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

Nikolaj · Guest

ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com kikirika:
[quote]On Jul 24, 5:40 am, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
On Jul 24, 6:07 am, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com"

ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On Jul 24, 4:33 am, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
On Jun 25, 11:54 pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
The alleged "law of palatals" was applied to some Sanskrit preterite
tense words
cakara ("theory" demands kakara) - "he/she did" and jagama ("theory"
demands gagama) "he/she went" and lo and behold that made it a sister
language to Latin and Greek.
But this is a simple illustration of an "irregularity" in Sanskrit for
euphony - the second "s" in the word "Sanskrit" itself is present only
for euphony - "Sam" + "Krita" or "samyak" + "krita" two possible
derivations of the word do not call for the "s" in the middle.
Here is a little quiz for all the non-Indian ng. members who go about
making pronouncements about Sanskrit:
Meaning verb inflected form
write likh likhita (written)
fall pat patita (fallen)
ask yaac yaacita (what is asked)
praise vand vandita (one who is praised)
do kri krita (what is done)
....................................................
lots of "regular" examples
...................................................
cook pac
what is sanskrit for "cooked"?
More proof that the "law of the palatals" is crock:
dragging Sanskrit into the PIE fold is based on a fundamental fallacy
- that it was subject to the same unconscious, usualy reductive sound
changes like just about every other known language.
But Sanskrit is unique in the possession of the laws of internal
sandhi - i.e., conscious sound change - sound changes driven by
euphony that may go either way - strong to weak or weak to strong.
Western linguists have made a huge deal of the softening of kakAra and
gaGAma = but we have at least one example of something traditional
hist ling ling says practically never happens - a palatal changing to
a velar
vanij (merchant) is vanik in the singular and vanijah in the plural.
vaNija (trade/commerce) and vaNijyaka/ vaNijaka/vaNijika (trader) in
Sanskrit. (N is [n.] in ASCII IPA).
vaNija->vaNiyaka is like mania->maniac in English (adjective,
adjectival noun)
vaNija meaning trader might have might have been extended from vaNija
meaning trade.
I can>t find vaNika in a Sanskrit dictionary but it might be an
adjectivization of vaNija that doubles as a noun.
The Kologne dictionary says

1 vaNik in comp. for %{vaNij}.

Its not VaNika - it is VaNik as in

Sing Dual Plural

VaNik VaNijau VaNijah

(I am guessing the dual).

I don>t seem to be able to look up that page. Be that as it, the
singular is vaNij. It seems unlikely that if vaNik is an alternative,
it>s a result of sound changes to vaNij. If it came from sound change,
it might be a result of sound change of vaNijaka.
[/quote]
'vaNij' is what would be called a prAtipadika in a sanskrit grammar, i.e.:

n. the crude form or base of a noun, a noun in its uninflected state
Pa1n2. 1-2 , 45 &c. APra1t. Sa1h. (%{tva-} n. Pa1n2. 1-2 , 45 Sch.)

Nikolaj · Guest

Peter T. Daniels kikirika:

[quote]What is this a "quote" from? And what does "can be reconstructed"
mean? As it happens, some things would be said identically in the two
languages; in all likelihood, Vedic and Old Avestan were mutually
intelligible.
[/quote]
I don>t know why linguists say that, but I am kind of skeptical.
Wikipedia says that Gathas and ancient portions of Yasna are in Old
Avestan. There are both published online:

Ahunavaiti Gatha
http://www.avesta.org/yasna/y28to34.htm

YASNA (Sacred Liturgy)
http://www.avesta.org/yasna/y0to8.htm

I don>t think someone understanding Vedic Sanskrit could understand
that. No doubt they are related, but mutually intelligibile is probably
to strong term; IMO they are just so mutually intelligibile as Slovak
and Slovenian - we can try to say a few sentences to each other, see
that we can not understand each other and then switch to English. ;)

Nikolaj · Guest

Peter T. Daniels pravi:

[quote]There is no such thing as "reduction" for Sanskrit to be "subjected
to." If Sanskrit has not changed since the sacred texts were canonized
some 2000 - 2500 years ago, of which there is no doubt, it is because
it has not been a spoken language since then.

But if you are not aware that Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are quite
different, as the result of ordinary processes of language change,
then you don>t know anything about Sanskrit at all.
[/quote]
They aren>t really that different. First verse of the Rgveda is pure
Classical Sanskrit, even I can understand it with my beginners knowledge
of Sanskrit.

Phonetical differences are very minor.

