Re: A series of questions for the forum

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Carl Hult <datalampa@...> wrote:

>
> When studying ancient texts, have any of you or your predecessors
> taken into account the following:

Truly no offense, but yours is a rather naive question. :^)

All of the factors you mention are well known to linguists,
and hardly a week passes on this list that every one of them
isn't taken into consideration in regard to one question or
another. Browse the archives a bit and you will see for your-
self. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the spread of uvular 'r'
itself has been discussed a _few_ times.

David

> 1) Speech is changed by influence from the upper classes, such as
> speech impediments which has been proven to change the way folks
> speak. The "thick" R, the tongue root-R as we call it in swedish,
> is such an evolution which originated in a speech problem. It came
> from France and spread throughout Europe in less than 100 years.
> Here in Sweden it stopped just shy of our capital, Stockholm, in
> 1850. They don´t have that R there naturally. Such speech problems
> could have affected many words in the past which we now see as a
> grammatical change which may baffle more than one scholar.
>
> 2) They may have spelled a certain word wrong. In haste everybody
> spells wrong, even the best spellers. Later readers took this word
> for the right spelling and passed it along and on it goes.
>
> 3) Dialects and human nature. There are hundreds of dialects and
> sociolects throughout one speech area. Where I live in Sweden I
> can hear three or four different dialects everyday. Dialects can
> change a whole speech area´s way of saying a certain word if the
> "right" person comes along. This "right" person may have a persona
> which can make others speak like him or her just by sheer
> admiration.
>
> If you do have taken this into account then this little article
> can serve as a reminder. If there´s anything unclear about what
> just wrote please let me know.
>
> Carl Hult