Re: [tied] Re: Initial stress

----- Original Message -----

From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 12:18 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Initial stress

Ah, you're arguing coincidence. But then the laws of statistics would apply and how could we then get such a large contiguous area?

Well, first of all, the laws of statistics do not prohibit clusters of identical events. They even predict them. If you toss a coin ten times you will not normally get a sequence like HTHTHTHTHT or THTHTHTHTH (on the average, only one sequence in 512 will be perfectly alternating). I've just carried out this little experiment, getting THHHTHTTHH, with a fairly large contiguous "area" of "heads". Now if I argue that the second occurrence of "tails" is intrusive (due to a late invasion), who knows if we aren't dealing with a vast area of "heads", covering half of the string?

 

Secondly, the existence of te area is not _entirely_ due to coincidence. For example, the fact that Proto-Germanic was already initially stressed strengthens the odds in favour of any Germanic language to have initial stress (unless an innovation occurs, as in English, but innovations are on the whole many times rarer than retentions). Thirdly, I don't rule out diffusion or even substrate influence. I simply don't see any solid evidence for the latter.

 

Piotr