Re: Larry Athy and His Logical Analyses.

"Eric Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 11:26:18 -0000, "JMB" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >"Eric Stevens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 11:43:37 -0000, "JMB" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> Pearson, Chi squared, Student's-t etc all rely on the application of
> >> >> the Taylor and McLaurin expansion of the Binomial theorem.
> >> >
> >> >So?  That still doesn't change the fact that none of them can be used
in
> >> >conjunction with letter counts to prove a relationship between two
> >> >languages.
> >>
> >> You don't really know that.
> >
> >I really do.  I, unlike you, have checked.  Linguists need words, not
> >letters, and certainly not a selection of letters, to show such links.
>
> You haven't asked the right person the right question.

Only according to you because the professional linguist that I asked the
linguistic question of didn't give an answer that you'd like to see.

> Your
> glottochronologician was looking for subtle shifts in language, not
> trying to tell whether list of messages A  is in the same language as
> list B.

No matter how many times you try to fudge things, it will never change the
fact that he wasn't asked about glottochronology, and he certainly doesn't
subscribe to the theory.  He was asked about using the letter counts of 15
consonants in order to make a statistical comparison of two languages to see
if they are related, and that is the question he answered first and
foremost.

> If Larry was trying to distinguish mere dialects or similar I
> might agree with you, but he was not.

Larry was trying to prove that the two sets were in related languages, and
used methodology that even if applied correctly couldn't prove such a thing.

>
> I'm not going to continue arguing as it prevents me doing more useful
> things such as my tax, writing out accounts, chasing up debtors, doing
> paying work and (not least of all but unfortunately last ) reworking
> what Larry has done.

That's fine with me.  Nobody will miss anything if you stop trying to fudge
the facts when people go out and get them.

>
>
>
> Eric Stevens


-- 
John Byrne
www.iol.ie/~archaeology
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