Re: 'Hard-Wired' Grammar Rules

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Jan 2002 12:35:13 -0000, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> >Another example: One evening when returning with a colleague from
> >Denmark to a job in Holland we saw a lot a bonfires everywhere and

my

> >colleague decided to ask a waiter at a motorway restaurant what

the

> >occasion was; but we didn't know the Dutch word for "bonfire". My
> >colleague convinced himself that since Danish word for bonfire
> >is "bål" the Dutch word would be "baal". I had a hunch that this

root

> >was North Germanic (also English, I later found out). The waiter
> >seemed to agree with my opinion.
>
> What's your point? "Baal" is not the Dutch for "bonfire".
>

That's exactly my point. The "baal" was the result of my engineer
colleague's attempt to apply his home-made liguistic correspondence
rules to a Danish word. I was trying to show that non-linguists
dealing with several languages use principles not unlike those
linguists use.

Torsten