Dear M. Iacomi,
1. "You should answer to that e-mail from the moderators
> of r-lang"
First of all: I answered to that e-mail days ago ...I don't
know why nothing happens ...seems that you are well informed that I
am on this...By the way, why so many cautions for r-lang acceptance?
2. " You already expressed this opinion and you did not produced
any valid argument to support it "
Viewing this "assumption", I feel obliged to re-write my
arguments (that I posted until now) here again:
I. No Slavic loans (or nor major Slavic loans) in Romanian
before Cyril and Methodius Bible. If you know such loanwords (I
mean "serious ones" not like "st^an~a", please give me a list of
them). So the great majority of loans not arrived in Romanian before
the X century. The Slavs arrive in Balkans after 600 or 650 so for
minimum 300 hundred years there are no major loans from Slavs in
Proto-Romanian. This is a fact. You didn't give any explanation on
this.
II. Different rules from Latin and Slavic loans in Romanian.
You didn't give a valid explanation on this (it's my opinion). I will
come back below to explain why this is a strong argument: We have
another language: Albanian where Latin->Albanian and Slavic->Albanian
loans follow similar rules.
My arguments:
--------------
a) Albanian - Romanian sounds correspondences quite the same
(HERE, we DON'T have wordloans (and NOT in the case of Latin
->Romanian as you wrote)) but different evolutions of the same
substrate one completely romanized, the other partial romanized)
b) Albanian - Romanian syntactic / morphological constructions
quite the same
c) Albanian - Romanian stress system quite the same
d) Historical moments of interaction of 2 languages with Latins and
Slavs quite the same
e) Loans rules from Latin to Albanian and loan rules from Latin to
Romanian very similar
f) Loans rules from Slavic to Albanian similar with the loans rules
from Latin to Albanian (I want to ask you: Latin/Slavic - Albanian
Interactions took also "centuries", isn't it?)
g) Loans rules from Slavic to Romanian NOT AT ALL the same with ANY
other rule above (see e) and f))
=> As result, Not a "natural" process of interaction between 2
populations to explains the Slavic Romanian "loanwords"
=> As result, do we have another "way" to explains the "loans"?
=> Yes, we have :
=> Slavonic Church Institution for Romanians (that works for
centuries and not for a short period of time)
=> Could we add other possible explanations => No. Not an obvious
one.
I think that this is a "clear" argument (In any case for me seems
to be one). What do you think?
If you have other explanations to explain the facts from a) to g)
please write your arguments here, but don't write again only your
conclusion.
I add now a third one (thanks to Alex):
Argument III. Slavic transformation rules into Romanian are
not at all consistent (we have a lot of exceptions).
-> This fact cannot be explained using the argument of "a long
interactions between Romanians and Slavic populations".
-> This fact could be explained very well by an "artificial"
way ("Church Institution") for the arrival of these words in
Romanian. Why? Lets take a "sure" "artificial" loanwords process:
You can find a "similar" artificial process in Romanian: French-
Romanian loanwords (starting from XVIII century and finished in XX
century):
->For sure there wasn't a "long" French-Romanian interaction
between the 2 populations in this case.
=> These wordloans contains a lot of "Inconsistent Phonetic
Changes", despite several adjustments and interventions of "Academia
Rom^ana" (that didn't exist in Old Church Slavonic time). So despite
these interventions, I can still give you a lot of examples
of "Inconsistent Phonetic Changes" for French loanwords into Romanian
(see Al. Graur). Is this a valid argument? For me it is.
If you don't agree, please give me and example
for "inconsistent phonetic changes" for any language to any other
one, together with your "consistent" explanation on this.
The Facts 1-2-3 are well explained by my idea. You don't give
me any other valid explanation on the 3 facts above.
And now I will add a 4-th one:
IV. I fully agree with you on ONLY one point:
"The adaptation rules for Slavic loanwords" (I want to precise
here: not for the whole process but for each loanword in part)
" appears over a very limited amount of time" (I add here: despite
the fact that the Slavic and Romanian populations live in Balkans for
about 1300 years).
Well, this is a very good observation. And, yes, you are right.
But this is another fact that I will add as argument to my idea
=> As result, EACH loanword is not due to a long interaction
between the 2 populations
=> etc...
