Science and Technology news... :: View topic - The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrate

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jun 28, 2:05 pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
[quote]On Jun 28, 1:53 pm, Harlan Messinger

hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:

an editorial

Please see my response to Dusan. Snusha and Sunus cannot be analyzed
separately.
[/quote]
Nor can they be analyzed outside the vocabulary of thousands of words
that exhibit hundreds of regular correspondences among dozens of
languages.

What makes Sanskrit special has nothing to do with the language itself
and all to do with what it was used for and how.

Du¹an Vukotiæ · Guest

On Jun 28, 4:52Â pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:

[quote]Sanskrit snuá¹£Ä is derived from the word "sun" in the same way as it
happened to sÅ«nu (son; Ger. Sonne => Sohn; Serb. sunce => sinak, sin;
English sun =

But of course !

What is more natural than "son>s wife" or "son>s woman" for daughter-
in-law?

You have helped illustrate the lack of common sense of PIEists even
better. Â "Daughter-in-law" is a derived relationship and whats more
natural than for it to be derived from the word for "son" ?

son);http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.indian/msg/
d47a7ddea6d6803...
[/quote]
But, there is a small problem.
Hindi sukhanÄ (to dry; Serb. suknuti sudden gush of flame; suÅ¡iti to
dry; Skt.Å›uá¹£yati dry up) is related to the sun, as well as similar
words in Sanskrit.

Everything looks OK, but, nevertheless, there is no name for the sun
itself in Sanskrit (or I cannot find it) from which the word sÅ«nu
(son) is derived. Unusual, isn>t it?

DV

Du¹an Vukotiæ · Guest

On Jun 28, 11:05Â pm, Italo <ola...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[quote]DuÅ¡an VukotiÄ‡ wrote:
On Jun 27, 9:24 pm, Italo <ola...@yahoo.com> wrote:

mb wrote:

On Jun 26, 7:15 pm, "Douglas G. Kilday" <fufl...@chorus.net> wrote:

mb wrote:

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:

...

Giubiasco reminds of Jovius or Jovia, either as a personal or familial
name, but the vocalism could be wrong; I would need to know what the
local dialect did with appellatives. Â

Good reflex. It>s Giubiasc with [y]. Not Gio- (with [o] or [u]), which
is the one corresponding to Jovius > Giovio and similar derivatives
(as in gioedÃ¬, Thursday). One time there was a suggestion (don>t know
how serious) connecting it to Biasca at the top of the valley.

Might the connection be the other way round? Â That is, might Biasca
have been extracted from Giubiasca, assuming the latter was
interpreted as a condensation of 'Down (from the) Biasca'? Â Or can
that be excluded on other grounds?

That>s what ("down") I was arguing against in mentioning that the giu-
(/y/) of Giubiasc is not confoundible with the gio (/o - u/) of giÃ²
(down). Yes, there is a relatively recent merger in some marginal
Lombard dialects, but not in this area, and not on such an ancient
toponym.

Apart from that, I don>t even remember where the suggestion of a
connection to Biasca came out; just that there was a vague, unspecific
attempt to connect the two.

Is it possible that here the initial G- < S-?
The German variant "SiebenÃ¤sch" (only mentioned by
wikipedia) reminds of Sebuinus, Subinates, etc.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

And this Sebuinus sounds similar to the name of the Serbian town
Sevojno - both names probably related to "habitat" (Serbo-Slavic selo,
from na-seobina village). In fact, as I have explained it in my
earlier posts, selo (village, habitat) is indirectly related to
cumulus (Serb. oblak cloud) and to the seemingly unusual heaven-heap
connection. Of course, Jovius is akin to Sebuinus, as well as Italian
Giovani is related to Serbian Jovan (John) and Novak (Noah). All the
above words are coming from the Gon-Bel basis (Nebo, Heaven, Zemlja,
Nebel etc.).