Morphologically everything that Classical Sanskrit has exists also in
Vedic Sanskrit. Vedic was just more varied in forms, and those forms
became standardised in the Classical Sanskrt. There is some loss of
certain forms (infinitives, subjunctive) but that is all.

But yes, there are differences in the syntax. PANini>s grammar
completely described phonetics and morphology, and those became fixed
from his times onwards (ChAndogya UpaniSad according to Cardona IIRC) -
at least in Sanskrit, not in some substandard forms.

PANini also defines (some of the?) syntax, but he could not fix it, that
is what Joachim referrs to. The long compounds are constructed by
recuresively using the rule from PANini with other (smaller) compounds
as the rule>s inputs.

I am not so sure when the past participles for expressing past tense
first appeared, but that might even be a completely new syntactical
construction, not present in PANini.

Nikolaj · Guest

analyst41@hotmail.com pravi:

[quote]Even granting the Western obscenity (of the two varieties of Sanskrit)
- why don>t you elucidate for us some changes from vedic to classical
sanskrit that would qualify as ordinary processes of language change ?
[/quote]
The two varieties of Sanskrit are just a model for expressing the major
differences in the natural development of Sanskrit.

More thorough models have 4 or 5 versions of Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrt;
Sanskrt of the BrAhmaNas, AraNyakas and UpaniSads; Epic Sanskrit,
Classical Sanskrit, (substandard) budhist hybrid Sanskrt.

Those terms don>t mark different languages, but one language evolving
through time and in different social environment (among scholars, among
simple people, etc...)

Nikolaj · Guest

Joachim Pense pravi:

[quote]As far as I know (which isn>t that much), in the first millennium CE, long
after the classical Epics were created.

Joachim
[/quote]
Yes, Coulson mentions that there was a special style of poetry
fashionable then and the poets competed with each other in making long
compounds, the one who made the longest meaningful compound was a winner.

Nikolaj · Guest

Joachim Pense kikirika:
[quote]Peter T. Daniels (in sci.lang):

Vedic is from ca. 1500 BCE. The Prakrits are from 1000 years later.

The Sanskrit used for metaphysical, mathematical and astronomical
treatises, drama, poems, fairy tales etc. is from yet another 1000 years
later.

Joachim
[/quote]
Metaphysical shouldn>t be mentioned above.

Also the epics probably come from vedic times and times when Sanskrt was
spoken among people - only in contrast with the Vedas, the folk-stories
weren>t sacred - so they lived among common people and poets, who added
and changed a lot of material, until they were finally written down much
much later.

LEE Sau Dan · Guest

[quote]"Adam" == Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> writes:
[/quote]
Adam> Fair point: often it is. But sometimes linguistics and
Adam> English are in the same department. NLP tends to be in
Adam> computer science more often than in linguistics or modern
Adam> languages.

Adam> On the other hand, a lot of scholars in physics, biology,
Adam> and mechanical engineering spend half their research time
Adam> (or more) programming computers to analyse data and solve
Adam> problems, but they don>t sit in the computer science
Adam> offices.

Merely knowing how to program a computer doesn>t imply knowing
computer science. Just like knowing how to drive a car doesn>t
qualify you as a mechanical engineer. Being bilingual doesn>t make
you a linguist automatically. There is a huge difference between
being able to use a tool and understanding the tool from inside out.

Adam> Disciplinary boundaries are tricky things these
Adam> days.

No, I don>t think so. The world has just become so complicated that
we need to master and use learn many more tools.

Adam> I know that it>s a commonly held axiom among pure linguists
Adam> that written language is an entirely different thing from
Adam> language (=speech) ... but we (who have never spoken to each
Adam> other) are communicating using a written medium that *seems*
Adam> to be based on the same language faculty as speech, with
Adam> basically the same syntax and lexicon (with different
Adam> frequency distributions, of rcourse).

No. Spoken English is not written English. They differ in syntax as
well as lexicon.

Adam> Otherwise, it>s a most remarkable coincidence that it>s
Adam> possible to read "artful literature" (nice expression) out
Adam> loud so that it sounds like speech. ;-)

You can read it out aloud, but it may not sound like natural speech.

e.g. an academic paper usually employs passive voice very frequently.
How often do you do that in natural speech? Do you tend to use long
sentences with nested relative clauses in speech?

