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

Azure · Guest

"benlizro@ihug.co.nz" wrote:

[quote]On Jun 10, 10:21 pm, Romanise <josh...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jun 10, 10:45 am, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz
wrote:

On Jun 10, 7:38 pm, ravimpillay <ravimpil...@gmail.com> wrote:

kaiku gaand jalata hai bhidu ...

woh to such bolta hai tumhari gori

gand mein aaaag kyo lagti hai ,,,>>>>>>?????

Ooh! Did he say a bad thing in Hindoo?

In South Indian Hindi.

Want me to translate it?

www.dmjoshi.org

Well, OK, I guess it>s relevant for sci.lang. We can find out how a
deeply metaphysical person talks when he gets mad.
[/quote]
Starts calling Winds Tornadoes and Earth Quakes!
I do anyway!
Usually get rather foul jest before that as I go Depressed, then the ID
kicks in and all hell breaks loose!

Harlan Messinger · Guest

John Atkinson wrote:
[quote]
"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:6cn53qF3hr7d7U1@mid.individual.net...
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].

That>s wierd!

[os] < Vulg Latin <ossum> makes sense, but how could <ossa> become [o]?
[/quote]
I don>t know, but likewise "oeuf" < "ovum" and "boeuf" < "bovem", and
the "f" is pronounced in "oeuf" and "boeuf" but the "f" and "s" are both
silent in "oeufs" and "boeufs".

[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").

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.
[/quote]
In modern *SPANISH*? Not in any dialect I>ve ever heard.

[snip]
[quote]Of course, the distinguishing feature in all three of these putative new
Andalusian phonemes, which, following Penny,
[/quote]
I don>t know if I>ve ever heard Andalusian.

[quote]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?
[/quote]
Me? I>ve had 40 years of study and exposure to it on and off, but no,
I>m far from a native speaker!

mb · Guest

On Jun 29, 1:32 am, Franz Gnaedinger <f...@bluemail.ch> wrote:
...
mb
[quote]["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]
...
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.
[/quote]
As said at the start

mb · Guest

On Jun 28, 9:51 am, Marco Pagliero <mart...@web.de>
...
[quote]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.
[/quote]
Reverse imperialism?

beelzibub · Guest

On Jun 3, 10:10 pm, Alan Truism <alan.tru...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[quote]On Apr 29, 8:50 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Apr 29, 7:13 am, Adam Funk <a24...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On 2008-04-12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

On Apr 11, 4:09 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
On 2008-04-06, tony cooper wrote:
This is pure Danielian Logic. He doesn>t post a lot on any subject
unless he responds to others. He doesn>t post in aue unless it>s in
reply to a cross-post.

It>s *possible* that someone is holding him hostage and making him reply
against his will, but it seems a bit farfetched.

Would it be the same one that forces you to keep coming back to this
thread after it>s been dormant for days, and to its topic after it>s
been dead for weeks?

It>s a pretty amazing coincidence!

Eighteen days this time. And he still adds crossposts to the dogfood
religion.

What do you have against dog food?
[/quote]
[i>ll handle this]

.... it says DOG FOOD on the label not PEOPLE FOOD. gurss who it is for?
cum on gues. i mean your the fuckin einstein in this equation. we
would appreciate an honest answer.

b
[quote]
Dogs need to eat just like people need to eat.[/quote]

Herman Rubin · Guest

In article <962e0aed-a210-4e5f-82bb-a6bf2a4c1418@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>,
<analyst41@hotmail.com> wrote:
[quote]On Jun 27, 2:17=A0pm, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
In article
c860b232-44f8-4e58-bd4c-2a5b067f2...@i76g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
[/quote]
.................

[quote]The ordering of the English alphabet - is it random or is there a
phonetic basis for it?
[/quote]
Whatever phonetic basis for the ordering in the
Semitic-Greek-Latin-English alphabet is minuscule,
if any.

[quote]The Shiva sutra lists Sanskrit vowels and consonants in several sets
in a partiuclar order - and there is some research to the effect that
the groupings and the order in which the groups are presented can be
derived phonetically.
[/quote]
It seems that the vowels were an introduction in Sanskrit,
as opposed to modification of consonants and semivowels in
the transition from Semitic to Greek. The Greek ordering
is essentially the Semitic one with small modifications.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Brian M. Scott · Guest

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:17:34 GMT, John Atkinson
<johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote in
<news:y1E9k.15713$IK1.8476@news-server.bigpond.net.au> in
sci.lang:

[quote]"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:6cn53qF3hr7d7U1@mid.individual.net...
[/quote]
[...]

[quote]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].

That>s wierd!

[os] < Vulg Latin <ossum> makes sense,
[/quote]
Late Latin /OssU/, early OFr /Os/, late OFr /o(s, z)/ (i.e.,
pre-pausal /os/, and in a phrase pre-consonantal /o/ and
pre-vocalic /oz/); this ought to have given Fr. <os> /o/.

