--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>
> Jens:
> >Forget about winning and losing.
>
> This is why we can never agree. This is all about winning and
losing.
> One idea must surely be closer to the actual truth than another.
> So one idea (or even a group of ideas) _must_ "win" over another.
I refuse to take part in a puerile display of oneupmanship.
> You fail to prioritize theories which explains your confusion.
>
> >I take the traditional Uralic reconstruction *luke-k-me-k or
*luke-t-me-k
> >'we read' (Finn. luemme) to represent a stem
> >put in the plural [...]
>
> Apparently, Jens thinks that Uralic speakers could read in the
> 5th millenium BCE.
Oh, I forgot that was the long printers' strike when there was no
reading material. Still, they must have counted the days, so we can
use the verb in its old meaning 'count'.
> >Corresponding IE forms such as 1du *gWhn-wé and 1pl
> >*gWhn-mé, 2pl *gWhn-té I derive from earlier *gWhen-g-
> >me-g, *gWhen-d-me-g, *gWhen-d-te-g [... and on and on
> >without stop ...]
It did stop, if only after I had presented the full basis, for fear
that it would otherwise appear to be without foundation.
> I'm not sure what adjective can accurately describe this baseless
> assumption.
May I suggest 'good' or 'constructive?
> I only enjoy new ideas if they are intelligent. Even
> a baseless idea can at least be entertaining if it is clever. This
one
> loses points on all grounds.
>
> It is well understood that the IE dual is a late innovation,
assuredly
> unrelated to anything in Uralic.
If there is a sign of innovation in the way the dual is structured
in Indo-European I would like to be told about it. To my
interpretation it has all the clear signs of archaic categories. The
dual is nowhere on the advance, but plainly has the status of a
fragile archaism wherever we see it. Its forms are not transparent,
so if they are young they are made without any obvious attempt at
conveying a decodable message. Where forms are analyzable some steps
back, they show the working of phonetic rules as old as anything we
can uncover. Reduction of the number of stem-types and of cases is
typical of moribund categories, so of course is their ultimate
disappearance. If the IE dual is an innovation becvause we cannot
find it in Hittite, and the Eskimo dual is also an innovation
because it is not found in the isolated Sirenik dialect, then it is
a wonder of the highest rank that the secondary IE dual and the
secondary Eskimo dual agree with each other, as they plainly do.
> The Uralic dual relates to its own
> numeral for "two".
What do you mean? 'Two' in Uralic is something like *kakta. How is
the powerful argument construed which you apparently derives from
that?
> There is no basis for this pretend marker **-g,
> but no doubt Jens will appeal yet again to his distressing mantra:
> "But we don't REALLY know what happened so it COULD be true..."
> Thus, a herd of unicorns are galloping on Mars.
I do in fact reason that way, meaning that possibilities should be
kept open until we know they are not true. For reasons beyond my
comprehension you are constantly portraying me as advocating
unnecessarily complicated solutions. That is not so, but I often do
prefer solutions that are more complicated than the ones already on
record. That, however, always has a simple reason, viz. that those
suggested are demonstrably flawed or simply did not add up in the
first place.
The dual ends in a voiced velar fricative in Ob-Ugric, reportedly
from a dual formant *-kV. The verbal forms I'm analyzing end in -e
in Finnish reflecting a word-final velar consonant. The
corresponding IE forms end in IE *-e just like the animate dual. The
word-internal allomorph is *-H3- in IE, and in Uralic it is some
consonant which can combine with a following -m- or -t- to form a
geminate (and cause the preceding consonant to go into the weak
grade as it does in closed syllables); experts say it can be -k-
or -t-. In Eskimo-Aleut the dual is definitely marked with a voiced
velar fricative. In Chukotko-Kamchatkan there is no dual, and the
pl. ends in -t (with an interesting allomorph -r-), but the verbal
endings of 1pl and 2pl are -m&k, -t&k which more than anything look
like displaced dual forms (much like the Icelandic pronouns
vi{dh} 'we, {th}i{dh} 'you' which are the old duals). That is not
all so far-fetched as you will have it appear.
[...]
Jens