DV

I don>t know, but my guess is that the toponyms
Vicus-Sebuinus and Vicus-Subinates (both south of
Giubiasco), as well as l.Sebinus, Sabio/Sabiona, Sebatum,
and Valle-Sabbia are named after the local Sabini tribe.
If wikipedia is right that SiebenÃ¤sch applies to Giubiasco,
then it appears as if it may be of the same origin.

Wikipedia further mentions the forms Cibiascum (1186) Â and
Zibiassco (1195).

Maybe the town>s name also had Vicus- prefixed, could that
account for an initial C-/G-, instead of S-?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
[/quote]
What is the etymology of Seville (town in Spain)? According to my HSF
theory, after the sound /b/ the next consonant must be the sound /l/.
It means that Sabini were originally Sabelini or Zabelini. It could be
related to Serbian town of Å½abljak or Å½upa (from Å½upljani; i..e.
Sebljani => Seljani villagers => selo village). I would say that s <=>
h (sibilant to glottal/velar and vice versa) were interchangable in
all parts of IE Europe.

In the area where I was born (Bosnia), there was a village named
SebioÄina (habitat, village). In Serbian the whole Cosmos is "va-
seljena" (probably from hna- => ha- => ua-seljena) or "na-seljena"
what has the meaning "inhabited", "populated".

DV

Harlan Messinger · Guest

analyst41@hotmail.com wrote:
[quote]Here is another fairy tale from Calvert Watkins:

start quote:

[snipping most of article except:]
We know
that an Indo-European s was lost before n in other words in Latin,
Greek, and Armenian, so we can confidently assume that Latin nurus,
Greek nuós, and Armenian nu also go back to an Indo-European *sn-.
(Compare Latin nix [stem niv-], “snow,” with English SNOW, which
preserves the s.) This principle is spoken of as the regularity of
sound correspondences; it is basic to the sciences of etymology and
comparative linguistics. 16
Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Armenian agree in showing the first
vowel as -u-. We know from other examples that Slavic regularly
corresponds to Sanskrit u and that in this position Germanic o (of Old
English snoru) has been changed from an earlier u. It is thus
justifiable to reconstruct an Indo-European word beginning *snu-.
end quote.

Simple explanation:

The Sanskrit is orginal - Slavic changed it slightly during contact-
acquistion. The Greek etc. are from something entirely different.
[/quote]
I>ve reached the conclusion that you don>t know what the word "regular"
means. This isn>t a special case where linguists have made a leap of
logic and imagined a connection that appears nowhere else in the
languages concerned. This is an ordinary instance of a *regular*
correspondence that exists among the languages.

YOU, on the other hand keep coming up with ad hoc explanations for
single cases that have no general applicability. It>s a puzzlement why,
when *you* do it, you don>t see it as a display of monumental stupidity.

mb · Guest

On Jun 28, 12:21 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
[quote]On Jun 27, 6:41 pm, mb <azyth...@gmail.com> wrote:
What a stupid statement: De Franzu verstäit nüüd, nimmer andres het>s
Problem. It is perfectly transparent to anyone with even a rudiment of
any Galloromance.

You should have listened to the Ticino fraction
working in the post fourty years ago, nobody
understood them.
[/quote]
Duh. Non-Galloromance speakers of course didn>t.

[quote]Giò is not giù. In the language secret only to you, "as" is a prosaic
plank and "ca" an equally prosaic house.

It>s Giubiasco, not Giobiasco, my boy (mb).
[/quote]
That>s exactly what I am saying. Do not confuse /y/ and /o/(=Ger. u)
in that area.

[quote]
At least 9 more in the immediate area, only between Orasco and
Purasca. You>d count a lot more with a map.

Yes, and they are all between Domodossola and Biasca,
[/quote]
No they are not. A lot of them are in the Lepontine area between the
Ossola and the Ticino, and a lot of them are outseide that area.

