Re: [tied] az+

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fortuna11111" wrote:

>> It was already <azU> in OCS, to be precise, and it may owe its
>> survival Bulgarian to the conservative influence of Church Slavic.
>
> OCS was based on the Slavic dialects spoken in the region of
> Tessaloniki. [...]

Since discuting with a senior linguist, there no doubt he's aware
of these trivia. For the sake of concision, you should avoid them
if they aren't necessary.

> [...] the Tessaloniki dialects are listed under Bulgarian dialects
> in university courses to the present day (this has reference to
> language and not to territorial claims, to save you the paranoia).

That's yet another remark which you should avoid.

>>> Just as many other things "happen to be so" in BG.
>>
>> Name any language, and I will show you things that "happen to be
>> so" there and nowhere else. I can't see anything peculiar about
>> Bulgarian.
>
> How acquainted are you with Bulgarian? I am far from an attempt to
> discredit you. Yet it is a frequent concern of mine. Most of what
> you read on southern Slavic languages is based exclusively on
> Serbo-Croatian [...]

Well, that's not what one would call an "educated guess". :)

>> What evidence? The existence of a similar word in Iranian?
>
> Archaeological evidence confirming the Protobulgarian migrations
> and connections with Iranian peoples.

That doesn't account for _linguistical_ evidence. That could be
said about any two peoples having had some contact for a while.
I had given a link to one source.

> I had not spoken about borrowing, but about some basic mixture of
> two languages, whereby some features of the original languages are
> preserved.

The idea of "basic mixture" is fallacious. The system belongs
usually and essentially to one and only language, with influences
of the other(s) language(s) involved. Mixed languages are merely
a rare marginal case, no occurrence for modern Bulgarian.

>> It's just a conjecture, and not a plausible one at that, given
>> that all the case forms of the 1.sg. pronoun are Slavic, and
>> that no other pronoun was replaced beside the least likely one.
>
> That was just one example that I shared. I want to go further
> researching this. You don't really have to worry. If there is
> nothing behind such a thesis, it will get disproven.

Your example got disproven. If you'll continue on the same line,
there is little doubt you'll have to worry about building theories.

>> even if it contains Iranian loans (and I don't think there are
>> more of them in Bulgarian than, say, in my native Polish).
>
> That has to be checked. If you are right, you are right. Yet I have
> a list of words that I checked with my roommate both ways - how
> something is called in Polish and if she can think of a word in
> Polish that sounds similar. Some of those words that I can say
> now, aus dem Kopf, are:
>
> omraza "hatred"
> mrazja "hate"
> hubav "good, nice"
> obicham "love"
> mrUsen "dirty"
> chicho "uncle"
> tUrsja "seek"
> dreha "piece of clothing"
> kolan "belt"
>
> Just a chaotic list of what I can recall.

Well, for making science you should try a more rigurous approach,
that is neither the amateurish "ear checking" with a roommate, nor
"aus dem Kopf". Just an advice for not making "chaotic lists".

> I also tried the words "karam" and "mUrdam". [...] The example
> with "karam" probably proves nothing, but it has given me some
> reasons for thought.

You tried what, exactly?

> E.g. how did those words end up with those meanings in Serbian?

Semantical evolution. It's that thing giving continuous headache
to Alex.

>> What languages? Slavic and Iranian? Even 2000 years ago the level
>> of mutual intelligibility between them was zero.
>
> Huh, now, Piotr, how do you know? In learning Indo-Iranian
> languages, I find many similarities between Slavic and Iranian.

Well, one can have a pretty clear idea from linguistical data.
The systems were essentially different, also the vocabulary.

> I cannot agree with the zero, even if my comments were also
> kind of sloppy.

You're based on... ?!

>>> Yet one of the worst things I could do is take those "things"
>>> and apply them indiscriminately to other languages, sometimes
>>> in conflict with actual evidence.
>>
>> What "other languages"? The methods of linguistics are not
>> supposed to be language-specific.
>
> So why do you call it linguistics at all if it is not based on
> knowledge of languages?

The methods are of course based on what one knows on languages
in general and on scientifical requirements. To study a particular
language, the very same methods are used on a specifical set of
linguistical data, giving correlated results.

> Unfortunately, linguistics does not have those checking mechanisms.
> And my general impression is many linguists are actually worse at
> speaking living languages than many amateurs. I do not think this
> is normal.

That impression is an Alex-like idée fixe. Just forget it and wait
for your graduation before making any assumption on future fellows.

Cheers,
Marius Iacomi