LINGUIST List 16.470

Wed Feb 16 2005

Disc: Re: Review: Historical Linguistics: Levin

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1. Saul Levin, Re: Review: Historical Linguistics: Levin

Message 1: Re: Review: Historical Linguistics: Levin

Date: 16-Feb-2005
From: Saul Levin <slevin

binghamton.edu>
Subject: Re: Review: Historical Linguistics: Levin

Re: Review of Semitic and Indo-European II in LINGUIST List 15.1554
(http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1554.html).

I, Saul Levin, author of both volumes of Semitic and Indo-European, avail myself
now of the invitation to respond to Robert Mailhammer's review of Volume II. I
take issue, above all, with his misleading quotation, near the end of his last
paragraph:

One does not have to go as far as R[uediger] Schmitt (1966) in his review of the
first volume (Kratylos 41, 201-205), who says "Die Zeit fuer die Lektuere
dieses Buches is vertane Zeit" (Reading this book is a waste of time).

Mailhammer fails to mention that I had already refuted, at length, Schmitt's
nasty slur. And I had called attention to my refutation on p. 228 of Volume II,
as I gave there (in fn. 97) the title and the page numbers of my article, "What
does Cognate mean? In reply to Alan Kaye and other reviewers of Semitic and
Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies," General Linguistics, 36 (1999[1996]),
257-269.

Mailhammer ought to have looked up this article, before he judged all of my
research almost - if not quite - as harshly as Schmitt had done. Any reader of
LINGUIST List, if he or she wishes, may receive from me an offprint of that
article, and of any other which I cited in the books that I have written.

Nowhere does Mailhammer even hint that he LEARNED, from any chapter of mine,
something that he did not know beforehand. Instead, he keeps blaming me: I
should have more thoroughly incorporated all the findings of the prior
scholars. He is unwilling to use my cross-references, and thus to come across
some detail that might interest him; it is my fault, because I did not make it
easier.

Dr. Saul Levin
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Classical Languages
Classical and Near Eastern Studies Dep't., LT-1109
SUNY - Binghamton University
P.O. Box 6000
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
USA

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics

Language Family(ies): Indo-European; Semitic
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