Re: [tied] Re: root *pVs- for cat

At 4:34:51 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:

>> At 5:21:57 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:

>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
>>> <BMScott@> wrote:

>>>> At 5:14:06 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007, tgpedersen
>>>> wrote:

[...]

>>> Let me see if I understand this: You assume that other
>>> people have questioned my decisions;

>> No, I *observe* that this is the case. I also observe
>> that you must have been aware of the fact, assuming that
>> you read the source that you cited.

> Oh, that is what you meant.
> You can't question someone's decisions if you're dead.

The Usenet newsgroup sci.lang would be a less inappropriate
venue for this sort of sophomoric word game.

[...]

>> I don't see what's so hard to understand. If you claim
>> that a word is 'non-foreign', and if this claim is
>> important to the case that you want to make, and if you
>> know that others have argued seriously against the claim,
>> you have an obligation at least to acknowledge the
>> existence of those arguments.

> This is the sentence you're ranting about, right?
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/49407
> "
> You seem to have left out a number of non-foreign pairs of
> items in p-/b- in McBain:
> "

> Your phrase 'others have argued seriously against the
> claim' then translates (yes?) into "MacBain proposes that
> some of these are foreign and mentions that others have
> claimed that too". Right?

Yes, of course.

> Now what was it you said about my personal honesty?

That your unqualified assertion of non-foreignness of some
of the words that you listed is sloppy to the point of being
intellectually dishonest. A more diplomatic version of the
same objection is quoted above ('you have an obligation').
I will add that I consider this obligation to rest most
heavily on those who -- like you and me in this case -- have
no real claim to expertise or authority.

[...]

>>>>> in particular because you steadfastly ignore that
>>>>> words in Germanic in p- are not Germanic words and
>>>>> words in Latin with root vowel -a- are (with
>>>>> exceptions) not Latin.

>>>> Both are completely irrelevant to any point that I have
>>>> tried to make.

>>> Why is that,

>> I explained in the sentence that immediately followed,
>> still visible a few lines down.

>>> and what was your point?

>>>> An Irish borrowing from Latin or English is not
>>>> evidence of Irish (or Insular Celtic) contact with some
>>>> NWBlock language, irrespective of whether the word is
>>>> native to Latin or Germanic, respectively.

>>> Of course. But that was what was under discussion. Once
>>> the question is settled, it's settled. What are you
>>> trying to point out by repeating this truism?

>> It's a direct response to your comment above ('in
>> particular because you steadfastly ignore ...'): if you
>> actually accepted this 'truism', you wouldn't have made
>> that comment.

> Why wouldn't I?

Because you would have recognized that the comment was
largely irrelevant.

>> Nor would you respond to suggested Gmc. or Latin sources
>> of EIr words by wittering on about how the putative
>> source can't be native in Gmc. or Latin, as if this had
>> any bearing on Insular Celtic contact with some NWBlock
>> language.

> ??? If a word exists in Latin or Germanic, but isn't
> native in them, it's native in some other language. That
> opens a new possibility, namely that the loan could have
> been made directly into Celtic from that language.

In many, possibly most, of the cases under discussion this
is wishful thinking on your part: there's a good match with
the putative source, which comes from a language known to
have supplied many other loanwards.

>>>>>>> From your tentative position which is not a
>>>>>>> position, how would you explain the many words in p-
>>>>>>> in both p- and q-Celtic? [...]

>>>>>> The DIL has only about 20 pages of <p-> words,

>>>>> 'Only' 20 pages, in a language which abolished p-.

>>>> Yes, only: that's 20 out of about 2500, a very small
>>>> fraction. And that same language did a lot of
>>>> borrowing.

>>> I don't get it; are you saying that if that number is
>>> small enough, we can pretend they're not there? [...]

>> No.

> Well, how is your remark relevant then?

At the very least it's relevant in that it explains, in
answer to the question implied by your scare quotes, why I
wrote 'only' in the first place! But in fact I expected the
comment to be read as a whole, including the second
sentence, and I further expected the reader to make the
obvious inference that in my opinion most of those
relatively few <p-> words were likely to turn out to be
borrowings from known sources (or derivatives thereof) --
especially when I went on to support this opinion with an
account of the first ~5% of the words.

[...]

>>>> <Pács> is a borrowing of Latin <pax>;

>>> That's possible.

>> It could hardly be anything else: it's 'a kiss', chiefly
>> in the religious context of 'kiss of peace'.

> Yes, but that is the domain of those cognates I referred
> to also.

No, it isn't; it isn't even close. (And even if it were,
that should be 'possible cognates'. Or even 'very
speculative cognates'.) The Latin source, on the other
hand, is a perfect fit on formal, semantic, and historical
grounds.

[...]

>> I feel no great obligation to explain them: I don't know
>> enough. And I prefer 'etymology unknown' to speculation
>> unsupported by any real argument.

> That's the safe option if you don't know enough and have
> no ambition to change that state.

'Safe' is accurate but a bit tendentious. More to the
point, it's generally the most intelligent option if one
doesn't know enough; one's ambitions are irrelevant. (And
in point of fact my primary ambition *is* to learn more;
it's making a new contribution that I don't much care
about.)

Brian