[quote]but how could <ossa> become [o]?
[/quote]
In Gallo-Romance the nom. plural of all masculine nouns was
remodeled after the second declension, so the starting point
was actually <ossi>; all final vowels except <-a> were lost
on OFr, so this should have followed the same course as the
singular.

I suspect that the modern pronunciation of the singular
reflects the influence of the 16th and 17th century
grammarians.

[...]

Brian

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jun 29, 11:23 am, hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:
[quote]In article <962e0aed-a210-4e5f-82bb-a6bf2a4c1...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com>,

<analys...@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Jun 27, 2:17=A0pm, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
In article
c860b232-44f8-4e58-bd4c-2a5b067f2...@i76g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,

.................

The ordering of the English alphabet - is it random or is there a
phonetic basis for it?

Whatever phonetic basis for the ordering in the
Semitic-Greek-Latin-English alphabet is minuscule,
if any.
[/quote]
There have been maybe half a dozen (probably fewer) attempts by
serious scholars to account for the order of letters in the West
Semitic "alphabet" as attested in a number of abecedaries from Ugarit.
Not one of them has persuaded anyone else of their plausibility. Note
that a quite different order of the letters is attested for the South
Semitic script (South Arabian, Ethiopic), which is equally
inexplicable.

My suggestion is that the order of letters is just the order in which
the inventor happened to think them up.

[quote]The Shiva sutra lists Sanskrit vowels and consonants in several sets
in a partiuclar order - and there is some research to the effect that
the groupings and the order in which the groups are presented can be
derived phonetically.

It seems that the vowels were an introduction in Sanskrit,
as opposed to modification of consonants and semivowels in
the transition from Semitic to Greek. The Greek ordering
is essentially the Semitic one with small modifications.
[/quote]
The vowels in the Indic scripts (Sanskrit is not a script, and does
not have a script of its own) were first indicated in the Kharosthi
inscriptions from northwest "greater India," i.e. Gandhara, which go
back to the 5th or 4th c. BCE. They are marked with short lines
attached to the consonant letters -- except /a/ is not marked with any
symbol. It has been suggested that this is because the use of matres
lectionis was already so pervasive in the Aramaic script from which
the Kharosthi is clearly borrowed, that the pandits got the idea that
the Aramaic consonant letters were _supposed_ to incidate Ca, and only
the other vowels needed to be marked explicitly.

This was convenient for the Prakrits that were the first Indic
languages to be written, because they had few to no closed syllables,
so every syllable was CV.

Later on, and when Sanskrit began to be written in the early centuries
CE, ways were found of writing consonant clusters (by combining
consonant letters into single units) and word-final consonants (with a
diacritic to mark absence of a vowel).

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jun 29, 4:51 pm, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
[quote]On 2008-06-16, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Is Afrikaans the Uyghur of the Germanic languages?

(Meaning, it doesn>t respect the orthography of borrowed words, but
applies surface-phonemic or even phonetic spelling to them?)

Swedish used to do this: e.g., salong, restorang, buffé (from French
salon, restaurant, buffet), borrowed in the 18th or 19th century (I
think).

The number of French words borrowed into English with modified
spellings must be enormous, but we don>t notice most of them any
more.
[/quote]
Frinstance?

Herman Rubin · Guest

In article <nsanders-412607.02043429062008@AClermont-Ferrand-256-1-26-64.w90-0.abo.wanadoo.fr>,
Nathan Sanders <nsanders@williams.edu> wrote:
[quote]In article <_zE9k.15727$IK1.10715@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:

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

[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
[/quote]
This is one reason why linguists and similar should learn
and use modern probability and statistics.

Also, you should not spurn studies by scientists and other
investigators which do not fit into your preconceptions.
At least attempting to put things on a precise basis,
expressed in mathematical terms, needs to be present.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Nathan Sanders · Guest

In article <g48gug$5tai@odds.stat.purdue.edu>,
hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:

[quote]In article
nsanders-412607.02043429062008@AClermont-Ferrand-256-1-26-64.w90-0.abo.wanado
o.fr>,
Nathan Sanders <nsanders@williams.edu> wrote:
In article <_zE9k.15727$IK1.10715@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:

"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders@williams.edu> ...

..................

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.

This is one reason why linguists and similar should learn
and use modern probability and statistics.
[/quote]
Who says we don>t? I have an SB in math, and my graduate program had
a mathematical methods course. I know plenty of other linguists with
backgrounds in math (or at least, a hard science). Statistical
knowledge is especially common among sociolinguists, psycholinguists,
phoneticians, and computational linguists.

Which linguists do you think *haven>t* learned probability and
statistics? Can you point to some work that clearly shows evidence
that the author doesn>t know any probability and statistics, and that
their would have benefited from such knowledge?

[quote]Also, you should not spurn studies by scientists and other
investigators which do not fit into your preconceptions.
At least attempting to put things on a precise basis,
expressed in mathematical terms, needs to be present.
[/quote]
Which studies are you talking about?

