At 11:20:51 AM on Thursday, July 3, 2003, tgpedersen wrote:
>>> My brain must be an outdated model, it can't follow you
>>> here.
>> Or won't. Look at a straightforward analogy. Irish
>> spelling shows a sharp break at some point in the 20th
>> century (sorry, but I forget the exact year); Irish
>> pronunciation doesn't. The choice to reform the spelling
>> was made at a specific point in time; the changes that
>> prompted the reform were gradual and took place over
>> centuries.
> In this case there was no 'downward sequence' of
> progressively creolized versions, therefore threre never
> is. Non sequitur.
You haven't quite committed a a non sequitur here, but you
*have* managed to find yet another way to miss the point.
I begin to think that it's deliberate, but I'll try one more
time. The traditional orthography of Irish isn't a bad fit
for the pronunciation of some 800 years ago. The
pronunciation of Irish, however, has changed considerably
over that period. In 1948 (I think) the orthography was
changed. The change occurred at a specific point in time.
If at some point in the future one had only the written
record, one would see an abrupt change in the language in
the middle of the 20th century, despite the fact that the
changes in the spoken language that underlie that abrupt
change occurred gradually. This is parallel to the
situation with Old French: a slow accumulation of changes
was at some point agreed to be significant.
And even if it were not parallel, it would demonstrate the
original point, that a sharp break in the visible evidence
does not *necessarily* imply a sharp break in the underlying
object.
Brian