--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

Franz Gnaedinger · Guest

On Jul 30, 6:44 pm, Craoibhi...@gmail.com wrote:
[quote]
Du, Bub, du
boy
[/quote]
Why are you always calling me a boy? Apparently you are
still sort of a boy, Panu Petteri Höglund, an over-ambitious
highschool boy coming to age. Your German tells me that:
exercises in the style of a sixteen-year-old who tries to
impress his teacher, pasting together sentences you
picked up here and there, compensating your lack of
thoughts with rehashed expressions, formalistic, nothing
original. Arthur Schopenhauer said: content without form
is better than form without content, because content will
sooner or later find a proper form, whereas formalism
remains empty. My wealth in ideas both attracts and
repels you - if only you had half as many ideas, but you
never will, and so you must deny my ideas, attack me,
spout ad hominems, and killrate my messages. In order
to get level with me you make me small. Classical case
of a destructive obsession. You better stop it while you
can. Going on will do you no good, Panu Petteri Höglund.
Find a reasonable task in your life (something else than
fighting women>s rights), and later or laterer you may have
something to say. - Now go away, you have no place in
my life and work. Return if you can prove PIE or disprove
Magdalenian. It must be done with scientific arguments,
which you lack, despite of having attended three
universities. Ad hominems, killrating, and a paternalistic
attitude can>t replace scientific arguments.

(Homework for the old highschool boy Panu Petteri
Höglund: learn to quote properly, also parts of quoted
lines require the angle > at the begin, and learn the
difference between strong and weak verbs - saugen
sog gesogen, säugen säugte gesäugt)

Joachim Pense · Guest

Nikolaj (in sci.lang):

[quote]
They aren>t really that different. First verse of the Rgveda is pure
Classical Sanskrit
[/quote]
Except for that extra letter.

Joachim

Joachim Pense · Guest

ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com (in sci.lang):

[quote]On Jul 30, 9:36 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
On Jul 30, 5:46 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

Toby D. Griffen, he posits a
Germano-European family whose two branches are
Germano-Armenian and IE, so its fate is hardly a surprise.

I>ll continue to believe Eric Hamp, who groups Armenian with Greek.

... meaning Greek and Armenian came from a proto-Armeno-Greek the
descendants of which included Phrygian, Lydian, Lycian, etc.?
[/quote]
Certainly not Lydian and Lycian, which were Anatolian languages. Phrygian
has been mentioned as being relatively close to Greek.

I wonder if Indo-Iranian also is included in that group, as it also has the
augment to denote the past.

Joachim

ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com · Guest

On Jul 31, 12:17 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
[quote]ranjit_math...@yahoo.com (in sci.lang):
On Jul 30, 9:36 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
I>ll continue to believe Eric Hamp, who groups Armenian with Greek.
... meaning Greek and Armenian came from a proto-Armeno-Greek the
descendants of which included Phrygian, Lydian, Lycian, etc.?
Certainly not Lydian and Lycian, which were Anatolian languages.
[/quote]
Oh, yes; now, I remember. Till what time were these langauges used?
Did Croessus' subjects speak an Anatolian language?

ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com · Guest

On Jul 31, 12:07 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
[quote]Nikolaj (in sci.lang):
They aren>t really that different. First verse of the Rgveda is pure
Classical Sanskrit
[/quote]
BTW, the 1st verse of the Mandala 1 is not considered the oldest
sample of Sanskrit; Mandala 2-7 are considered the older. How does
their language compare with Classical Sanskrit?

[quote]Except for that extra letter.
[/quote]
.... the L in agnimILe?

Guest

On Jul 30, 10:43 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 30, 8:06 pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:

On Jul 30, 4:59 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
On Jul 30, 1:43 pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
On Jul 30, 12:57 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
On Jul 30, 10:27 am, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
On Jul 30, 8:20 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:45 am, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
On Jul 29, 11:07 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
On Jul 29, 6:29 pm, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
I keep trying to point out to you that Sanskrit was probably never
used for commonplace transactions and that being mostly used for
chanting (probably in chorus), religious rites and metaphysical
treatises for an esoteric audience would not subject it to the
neogrammarian sound changes - but you don>t want to understand it.

Becase no language in the entire history of humanity has such a
history.

Sez you.

And everyone else who has ever studied language seriously.

You obviously have no citation for this - since I think I am the first
to explicitly point out that Sanskrit might never have been used as a
spoken prose language for everyday activity.

That would be because it>s self-evidently asinine.

Its very simple - either its so asinine that nobody would even think
of dismissing it - in which case you were not truthful when you wrote
"and everyome else ..seriously".

You have confused yourself (again).

actually you are persisting with your straw-man argument.

Ooh, you learned another epithet! (But not how to use it.)

