Re: Optional Soundlaws

> All free variation results from an opt. change,

Wrong. Free variation exists as to whether aspiration lasts 120 milliseconds or 100 milliseconds, whether a trill has three or four vibrations, whether voicing is tense or lax, how front a velar is exactly when before a front vowel, how labial /u/ is exactly, and so on. None of these represents any sort of a systematic "change". Phonemes are abstractions covering an *area* of phonetic space. "Free variation" is what we call it when one language's area corresponding to phoneme X covers an area corresponding to phonemes Y and Z in some other language.

(This tends to be the case especially when the 2nd language is one of those the IPA was originally based on. Contrasts like tense voice do not exist in them so we usually do not speak of things like "French has free variation between tense and modal voice", altho it would be entirely justified.)

Apparently you think that there also exists a second type of "free variation" where the sounds involved are somehow fundamentally different and must be kept divided into two areas? (If so, why do we never see free variation between things like [z] and [b]?) And we then must call every time the phoneme's realization drifts across this nonexistent line within its phonetic waters an "optional change"?

> > > It's not weaker to invoke optionality if that is what is seen. Historical linguistics involves finding the right explanation; if optionality exists, then optionality must be given as the explanation.
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> > Unlike with free variation you can however never have evidence strictly for "optional phonemic change", as doublets can also represent dialect/sociolect mixture, onomatopoetic or ideophonic variation, even mispronunciations or typos.
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> There is no reason to think that.

There is no reason to think that dialect mixture can exist? That onomatophonetic variation can exist?

> > Perhaps. Your approach where "optionally" is always sufficient would howver appear to be one where we don't bother seeking Verner's law and simply state that Germanic has "optional" medial voicing. Or indeed, we could state that Grimm's Law is optional as well and not bother sorting later loans apart from inherited Germanic material.
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> Not at all. I have looked for other expl., just as others have, and no one has found any.

You can not guarantee nobody will find one later; if you only had Germanic to work with, you'd never find the conditioning for Verner's Law, as the former accent has been lost.

> The changes such as m>w and w>m, which in some languages is free variation, are in others only seen sometimes in some words (which you describe as "free variation later ends up frozen in place (commonly irregularly)").

No, I have not said that all apparent "optional changes" would have to result from former free variation.

> > > As to "any word in any language could be derived from any word in the same or any other language, merely by tailoring the "optional soundlaws" to achieve the desired result", are L aestus and iussus to be "without root connection" merely because deriving both from -dht- would risk irregularity? Are Osc puklo- and L pullo- so different from *po:tlo- > L po:culum that a different explanation is needed?
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> > These, not really. Your IE-New Guinean etc. macro-comparanda, most certainly.
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> I have not made any such "macro-comparanda", only within IE.

They are "macro" as far as they attempt to expand the IE family vastly beyond its accepted boundaries.

> > The point is that if there is *no* downside in assuming "optional soundlaws", as many can be assumed as one wants, not just one or two, and that does allow for any arbitrary word to be connected with any other. (As in my "dog" example.)
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> I have said nothing against those laws that are not opt., but they are not the only ones. If all n > l, etc., or a conditioning env. can be found, etc., no opt. need be posited.

Which doesn't address my preceding point.

> > There's nothing simple in optionality as you must specify for each and every applicable word separately whether it undergoes the change or not.
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> Wrong. All applicable words underwent all the opt. changes. It is due to chance which variation(s) remain in each language. Sometimes two or more remain, in which the old alt. is apparent

You are either shifting the issue of having to define precise sets of words every time into the meaning of "applicable", or essentially talking about dialect mixture by now.

John Vertical