[quote]making me wonder about an ancient sanctuary in the
mountains in between, perhaps on lake Alzasca? I am
trying to book a job as an archaeologist in one of my next
lives, in the Internet - everything is possible in the online
world, they say - but until now I didn>t find a matching website.
[/quote]
That job is gone. Giubiasco and two adjoining neighborhoods are the
site (so say archeologists) of the largest Gallic necropolises.
Explored for a longish time.

mb · Guest

On Jun 28, 2:05 pm, Italo <ola...@yahoo.com> wrote:
..
[quote]I don>t know, but my guess is that the toponyms
Vicus-Sebuinus and Vicus-Subinates (both south of
Giubiasco), as well as l.Sebinus, Sabio/Sabiona, Sebatum,
and Valle-Sabbia are named after the local Sabini tribe.
If wikipedia is right that Siebenäsch applies to Giubiasco,
then it appears as if it may be of the same origin.

Wikipedia further mentions the forms Cibiascum (1186) and
Zibiassco (1195).
[/quote]
Very interesting. You might some Lombard toponymy works but not on the
Internet.

[quote]Maybe the town>s name also had Vicus- prefixed, could that
account for an initial C-/G-, instead of S-?
[/quote]
Provided one could explain why it would be the first vicus of all not
to remain whole.

Bart Mathias · Guest

Daniel al-Autistiqui wrote:
[quote][...] I should now point out that for me, "hour",
"flour", "flower", "tower", "power", and *all* words of that sort are
definitely disyllabic. If I didn>t know how to spell these words, I>d
*never* think of them as one syllable, whether they be "-our" words or
"-ower" words.
[/quote]
And, analogously, "fire," "flier," "sire," "sigher," etc.?

Bart Mathias

Bill McCray · Guest

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:05:08 -0400, "Don Phillipson"
<e925@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:

[quote](But we may
think Shaw cheated, since he spoke with an Irish accent all
his life, and the Irish and Scotch pronounce their vowels
differently from the English.)
[/quote]
This sentence relates back to the "than" vs. "from, to" discussion.

I would generally suggest using "different from (or to)" and
"differently than", but I think this sentence is acceptable, because
it can be understood as "... pronounce their vowels differently from
(the way) the English (do)".

Bill

----------------------------------------------------------------
Reverse parts of the user name and ISP name for my e-address

Italo · Guest

DuÅ¡an VukotiÄ‡ wrote:
[quote]On Jun 27, 9:24 pm, Italo <ola...@yahoo.com> wrote:

mb wrote:

On Jun 26, 7:15 pm, "Douglas G. Kilday" <fufl...@chorus.net> wrote:

mb wrote:

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:

...

Giubiasco reminds of Jovius or Jovia, either as a personal or familial
name, but the vocalism could be wrong; I would need to know what the
local dialect did with appellatives.

Good reflex. It>s Giubiasc with [y]. Not Gio- (with [o] or [u]), which
is the one corresponding to Jovius > Giovio and similar derivatives
(as in gioedÃ¬, Thursday). One time there was a suggestion (don>t know
how serious) connecting it to Biasca at the top of the valley.

Might the connection be the other way round? That is, might Biasca
have been extracted from Giubiasca, assuming the latter was
interpreted as a condensation of 'Down (from the) Biasca'? Or can
that be excluded on other grounds?

That>s what ("down") I was arguing against in mentioning that the giu-
(/y/) of Giubiasc is not confoundible with the gio (/o - u/) of giÃ²
(down). Yes, there is a relatively recent merger in some marginal
Lombard dialects, but not in this area, and not on such an ancient
toponym.

Apart from that, I don>t even remember where the suggestion of a
connection to Biasca came out; just that there was a vague, unspecific
attempt to connect the two.

Is it possible that here the initial G- < S-?
The German variant "SiebenÃ¤sch" (only mentioned by
wikipedia) reminds of Sebuinus, Subinates, etc.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

And this Sebuinus sounds similar to the name of the Serbian town
Sevojno - both names probably related to "habitat" (Serbo-Slavic selo,
from na-seobina village). In fact, as I have explained it in my
earlier posts, selo (village, habitat) is indirectly related to
cumulus (Serb. oblak cloud) and to the seemingly unusual heaven-heap
connection. Of course, Jovius is akin to Sebuinus, as well as Italian
Giovani is related to Serbian Jovan (John) and Novak (Noah). All the
above words are coming from the Gon-Bel basis (Nebo, Heaven, Zemlja,
Nebel etc.).

