Re: Volcae and Volsci

At 5:50:05 AM on Sunday, March 30, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

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

>> At 2:26:46 PM on Saturday, March 29, 2008, tgpedersen
>> wrote:

[...]

>>> No, what you want to do is present an example which
>>> can't have been caused by a substrate.

>> In your world I doubt that there is such a thing. Even in
>> my world it would, I think, be very difficult to find
>> such a thing. That's why your extreme reliance on
>> substrates, like your reliance on invisible underclasses,
>> is methodologically unsound.

> I always relate underclasses to to substrates and
> therefore to previous conquests

I know. Since you don't otherwise appear to lack
imagination, overcommitment to a theory seems the likeliest
explanation of this reflex.

> and they consequently becomes yet another touchstone which
> my claim has to be tested on. You might think that
> disregarding history and archaeology to obtain a clean
> science of linguistics is methodologically unsound;

Eh? This has nothing to do with my point, though I do of
course think that a historical linguist who disregards
archaeology and history is every bit as foolish as an
archaeologist or historian who makes the complementary
error.

The point is the same one that I made a few weeks ago in
connection with your shibboleth fetish: 'I think that
resorting in the first instance to an explanation that in
general cannot be tested is methodologically unsound.' In
many cases your 'explanation' is empty: it explains nothing
and is in all probability incapable of either demonstration
or refutation. In other cases it's downright ludicrous,
like your 'gradually germanized originally NWBlock speaking
underclass' that finally shows up in 17th century English.

[...]

> How would you explain all the early English names in P-,
> eg., if you disregard NWBlock?

My objection was to *excessive* reliance on substrates, not
to any and all appeal thereto; here there seems to be at
least some sort of case to be made, though I'd not go so far
as to say that you actually have an explanation.

Brian