I also agree with Mr. Poser that the criticism of errors in data does not rely on the mere authority of the critic. From conversations, I would judge some are still reluctant to face this test, the one required by a part of their claims. We are always dealing simultaneously with possibilities of genetic relationship or convergent evolution. He states that this had been a classic case in biology, used to show convergent evolution of originally unrelated organs to serve the same function. If this line of argument holds up, we have quite a revolution in thinking on our hands.
Sound symbolism is a typological basis for their recurrence.
As another factual contribution to the discussion of Greenberg's errors, Bob Rankin clarified for me at the AAA meetings that he had looked at Greenberg's original notebooks, and that apparently what happened is that Greenberg had a single flexible flap in his notebook bearing the language names, and sheets which he matched up against that to enter data for particular lexical items. This is a mechanism subject to errors of the two pieces of paper slipping vertically relative to each other, and in fact there were rather a large number of such errors. I gave Mr. Poser an eyewitness account satisfying the wording he used. I stand by that eyewitness account. None of Mr. Poser's supposed rebuttal in his recent message is at all relevant to that claim, though it is relevant to another claim, an absurd one, that I did not make.