DV
[/quote]
I don>t know, but my guess is that the toponyms
Vicus-Sebuinus and Vicus-Subinates (both south of
Giubiasco), as well as l.Sebinus, Sabio/Sabiona, Sebatum,
and Valle-Sabbia are named after the local Sabini tribe.
If wikipedia is right that SiebenÃ¤sch applies to Giubiasco,
then it appears as if it may be of the same origin.

Wikipedia further mentions the forms Cibiascum (1186) and
Zibiassco (1195).

Maybe the town>s name also had Vicus- prefixed, could that
account for an initial C-/G-, instead of S-?

Glenn Knickerbocker · Guest

On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:10:20 -1000, Bart Mathias wrote:
[quote]And, analogously, "fire," "flier," "sire," "sigher," etc.?
[/quote]
In my speech (and most Northerners' and West Coasters' I know) these are
all usually two syllables but aren>t exact rhymes: /fV:I-@r/ vs.
/flA:I-@r/, /sV:I-@r/ vs. /sA:I-@r/. Words in "-yre" get /A:I/, which
makes the British spelling "tyre" look like a whole different word from
"tire."

¬R http://users.bestweb.net/~notr You are already too educated stupid to
understand the truth of nature>s harmonic simultaneous 4-liter wine cube

Harlan Messinger · Guest

analyst41@hotmail.com wrote:
[quote]On Jun 28, 1:53 pm, Harlan Messinger
hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:

an editorial

Please see my response to Dusan. Snusha and Sunus cannot be analyzed
separately.
[/quote]
"Cannot"? You have confused the question you asked him ("what is more
natural ...?") for a proof. Next thing you know, you>re going to be
insisting that "aunt" must come from "father" because aunt-ness is
derived through father-ness. Once again you mistake a happenstance of
the English language for a universal cognitive condition.

John Atkinson · Guest

"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:6cn53qF3hr7d7U1@mid.individual.net...
[quote]John Atkinson wrote:
Well, Andrew Woode completely shot down that particular example, at
least as far as Spanish is concerned (should have checked my facts
before posting!). Maybe it (blocked s-deletion in plurals) still
works in other Western Romance languages (Catalan, Occitan, earlier
French?) -- or even Middle English -- but I don>t know enough about
them to say.

The final "s" is still pronounced in French "as" ("ace") and "os"
("bone"). The plural of the latter, also spelled "os", is, however,
just [o].
[/quote]
That>s wierd!

[os] < Vulg Latin <ossum> makes sense, but how could <ossa> become [o]?

[quote][snip]

Like this:
Before s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las
mulas>, [l&s mul&s], /las mulas /.
After s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las
mulas>, [l& mul&], /l& mul& /.
Similarly, /e / > /e, E / and /o / > /o, O /.

Do you mean [A] rather than [&] (the vowel in "cat").
[/quote]
No, I meant [&]. According to Ralph Penny ("Variation and Change in
Spanish" p 126), which is where I got it from, it>s [&] in closed
syllables. However, John Green in the Routledge "Romance Languages" p
85, says it>s not that simple: "in closed syllables [...] /a /, which in
citation has a central low articulation, may be displaced forward or
backward depending on the adjacent consonant." The example he gives is
<jaulas>, cages, [xAwl&s] -- note that this has /-las /, the same as
<mulas>, so it makes sense that <mulas> should also have [&], no?

Of course, the distinguishing feature in all three of these putative new
Andalusian phonemes, which, following Penny, I>ve written as /&/, /E/,
/O/, actually appears to be "laxness" rather than height or frontness.

Anyway, you>re a native speaker, aren>t you? What>s the situation with
allophones of /a/ in your variety?

John.