(By the way: I don't agree at all with the other explanations that
you put there like "not derivation rules" etc...)
Despite Arguments I-IV, I fully agree with you that I did not
produce "final" arguments on my idea...
First I need to identify the whole list of the Old Slavic
loans (from DEX, Rosetti etc..That is not a short task - but I was
very surprised when somebody tells me that "A-Slavic loans" is not a
good sample. Every sample is a good sample in my opinion) and to
compute the apparitions and the frequencies of Slavic loans in the
Romanian in the old written documents (like Psaltirile (unfortunately
I don't have them), Ureche, Costin, Neculce, "Letopisetele" din
Muntenia" ) etc...
Also I re-read the ILR (as indicated by you) ... but I wasn't
convinced that the "phonetics changes due to the Slavs, described
there by Rosetti", indicated by you as an argument against my idea,
cannot arrived in Romanian via the "Slavonic Church Institution", but
I agree that I have to come back on this subject.
Also Please Note: that I didn't come back myself on this subject
I only send a reply viewing Alex e-mail.
"Slavic - Romanian" case is not for me a case in "itself", its
only an examples in order to find out rules...for different types of
non-genetic interactions.
3. "> Unlike Slavic, most Latin words in Romanian are _not_
loanwords."
I was very surprised by hearing this assumption. In this case
my question is: "Who learned the Latin in Balkans: the Latins (or
the "already Latin-speaker" colonists)"?
=> No.
=> If a non-Latin population learned Latin in Balkans...
=> The learned words are "loanwords" or not? (even they learned
also the morphological and syntactical Latin rules, the learned words
are of course "not their own words" )
=> So they were...loanwords...
What I also find "strange" in your email was the following
assumption:
4. "even without any external "influence" (if that would be
conceivable), a language undergoes changes"
This is NOT true at all. Arguments:
a) First of all because ( you are right) : a "perfect isolated
(language) system" is not conceivable.
b) For sure the most "isolated language systems" keep better
the old traces...I can give you some examples, if needed.
c) Please give us an example of linguistic change without
external influence ...I don't think that you can.
(I agree that "Physics is not the right method" (this wasn't an
argument from my sideÂ…only an "expression")-> but for sure the
Rule: "where is no external change no internal change (if any) will
survive" is a valid one -> The Rule above is well available in any
evolutionary system: genetics -> life, languages and also in the
social systems.
Best Regards,
marius a.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "m_iacomi" <m_iacomi@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" wrote:
>
> > Sorry, but I cannot agree with you on the following item:
> >
> > << Simply trough the factor "time".>>
> >
> > Is not a sufficient condition.
>
> Well, you don't have to agree with him. You have first to learn
> a lot about timeline of changes. This is still hardly appropriate
> on this list. You should answer to that e-mail from the moderators
> of r-lang, in order to be inscribed and ask the right questions in
> the right place.
> Still, a thing might be emphasized: rules of phonetical changes
> from Latin to Romanian are rules of derivation in an evolving
> language over the centuries. The rules for Slavic words are not
> rules of derivation but of correspondence or phonetic adaptation
> over a very limited amount of time, at some historical moment,
> from a language to another. Keep that in mind before speculating
> about how different are these rules.
>
> > For me it can me only 2 explanations:
> >
> > 1. the loaner "genetic" structure have changed meanwhile...
> > (see also the First Law of Newton : "a body keep his status if no
> > change appears...")
>
> All on the contrary in historical linguistics: even without any
> external "influence" (if that would be conceivable), a language
> undergoes changes. Physics is not the right method to describe
> history of languages.
>
> > 2. the modality in which these 2 types of loans appear is quite
> > different:
>
> Unlike Slavic, most Latin words in Romanian are _not_ loanwords.
>
> > My opinion is that the slavic loans arrived in Romanian MAINLY
> > via the Church Institution...so this can explain why these loans
> > didn't suffer similar alterations as latin loans...
>
> You already expressed this opinion and you did not produced any
> valid argument to support it. With the above, you still did not
> brought something valid, but a deep misunderstanding of what the
> word "historical" stands for in "historical linguistics".
>
> Cheers,
> Marius Iacomi