[tied] Re: Everything except agreement

From: Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Message: 21840
Date: 2003-05-14

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> > > Jens:
> > > >You don't know how frequent the *z...
> > >
> > > Ach. How many times are you going to wave everything away with
> > > "We don't know this and we don't know that -
> >
> >As many times as it takes.
>
> You're proving nothing. We both agree that we don't "know"
anything.
> That has no relevance to theories which serve to help us fill in
the blanks
> and to at least approximate the truth. We'll never "know" whether
protons
> really have +1 charge or even if they exist at all... but how does
that
> disprove
> quantum mechanics?? It doesn't. Your point is boring and futile to
this
> debate.
>
>
> >And even if I am totally wrong, how can I know that your idea is
correct?
>
> What is your problem?? Can't you distinguish absolutes from
probabilities??
>
> Theories can't be judged as "true" and "false" because these are
absolutes
> requiring absolute knowledge which you keep unnecessarily
reminding me
> we do not have. They are judged by relative probabilities that
range
> BETWEEN "true" (100% probability) and "false" (0% probability).
Einstein
> knew about relativity which is why his theories worked.
>
> Theories can only APPROXIMATE truth but without them we'd be dumb
> as a turnip. If you're trying to find absolute truth, you're in
the wrong
> field.
>

In rooting so loudly for relativity you are actually speaking my
mind, only I do not see you following your own gospel. Your choices
strike me as being very far from consistent and very far from the
easiest solutions that come to mind. To boot they have been so
contrived that they require a quite simple account of the key
elements to be false. That at least places them in some danger.


> >Is your theory good because I have suggested something which you
> >consider even worse?
>
> Yes, and I consider it worse because it is less likely. This is
how we solve
> problems of a theoretical, non-absolute nature. I've already
stated above
> why your theory is undesirable; It is based on a slew of
unsubstantiated
> assumptions of your own psychotic design. You have to first
JUSTIFY that
> *t- becomes *s- with other examples. JUSTIFY that the loss of *-s
is
> reasonable change and preferably again with other examples.
>
> If you can't JUSTIFY anything you're stating, your theory is
inferior to the
> one I propose because my view IS based firmly on _substantiated_
theory.

The theory of yours that the nominative marker is a rudimentary
variant of the nom.sg.masc. demonstrative pronoun *so is not
substantiated all that well. To salvage a theorem that a nominative
cannot be marked you are staking everything on a pronominal form
which in your interpretation only occurs in the nominative. That
strikes me as very inconsistent. There are other IE morphological
markings that are restricted to the nominative singular, note only
Eng. I vs. me. Of course the nom.sg. did not have a function related
to the first person pronoun, so *(h1)eg^ would be a poor choice,
perhaps even if it worked phonologically. Nor would she vs. her or
we vs. us be much use. But the meaning of *so is such that it could
perhaps be used as a definite article (as it was later in some of
the branches), but there is little reason such definiteness should
exist only in the nominative, and that other cases should not form
definite forms with the corresponding cases of the stem *to- which
would have been the thing to use if the alleged use of *so made good
sense. And if a feminine *se-h2 > *sah2 existed too, why was the
very same rudimentary form of *so, i.e. *-s, also used as the
nominative marker of feminines? And how did *sah2 get created in the
first place? Its companions *néwah2, *yáh2 went with a nom.sg.m.
*néwos, *yós, not *newo, *yo, so the beauty is limited.

I can easily justify that *t- turned into *s- in this pronouns, for
the regular form would be *to-s with an *-s sitting on the form, an
ending to which the initial could quite easily have been
assimilated. This would be specially easy if the dental phoneme was
at the time an affricate /c-/ [ts], i.e. the element which is *-s in
final position and t in most others. In that case *cos could easily
have developed into *sos, and *sos could just as easily have
undergone dissimilatory loss of the second s, resulting in *so.
Reflexes of *sos are in fact found in Vedic and Avestan, Greek and
Old Norse as variants under specific conditions, but they may of
course be secondary. If it is unjustified to think of *tos, then it
is also unjustified to derive the Vedic instrumental sg. forms in -
ma: or -na: of man-stems from older forms with *-mn-. In fact both
analyses are fully justified by the regularity they accomplish. The
m/n-thing is common knowledge and presumably universally accepted; I
do not understand that the ultimate derivation of *so(s) from *tos
has not been suggested before (if it hasn't).


> It is true (based on the agreement of many IEists) that *so is not
> case-declined. It is true (based on the agreement of many IEists)
that *so
> is animate _only_. So the only thing I have to theorize is that an
animate,
> undeclined *so was attached to the paradigm of an already declined
*to-.

It is also true that *so expresses more than a mere case function.
And it is true that *so is masculine only, while *-s is also
feminine. It is further true that the synonymous stem *to- was never
used to express the cases in which it was used. It is also true that
we have no other (real or apparent) endingless animate nominatives
of pronominal stems, or of any other stems open to case inflection.
These are quite serious flaws in the theory which may be added to
the flaws in the phonology I have already pointed out.

> If you don't get it at this point, you're just being argumentative.

I won't object to subjective impressions.

Jens