Franz Gnaedinger · Guest

On Jun 28, 6:51 pm, Marco Pagliero <mart...@web.de> wrote:
[quote]On 20 Jun., 18:36, mb wrote:> On Jun 19, 11:14 am, Marco Pagliero wrote:
they say it comes from Celtic/Roman -acus meaning village, but where
comes -acus from?)

["They" also say in some places that it could well be an adjectival
ending (like, say, -ish). They don>t really seem to have much to bite
into]

Yes, this is apparently a topic where the one secured information is:
it is controversial. This is curious, because on the other hand
everyone can easily learn Ligurian :-)http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Learn/Ligurian.asp
But linguistics is not easy, when one can find (about the origins of
the Piedmontais language):
Balma (cavern), from the Celtic “Beal” (watercourse);
Bealera (brook), from the Celtic “Beal” (hill);

I found the coordinates in some semi-official lists, they are not that
accurate and I deleted half a dozen yellow points falling in the sea,
Belgium or the Switzerlands,

Why on Earth? Belgium and Switzerland are smack within the area.
Already in Ticino -asco/-asca/-azzo makes up a respectable percentage
of place names.

I have nothing against Belgians or Helvetians, but of both lists I
used one was of the french, the other of the italian minicipalities,
so no dot was supposed to autonomously migrate over the borders.

But I take yours as an interesting proposal and I will, when I have
some time and if I find the applicable lists, plot this kind of
toponyms from Belgium, Switzerland and Spain.

Can you suggest what could have become of -asco, -brac, and -acum in
the germanic and hiberian languages?
[/quote]
If you don>t mind my answering this question you pose
to 'my boy' (mb), I may say that I found a good answer.

From the proud mountain massif Monte Rosa
on the Swiss-Italian border flows a river by the name
of Anza through a valley called Anzasca, so the
ending -asca must have the meaning of pertaining to:
the valley pertaining to the river Anza is the Val Anzasca.
In Switzerland we have the town of Fryburg and the land
pertaining to the town called das Fryburgische, in French:
Fribourg (town) le Fribourgeois (land). German: Freud
(founder of psychoanalysis) ein freudscher Versprecher
(a freudian slip); Kafka (an author) kafkaesk, eine
kafkaeske Situation (a situation as imagined by Kafka).
In the female affix -eske you can easily recognize
a derivative of -asca, and the origin of this ending was,
I believe, Magdalenian AS CA --- upward (as) sky (ca).
My country Switzerland was founded by three legendary
heroes on a mountain meadow above lake Lucerne,
each of them raised his right arm and hand, and thus
they took an oath to God in the sky above. Who can
give land if not God? Yahweh in the case of Israel,
whose name may come from ShA CA --- ruler (sha)
sky (ca), ruler of the sky, also known as "rider of
clouds." Yahweh presumably came from Mount Seir
in the Negev. Arcadian Sseyr resided on top of Mount
Lycaion, from where one has a breath-taking view
over the Peloponnese, and where a pre-Greek altar
and crystal seal have been discovered recently. Greek
Sseyr (Middle Helladic) Sseus (Doric) Zeus (Homeric)
resided on top of Mount Olympos. Many gods lived
on mountain tops. Maybe Monte Maggiorasca above
Genova in Liguria was the abode of another ancient
god? of a god or a goddess granting this or that?
whereupon hypothetical AS CA 'up above in the sky'
turned into a sacred and then more and more profane
notion of possession, mainly of land? Monte Alzasca
in the canton of Ticino may then have been the abode
of another major deity granting land and other favors.

John Atkinson · Guest

"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders@williams.edu> ...
[quote]"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:
Jack Campin - bogus address <bogus@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Is there evidence of sound change be conditioned by
part-of-speech?
I>m not quite sure what you mean, but the answer is probably
no.
If two words are homophonous, they will undergo the same sound
changes with the same results, regardless of their parts of
speech. (Keep in mind that I>m talking about systematic change
here. Sporadic change is always possible, and it>s one of the
few
ways homophones can diverge.)

Can>t word order affect that? If some particular part of speech
is always sentence-final, won>t it be subject to different sound
changes than a homophone which is aways initial or medial? (I>m
not pretending to have an example).