Nathan

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

aniod · Guest

On Jun 24, 11:23 pm, Iain <iain_inks...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[quote]On Jun 21, 4:46 pm, "James H. Newman" <NewJa...@exicite.com> wrote:

Well, Suetonius claims that Augustus Caesar consistently used
the wrong declensions in some Latin phrases, probably because, being the
emperor, he just could.

And on that precedent, I intend to do likewise hereafter.

~Iain
[/quote]
If we>re talking about spelling it>s sufficient to take a look at Old
English works:

"On a related point, you will notice as you go along that the spelling
of Old English is somewhat variable. Scribes at that time lacked our
modern obsession with consistency. Rather than insisting that a word
always be spelled the same way, they applied a set of rules for
rendering the sounds of their language in writing, and these rules
sometimes allowed them to get the job done in more than one way. "
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/pronunciation.html

Nathan Sanders · Guest

In article
<nsanders-F035EA.14372929062008@AClermont-Ferrand-256-1-26-64.w90-0.ab
o.wanadoo.fr>,
Nathan Sanders <nsanders@williams.edu> wrote:

[quote]In article <g48gug$5tai@odds.stat.purdue.edu>,
hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:

In article
nsanders-412607.02043429062008@AClermont-Ferrand-256-1-26-64.w90-0.abo.wana
do
o.fr>,
Nathan Sanders <nsanders@williams.edu> wrote:
In article <_zE9k.15727$IK1.10715@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@bigpond.com> wrote:

"Nathan Sanders" <nsanders@williams.edu> ...

..................

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.

This is one reason why linguists and similar should learn
and use modern probability and statistics.

Who says we don>t? I have an SB in math, and my graduate program had
a mathematical methods course. I know plenty of other linguists with
backgrounds in math (or at least, a hard science). Statistical
knowledge is especially common among sociolinguists, psycholinguists,
phoneticians, and computational linguists.

Which linguists do you think *haven>t* learned probability and
statistics? Can you point to some work that clearly shows evidence
that the author doesn>t know any probability and statistics, and that
their would have benefited from such knowledge?
[/quote]
Just for clarification, the reason I ask is that, in any science, some
amount of approximation and ignoring variables is a regular occurrence.

A physicist not specifically interested in quarks will likely ignore
them when focusing on the orbits of planets. (Or insert your favorite
reference here to a "massless pulley" or "frictionless surface".)

Likewise a linguist who isn>t specifically interested in inter- or
intra-speaker variation will likely ignore them when focusing on sound
change over hundreds of years, simplifying the analysis by assuming
each sound change applies all at once to all speakers.

But even when explicitly working on variation, you could just study
the mere fact that variation exists (and thus ignore the actual
frequencies of the competing variant forms) or you can the study the
distribution of the variant forms and the how the distribution changes
(in which case, probability and statistics will certainly be
necessary).

But there>s no need for every linguist to analyze linguistic phenomena
at such a low level. There are still too many unknowns at the higher
levels for us to explore, and if everyone focused exclusively on the
lowest levels, the field would suffer. Imagine if physicists had to
factor in quantum-level effects in *everything*! The field would be
bogged down by minutiae, with the proverbial trees hindering
perception of the forest.

Nathan

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

Adam Funk · Guest

On 2008-06-16, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

[quote]Is Afrikaans the Uyghur of the Germanic languages?

(Meaning, it doesn>t respect the orthography of borrowed words, but
applies surface-phonemic or even phonetic spelling to them?)
[/quote]
Swedish used to do this: e.g., salong, restorang, buffÃ© (from French
salon, restaurant, buffet), borrowed in the 18th or 19th century (I
think).

The number of French words borrowed into English with modified
spellings must be enormous, but we don>t notice most of them any
more.

--
I heard that Hans Christian Andersen lifted the title for "The Little
Mermaid" off a Red Lobster Menu. [Bucky Katt]

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jun 29, 8:03 pm, aniod <jacop...@gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]On Jun 24, 11:23 pm, Iain <iain_inks...@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Jun 21, 4:46 pm, "James H. Newman" <NewJa...@exicite.com> wrote:

Well, Suetonius claims that Augustus Caesar consistently used
the wrong declensions in some Latin phrases, probably because, being the
emperor, he just could.

And on that precedent, I intend to do likewise hereafter.

~Iain

If we>re talking about spelling it>s sufficient to take a look at Old
English works:

"On a related point, you will notice as you go along that the spelling
of Old English is somewhat variable. Scribes at that time lacked our
modern obsession with consistency. Rather than insisting that a word
always be spelled the same way, they applied a set of rules for
rendering the sounds of their language in writing, and these rules
sometimes allowed them to get the job done in more than one way. "http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/pronunciation.html
[/quote]
The English-writing world, however, has changed since the Old English
period, and standards of a thousand and more years ago are not the
standards of today.


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