Re: Etymology of the Italian surname 'Brighenti'

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

>
> At 2:14:49 AM on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>>>> But I think the *-en- > *-in- spread as
> >>>>> hypercorrection from those strong verbs being
> >>>>> regularized, see
> >>>>> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.html
>
> >>>> Why? At best your fixation on shibboleths makes you a
> >>>> blind man claiming that an elephant is very like a rope.
>
> >>> The traditional explanation claims two separate rules
> >>> caused *-en- > -in- in 2,3sg, 'pre-nasal raising' and
> >>> umlaut; my explanation has no such causal overlap.
>
> >> The verbs *bindanã 'to tie', *helpanã 'to help' and
> >> *werpanã 'to throw' are all Class III strong verbs and
> >> started out with identical root vowel (*e) and identical
> >> conjugations, but only in the first was the *e of the
> >> root raised to *i throughout the present. You want
> >> analogy to extend i-umlaut of *e from words like *bindanã
> >> to completely unrelated words like *hringaz, but not to
> >> words like *helpanã; that's very implausible. It's much
> >> simpler to note that nasals have a tendency to raise
> >> preceding /e/ anyway, so that the observed change isn't
> >> particularly surprising; there's no need to invoke
> >> dubious psychological explanations. (And for all I know
> >> there may be other reasons to keep the two separate.)
>
> > You've gotten half of it, but you haven't quite thought it
> > through.
>
> No, *you* haven't thought it through. Or if you have, your
> bizarre sociolinguistic axioms make it a case of GIGO.

This habit you have of using value judgments as premises in your line
of reasoning, is that something you have carried over from your day
job in math? 'Oh, what a nasty number, I don't like it'?

> > What I claim is that in the class III verbs,
> > analogy-leveling was done in -en- verbs, not in the
> > others, or rather, that, of all the 'faulty' (by the then
> > standard class III paradigm) levelings, those of the -en-
> > verbs survived (were preferred by those who mattered), the
> > rest didn't. In that period of uncertainty, -in- was
> > substituted for -en- also in other contexts by presumably
> > the same people, or those who wanted to emulate them.
>
> As should have been clear from my post, I understood that
> this was your claim. And as I said, it's implausible and
> unnecessary.

It is clear from your post you didn't. This my proposal, chronologically:
1. Umlaut causes stem vowel /e/ > /i/ in (among all else) 2,3sg, 2pl
of Gmc. class III verbs
2. In verbs with originally *-en-, the -in- forms are substituted by
generalization into 1sg, 1,3pl, in the rest, -en- is similarly
substituted into 2pl.
3. The -en- > -in- substitution spreads to the rest of the vocabulary.

You conflated 2. and 3., thereby labeling 2+3 a kind of umlaut which
of course it isn't. I don't 'extend i-umlaut of *e from words like
*bindanã to completely unrelated words like *hringaz, but not to
words like *helpanã'. I generalize -in- from the umlauted forms in
paradigms from -en-, and *then* introduce them by analogy to the rest
of the vocabulary. The latter step has nothing to do with umlaut, and
therefore does not affect words like *helpanã.

> >>> Two rules causing the same one effect is a sign the
> >>> theory was designed wrong.
>
> >> Unless there really are two different things causing the
> >> same effect.
>
> > And the other examples are?
>
> Of what?

Of two rules causing the same one effect.

> And who cares?

Oh, so you did know, you were just being contrary.

> I was objecting to the general statement.

The only surefire way to do that is to provide a counterexample.
You didn't.

> In any case, your comment was a non sequitur. First, there
> are two different effects: raising of *e to *i when followed
> in the same or the next syllable by a high vowel, and
> raising of *e to *i when followed by a nasal in the coda of
> the same syllable. The latter occurs without the high vowel
> trigger, and the former occurs without the nasal.

You must have misunderstood something. This is a restatement of the
traditional explanation, not a premise which supports it or disproves
my alternative proposal. Circular.

> Secondly, your explanation still leaves you with the two
> rules i-umlaut and pre-nasal raising: making the latter an
> indirect, psychosocial consequence of the former does not
> change its status as an independent rule or magically turn
> it into a form of i-umlaut.

If I make one of the rules a consequence of the other, then it is
dependent on, not independent of that rule. Those two predicates are
antonyms. What is the matter with you?


Torsten