Note that occurring phrase-finally or phrase-medially is still
technically a phonetic environment, since you have the
absence/presence of some sound following the word.

But yes, this sort of thing could be a way of distinguishing two
homophones (an analogous example is "to" versus "two"; the former
is
nearly always unstressed, leading to reduction of the vowel,
while
the latter is nearly always stressed, preserving the vowel
quality).

A more convincing example (at least in my dialect) is the
difference
in the final consonant of <of> and <off>, which were originally
the
same word -- when used adverbly <off> it was typically
phrase-final,
thus had the voiceless allophone of the OE fricative, while
preposition <of> was frequently followed by a vowel or voiced
consonant, which induced the voiced allophone.

Right, this is the sort of thing I>m talking about. It>s possible
for
homophones, by the nature of their meanings or lexical categories,
to
appear predominately in different phonetic environments, and
eventually cease being homophonous via leveling of the altered
pronunciation of one of them across all environments (one factor in
language change is allomorphy avoidance, which can sometimes cause
one
of many allomorphs to be lexicalized, wiping out many/all of the
other
allomorphs).

But it is still the phonetic environment that triggers (or blocks)
the
relevant sound change. "Of" didn>t undergo voicing because it was
a
preposition---it underwent voicing because it was in a phonetic
environment conducive to voicing, and instances of "of" not in that
environment were changed to match the most commonly used form
(again,
not because they are prepositions, but because of another
functional
factor).

ISTM that sound changes may occasionally be blocked (at least
temporarily) when they would otherwise lead to loss of an
"important"
distinction. I>m thinking of things like the loss of Latin final
/s/ in Spanish, which appears to have been blocked only when it
denoted the plural of nouns (there, it was later extended even to
nouns that didn>t have it in the first place). Today, even that
final /s/ is beginning to be lost in some varieties -- over a
millenium after it was dropped elsewhere.

Without having thought too hard about it, isn>t this sort of thing
pretty close to Analyst>s "sound change conditioned by
part-of-speech"?

Whatever blocked s-deletion was most likely a phonetic environment
that the relevant words typically occurred in. I don>t know the
relevant facts here however, so this is just a guess, but I>d
expect
the non-deleting /s/s to have typically occurred pre-vocalically
(causing them to be resyllabified as onsets, and thus, blocking
deletion).

Well, Andrew Woode completely shot down that particular example, at
least as far as Spanish is concerned (should have checked my facts
before posting!). Maybe it (blocked s-deletion in plurals) still
works
in other Western Romance languages (Catalan, Occitan, earlier
French?) -- or even Middle English -- but I don>t know enough about
them
to say.

I guess the question is whether phonetic environment is the _only_
factor governing sound changes, or whether preservation of an
important
(for the language involved) distinction is _ever_ a factor in
blocking a
merger or deletion.

Today, even that final s is beginning to
be lost in some varieties -- over a millenium after it was dropped
elsewhere.

[Andrew:]
Though in many the phonological distinction in the relevant
syllables
is not quite gone (often being expressed in new vowel
distinctions).

Like this:
Before s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las
mulas>, [l&s mul&s], /las mulas /.
After s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula / has plural <las
mulas>, [l& mul&], /l& mul& /.
Similarly, /e / > /e, E / and /o / > /o, O /.

If the singular/plural distinction in nouns and adjectives and the
2nd/3rd person distinction in verbs weren>t "important" ones, and
therefore worth maintaining, presumably the loss of final -s wouldn>t
have induced the splits in the vowels in these Eastern Andalusian
varieties? That is:

After s-deletion, <la mula>, [la mula], /la mula/ would have plural
las
mulas>, [la mula], /la mula/.

Here, [a] and [&] have remained allophones of /a /, and <las mulas
is
pronounced [la mula], because the allophony is governed by whether
the
syllables are open or closed. The singular/plural distinction would
be
completely lost in nouns ending in -a and -o, though it would still
be
there in the masculine definite article (/el / vs /lo /), and in
nouns
ending in a consonant (<la paz> /la pas / would have plural <las
paces
/la pase /).

