Re: [tied] Re: OE *picga

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 8:18 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: OE *picga

I saw "sine ratione" somewhere, but you might be right. Does it make an essential difference here?

 

Actually, William of Occam never actually wrote those words. He expressed the principle of parsimony in many ways in his works, e.g. "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate". Duns Scotus also wrote things to exactly the same effect. The classical formulation of the principle comes from the 17th century (ca. 300 years after William) and its author, as far as I know, was John Ponce of Cork, another Franciscan philosopher. It says, "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem". "Necessitas" is the key word here, since it emphasises the requirement of economy. "Sine ratione" does not have the same effect, since economy may not be high on some thinkers' lists of priorities, and they might have other "reasons" for proposing something.

 

Piotr

Now, what particular _entities_ does Waruno Mahdi multiplicate beyond
necessity?

I'm not sufficiently into Medieval ontological thinking to determine
whether a theory is an ens or not. I recall from formal logic one
school of thought (situational logic) that believed in statements as
having "situations" as denotation (as opposed to the usual Fregean
true-or-false). If you take a theory to be a statement about the
world, then, well, theories are entia in their own right (Occam might
of course not have agreed).
>

> > Mahdi's explanation lacks the reason (well, a sound one), since
he is trying to preserve a theory (Austronesian out-of-Taiwan) that
doesn't have much going for it, since it seems to forget that
geography was much different, when the events in it should have taken
place.
>
> The geography was not much different in the fourth millennium BC
and later, when the Austronesian dispersal was happening according to
the scenario accepted by Mahdi (as for the out-of-Taiwan theory of
Austronesian _linguistic_ origins and as for dating the submergence
of Sundaland, I have nothing to add to what I have already said on
this list). Waruno Mahdi is a member of the Austronesian e-group, and
if you feel brave enough to take on a real expert in the field, go
there and discuss things with him and with other professional
Austronesianists. What's keeping you?

I understand that it's a moral failure on my part not to have
confronted mr. Mahdi with my opinions before quoting him on cybalist?
I don't know, taking on another old school debunker (sigh). What's
the URL?

> > That doesn't mean that I reject this type of explanation on
principle. But I think I read somewhere that european pigs had Asian
genes in them.
>
> _Some_ Asian genes, which is hardly surprising after so many
millennia of pig breeding.

I understand. 1. There was no contact. 2. It's hardly surprising that
there was.

>
> > What does "uninformative" mean?
>
> Providing no clue; not enlightening.
>
> > BTW, what is *bairaz supposed to be in PIE, and can it be
analysed there?
>
> It's (West) Germanic only, so it isn't supposed to be anything in
PIE, which had a different word for "boar" (preserved also in
Germanic as *eburaz). My personal guess is that *baira- < *bHoi-só-,
possibly from the root meaning 'fight, strike', or perhaps the
similar one meaning 'fear', cf. Lith. bhaisa`s 'fright'.

And then there's Latin verres "boar". Three internally unrelatable IE
words of the type b/p/v-r-(g-) meaning something with "pig" (and four
with that one). In other cases that type of situation automatically
leads to the assumption "loan word". Not here; although there are
genetic links, there has been no contact, although it would hardly be
surprising if there were, also bearing in mind that the connection
between word and designated object is a very fickle one (a basic
tenet of linguistics), at least in this case. Special pleading,
anyone?
>
> Piotr

Torsten

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.