocy that cripples macrocomparison is the myth or dogma that, after some time, say 5,000 or 10,000 years, macrocomparison would allegedly become impossible. This dogma, propagandized by obscurantist nihilist shitheads, like Lyle Campbell or Alexander Vovin, is just plainly false.. They have no expertise nor experience in macrocomparison. Don’t expect a marxist to explain Latin mass.
>
> 6. Another toxic idiocy is the creationist isolationist bunker, in which the Indo-Europeanist crooks claim PIE has no close nor distant relatives, no ancestors, and Indo-European languages spread in a vacuum, having no substrates. This cryptonazi indo-germanisch myth must be eliminated.
> 2. What to get rid of (slowly)
>
> 7. It can be observed – en passant – that promoters of a connection between Burušaski and Yenisseian, like Bengtson or Blažek, have never published a side-by-side basic wordlist of both groups. As a matter of fact, both groups share about nothing. The inclusion of Yenisseian in Euskaro-Caucasic is highly dubious.
>
> 8. Another problem is Pronominal Fetichism, especially the MeTu myth, on which Greenberg’s Eurasiatic is based to a large extent. IEan is not a Siberian agglutinative language. For that matter, it has nothing to do with languages of the Ural-Altaic type. The MeTu myth is to a large extent a pareidolic delusion. Needless to say that there is nothing good to expect from the maximally head-shrunken wordlist: me, tu, one, two, three, dog, salt, à la Starostin-Yakhontov.
>
> 9. To some extent, basic wordlists are an issue, especially when used in the most idiotic way, as the head-shrinking Starostin Circus routinely does.. Basic wordlists should be used for comparative purposes, not for unreliable glottochronological calculations. It is just wondrous that the Starostin Circus calculates a 6,000 year distance between Hurrito-Urartian and NE Caucasic languages, when Hurrito-Urartian is not a member of NE Caucasic in the first place.
>
> 10. A reliable laryngeal-oriented reconstruction of Proto-Uralic is in urgent need. Regrettably the most competent Uralicists stick to a retarded vowel-oriented Pokornyan format. Besides, one needs to understand why Samoyedic shares only 250 words with Finno-Ugric. This is unbelievably low. I suspect that a number of metatheses occurred in Finno-Ugric that blur cognacy, with both Samoyedic and Nostratic. For example, (only FU) *walk- is possibly from *lawk- ‘white’, or (only FU) *witti ‘five’ from *tiw-ti ‘the big (thumb)’, or (only FU) *wed- ‘to kill’ from *dhew- ‘to die’. The *CvW- pattern underwent metathesis in FU, certainly, some other patterns also did. I expect the number of shared cognates will increase, once the metatheses in FU have been described.
>
> To summarize, the Copernican prerequisites for Nostratic studies are:
>
> - dismiss the toxic idiocy that NE Caucasic (i.e Nakh-Daghestan) would not be related to Indo-European, its neighbor, but would allegedly be more closely related to (far-away) Sino-Tibetan.
> - dismiss the toxic idiocy that Nostratic would have three series of stops, instead of two (as I propose).
> - elucidate the phonetics paths of each group, out of a simple state of language, that had only two series.
> - dismiss Pronominal Fetichism, especially the MeTu myth.
> - dismiss the dogma that only shallow-dating comparisons are possible.
> - ignore obscurantist nihilist shitheads, like Lyle Campbell or Alexander Vovin.
>
>
>  
> 3. A few definitions
>
> PIXA : Proto-Exo-African. According to archeology and paleoanthropology, some 60-50,000 years ago, “modern” man stepped out of Africa and began to spread in Eurasia and beyond. At present, it is not possible to determine if PIXA was a single language, or if there is more than one PIXA, for example PIXA1 would have crossed the Sinai and PIXA2 would have crossed the Red Sea and reached the south of the Arabic Peninsula. The parsimonious hypothesis is that there is only one PIXA.
> It is unclear at this point how many branches PIXA has. Two clear branches are Post-Rhotic and NW Pre-Rhotic.
>
> Nostratic : a broad synonym for “Proto-World”. PIXA is technically more precise, for non-African languages.
> Nostratic has at least two branches: PIXA and PENA (= Proto-Endo-African). It is unclear at this point how many branches of PENA exist. Chamito-Semitic (or Afrasian) is one of them.
>
> PIE : Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of Post-Anatolian and Anatolian languages.
> IPS : Improved Proto-Sanskrit, the great-daughter of PIE, fraudulently sold as being PIE by the Indo-Europeanist crooks.
>
> Post-Rhotic : at some point, inherited *-s- changed to -r-, word-medially and word-finally in the prehistory of PIE. This group includes PIE, Hurrito-Urartian and Sumerian.
>
> NW Pre-Rhotic : this is a short name than Euskaro-Caucasic for the family including Basque, Caucasic (NE+NW), Burušaski, and probably also Siouan.
>
> Macro-Kartvelian : includes Kartvelian and, probably Etruscan and a good deal of Pre-Greek.
>
>
> 4. What PIXA looked like
>
> The following system (of 24 phonemes) is my reference for PIXA :
>
> 1. Obstruents: p t ǩ k (voiceless stops)
> bh dh ğh gh (voiced stops)
> s / z c / ʒ (sʒibilants)
> 2. Resonants: m n (nasals)
> w y l
> (d)ɮ (t)ɬ (lateral fricatives)
> 3. Laryngeals:
> velars H2- [ḫ] H2+ [ġ]
> pharyngeals H1 [ḥ] H3 [ˁ]
> glottals H4 [ˀ]
>
> Each branch of Nostratic has its own phonetic signature as regards especially the sʒibilants and lateral fricatives.
> As can be seen, PIXA did not have a phoneme *r. For that matter, each branch of Nostratic developped /r/ out of a different inherited phoneme. These phenomena: sʒibilants, lateral fricatives and /r/ are of utmost relevance and importance.
>
>
> (to be continued)

Thank You for your clear statement.

I don't know enough to have an opinion other than that this Nostratic research seems to be based on very flimsy foundations.

But I could be wrong. Keep up the good work.