In French, final s-deletion _did_ lead to loss of the singular/plural
distinction in most nouns with no compensating split elsewhere.
(Admittedly, French maintains the distinction in both masculine and
feminine definite articles). Does this imply that the sing/pl
distinction
is "less important" in French than in Spanish?

The sound changes in question were triggered by phonetic factors, and
they happened to occur in such a way as to create a phonemic split.
Eastern Andalusians didn>t predict the forthcoming s-deletion and plan
for it by changing their vowels in advance. The vowel changes just
happened on their, and sometime later, s-deletion happened (both are
independently attested changes). It>s nothing more complex than that,
with the "importance" of number-marking playing no role.

Maintenance of contrast is definitely a functional factor in sound
change, but it doesn>t quite work the way you>re describing. Anna
Lubowicz has offered up a formalization of the kind of thing you>re
talking about with her Contrast Preservation Theory, but there are
some serious problems with her approach (which I discussed in my
dissertation).
[/quote]
I must say I agree with you. The trouble with the "preservation of
important contrasts" argument is that word "important". If half the
world>s languages get on just fine with no obligatory sing/pl contrast
expressed on nouns, why should speakers of language X go out of their
way not to lose it? It has the flavour of being a Just So story -- if
it was lost, it wasn>t important, if it wasn>t, it must have been. Not
to say that in occasional particular cases one might not be able to find
additional (non-phonological) supporting evidence for why something
happened -- but simply to say that it happened in order to preserve a
contrast really says nothing at all.

[quote]The best way to think of how contrast preservation affects sound
change is to look at what happens when a contrast is relatively
difficult to perceive/make. If a sound change is going to occur, one
of two things will happen: the contrast will be given up on resulting
in a merger, or the contrast will be enhanced by making one or both of
the contrasting units more distinct. But either possibility can and
does occur, and across languages, even within languages at different
points in time, we see the same contrast being handled differently,
sometimes merging, sometimes being enhanced (and often, just being
left alone).
[/quote]
Yes. But the question remains unanswered -- why did they go one way
rather than the other? Which is a bit unsatisfactory. Though of course
unsatisfactorinesses like this abound in historical linguistics. Are
languages chaotic systems? (In the sense that tiny differences typically
get amplified -- the amazonian butterfly effect.)

John.

Nathan Sanders · Guest

In article <_zE9k.15727$IK1.10715@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:

[quote]"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders@williams.edu> ...

The best way to think of how contrast preservation affects sound
change is to look at what happens when a contrast is relatively
difficult to perceive/make. If a sound change is going to occur, one
of two things will happen: the contrast will be given up on resulting
in a merger, or the contrast will be enhanced by making one or both of
the contrasting units more distinct. But either possibility can and
does occur, and across languages, even within languages at different
points in time, we see the same contrast being handled differently,
sometimes merging, sometimes being enhanced (and often, just being
left alone).

Yes. But the question remains unanswered -- why did they go one way
rather than the other? Which is a bit unsatisfactory. Though of course
unsatisfactorinesses like this abound in historical linguistics. Are
languages chaotic systems? (In the sense that tiny differences typically
get amplified -- the amazonian butterfly effect.)
[/quote]
That is how I think of it. It>s just random. When you have a given
linguistic state, there are multiple (but limited) natural paths a
language could take from that point on. Some language learners in
that state will settle on one path, others will settle on another.
But the "choices" will be essentially random. Many of these will be
leveled out by contact with other speakers who followed a different
path, others will be reinforced by speakers who followed the same path.

Iterate this generation after generation (which children adopting the
path their parents followed, perhaps with their own innovations!), and
eventually, one path or another will dominate, and someday completely
take over.

The randomness very likely could apply within a given speaker instead.
That is, a child doesn>t strictly follow a single path. Rather, he
uses a speech pattern that follows one path part of the time, but
different speech patterns at other times. The overall effect will be
the same, however.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/


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