The palatal sham :) (Re: [tied] Re: Albanian (1))

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >
> > 1) What is it I said that makes you believe that I disregard the
> > influence of "what other people say" in language change?
>
> >
> > 2) I don't understand the way you oppose "what other people say"

to

> > paradigmatic alternation. Please be more specific.
>
> You did that implicitly by insisting on alternation being the cause

of

> depalatalisation, when simple copying of the speech of speakers who

had

> not yet palatalised could do it alone. That strips the alternation
> argument of its cogency.

My idea demands the presence of alternating paradigms, yours demands
the presence of non-palatalising speakers. If I knew what you meant
by 'cogent' I would know which idea was it most.

>
> > > In the case of Danish it was certainly not levelling that caused
> > > depalatalisation. The correspondence of German <gelten, galt>

used

> > to be
> > > <gjælde, galdt>; that developed into <gjælde, gjaldt> by

levelling,

> > then
> > > to present-day <gælde gjaldt> with depalatalisation *against*

the

> > uniform
> > > picture caused by the earlier levelling.
> > >
> >
> > That's right. There was an attempt at levelling which comprised a
> > very few verbs, before the depalatalisation. They were then

caught up

> > in the depalatalisation (which attempted to regularise 'the other

way

> > round') and became irregular. That doesn't disprove the argument,

on

> > the contrary.
>
> It shows its lack of relevance.
>

Erh? I think I'll stop here.

Torsten