From: stlatos
Message: 68121
Date: 2011-10-22
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@> wrote:You have no idea what you're talking about. I do not oppose regular soundlaws, I simply know not all changes are regular, and that many are optional.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > There should be no reason for any linguist to reject a sound change because it's optional. Full regularity is disproven by ex. in many known languages, and has been well-known for many years. An ingrained dislike of such opt. changes apparently is found in many linguists, among other apparently esthetic preferences. All this does is prevent the more insightful from fully realizing exactly what the evidence is showing and that they are on the path of (like Lehmann with the r-preterite).
> >
>
> So if you had been alive 135 years ago you would have denounced Verner for wasting his time trying to explain grammatical change through a fully regular soundlaw. What elegant economy of effort you would have offered as an alternative! Optional voicing of Germanic fricatives, as opposed to digging up the accent of Greek and Sanskrit cognates, and insisting that suprasegmental phonemes matter!
>
> And if your viewpoint had prevailed, comparative linguistics would have stopped dead in its tracks in 1875.