Re: Proper methodology (was: RE: [tied] Re: Mother of all IE langua

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 27982
Date: 2003-12-05

Miguel:
>The 1sg. nom was replaced by *eg^.

We all know this already. It's an obvious conclusion concerning
an otherwise unexpected, suppletive form.

The word *ego: was originally a 1ps form of the thematic verb
*e-g- "to be here", which in turn was based on *e and the
intensive *-g- (< *ge [emphatic]). It may be literally translated
as "As for my being/As for me". It was adopted in the latter
half of the Late IE period and is semantically parallel with
Inuktitut /uvanga/ and Aleut /ting/. If what is meant by
"secondary" is "recently coined", then I will agree with the
statement.


>Szemer�nyi's treatment can be summarized as follows [...]
>[...]
>1pl. *wei- is secondary (*we- "2" (dual!) + *-i (plural)

I don't consider many of Szemerenyi's analyses sobre-minded.

To be honest, I actually agree with you that *m was changed
to *w in *wei-, however that change was to dissimilate the
form from the singular in *m-, not because of a strict sound
change rule. Random changes like these occur frequently in
other languages, even involving the same sound alternation of
/m/ and /w/! There are no other alternations in initial position
like this, ergo there is no basis for your ad hoc sound change
rule.


>2pl. *yus is pronominal *y- + 2pl. *wes. ".. it seems clear that *wes is
>itself simplified from *twes,

Hyperbole. We find *-te(s), not **-ye(s), so this doesn't
support the claim of **twes > *yus in the slightest. An
arguement that goes nowhere.


>Martinet's theory

Even worse. Again, highly speculative. It never can be good
when someone starts off with "On pourrait penser que". Non,
il ne faut pas "penser que", Miguel, avant que l'id�e est
support�e par les faits attest�s! Occam's Razor, Miguel,
Occam's Razor! Here again it is assumed blindly that *t- was
there, this time in *wes!???

At any rate this has no bearing on *yus. Your quotes merely
serve to discredit the logic behind your much-loved sources.


Now, concerning Jens' theories:
>1 nom (*m-w) *m-w(�)-G *m-w(�)-D
> acc *m(e)-w-m(�) *m-w(e)-G-m(�) *m-w(e)-D-m(�)
>[...]
>In ten steps, these forms develop into the attested forms:

This looks either like pseudolinguistics or something Mark Okrand,
the man behind the Klingon language, has devised. There's
no point defending against a theory based more on mathematics
than human speech.


= gLeN

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