"neo-grammarian sound change" as a short cut to expresss "sound
changes as propounded by the neogrammarians" is totally unremarkable.

No such thing. You _really_ ought to find out what "neogrammarian"
means.

What I, and every other linguist
in the world, "sez," is that no human language has ever existed that
was not subject to sound change. (There>s no such thing as
"neogrammarian sound changes," no matter what you may find by googling
crackpot websites.) And every other kind of language change.

straw man. Whether you agree or not - I am making a well-defined
claim - a conditioning factor (gra__as :-)) that obtained (and still
obtains) during most usage of sanskrit stopped neogrammarian sound
changes from happening to it.

Here is a way to test this and a sure hist ling phd awaits whoever
does it:

Get hold of sound recordings over a span of time (I guess they go
back to the beginnings of the 20th century) and measure sound changes
in

(1) the speech of ordinary people
(2) the speech of actors paying bit parts in movies
(3) The speech of leading men in movies (women, I don;t know)
(4) political speeches, in particular, presidential campaign speeches.
(5) News readers

conjecture 1>2>3>4>5 in the degree of neogrammarian sound changes
observable,

You are incredible naive, stupid, and ignorant. What do you think you
are "proving" by noting that more formal language exhibits less change
than less formal language?
[/quote]
:-) Thats your inimitably graceless, infantile and petulant way of
conceding my point.

(And "neogrammarian sound changes" has
[quote]nothing to do with it.
[/quote]
OK. WHy do you think formal language exhibits less change than less
formal language?

and how do you define "formal language" ?

n.b. : try not to weasel out of your "we are never conscious of how we
produce speech" or something to that effect.

Guest

On Jul 30, 10:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 30, 7:36 pm, Nikolaj <nikolaj.kor...@bla.si> wrote:

analys...@hotmail.com pravi:

Even granting the Western obscenity (of the two varieties of Sanskrit)
- why don>t you elucidate for us some changes from vedic to classical
sanskrit that would qualify as ordinary processes of language change ?

The two varieties of Sanskrit are just a model for expressing the major
differences in the natural development of Sanskrit.

More thorough models have 4 or 5 versions of Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrt;
Sanskrt of the BrAhmaNas, AraNyakas and UpaniSads; Epic Sanskrit,
Classical Sanskrit, (substandard) budhist hybrid Sanskrt.

Those terms don>t mark different languages, but one language evolving
through time and in different social environment (among scholars, among
simple people, etc...)

That>s _really_ going to annoy analys.... Doubtless he>ll just ignore
it.- Hide quoted text -

[/quote]
Its really sad to see you bait at such an infantile level. Why should
that annoy me anymore than claims that language change can be
discerned among the different books of the RigVeda?

The changes were not neogrammarian - there might as well have been
"Prakritisms" in the Rig Veda - in which the bard used a Prakrit root-
word after polishing it a little bit for better euphony and perhaps
for scansion.

> - Show quoted text -

Peter T. Daniels · Guest

On Jul 31, 6:41 am, analys...@hotmail.com wrote:
[quote]On Jul 30, 10:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

On Jul 30, 7:36 pm, Nikolaj <nikolaj.kor...@bla.si> wrote:

analys...@hotmail.com pravi:

Even granting the Western obscenity (of the two varieties of Sanskrit)
- why don>t you elucidate for us some changes from vedic to classical
sanskrit that would qualify as ordinary processes of language change ?

The two varieties of Sanskrit are just a model for expressing the major
differences in the natural development of Sanskrit.

More thorough models have 4 or 5 versions of Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrt;
Sanskrt of the BrAhmaNas, AraNyakas and UpaniSads; Epic Sanskrit,
Classical Sanskrit, (substandard) budhist hybrid Sanskrt.

Those terms don>t mark different languages, but one language evolving
through time and in different social environment (among scholars, among
simple people, etc...)

That>s _really_ going to annoy analys.... Doubtless he>ll just ignore
it.- Hide quoted text -

Its really sad to see you bait at such an infantile level. Why should
that annoy me anymore than claims that language change can be
discerned among the different books of the RigVeda?
[/quote]
It should annoy you because of your religious claim that the Sanskrit
language is one and immutable.

[quote]The changes were not neogrammarian - there might as well have been
"Prakritisms" in the Rig Veda - in which the bard used a Prakrit root-
word after polishing it a little bit for better euphony and perhaps
for scansion.
[/quote]
What the bloody hell does "The changes were not neogrammarian" mean?

You are incompetent to add anything to this thread, since you have no
idea what you are talking about.


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