Hello Piotr,
I understand now, why on your opinion this spread was more quickly.
The basic argument that you presented is the following:
" Any reorganisation of a phonological system has to happen quickly
once it has begun to spread, and there is a very good reason for
that: what a speech community needs is relative stasis rather than a
state of flux going on for centuries"
It's a valid argument.
(even "quikly" and "community needs" are not precisely defined to
can introduce some measure here...I take your argument mainly as an
indication of what idea you have followed, and not as a
demonstration...that is OK).
I want only to ask you one more thing, if possible :
One of the main issues that I found in linguistic books is that
the timeframes of these transformations are usually not precisely
fixed. This generate a lot of confusion.
Especially the fact that we have INTERVALS and not MOMENTS in
time, and also the fact that these INTERVALS represent either
TRANSITIONS or STABLE PERIODS (you very well presented this idea
above...)
Now in Albanian(3) you presented only one moment of this s->sh
transformation: somewhere after the Latin Loans and Before the Slavic
loans.
So please put your estimations (even rough ones) not only on one
moment but on the main moments (in years) of this
transformation...this will be very usefull for me.
I put below these main moments as I identified them:
MY WORST CASE SCENARIO
0. Stable period of (s->s) ??? -- max. 200 AD
1. Start_moment_of (s->sh) max. 200 AD
2. End_of_Global_Spread (s->sh) max. 600 AD
3. Start of reverse process (s->s) max. 600 AD
(note: in reality we cannot have here 0 years)
4. End_of_Global_Spread (s->s) max. 1000 AD
5. Stable period of (s->s) max. 1000 AD -- today?
Thanks in advance for this and Best Regards,
marius alexandru
P.S. : Thanks also for the recommended book. I will try to read it
(even is not obvious that I could find it).
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
> 29-01-04 20:00, alexandru_mg3 wrote:
>
> > " but an innovation like the one we're discussing is likely to
take
> > decades rather than centuries. "
> >
> > Sorry again, but I find above just another afirmation with no
> > arguments after it. Is there an issue to put the arguments after
any
> > afirmation like this?
>
> Any reorganisation of a phonological system has to happen quickly
once
> it has begun to spread, and there is a very good reason for that:
what a
> speech community needs is relative stasis rather than a state of
flux
> going on for centuries. If an innovation disturbs the equilibrium,
new
> speakers will instinctively opt for any adjustments that are
conducive
> to the reemergence of "law and order" (a new state of equilibrium).
It
> isn't intellectual speculation but a conclusion drawn from
empirical
> evidence. There are many historical examples of datable sound
changes
> and, even more importantly, present-day examples of change in
progress
> which show that phonological change is far more rapid than most
people
> would imagine. If you want reference to studies of ongoing sound
change,
> I recommend William Labov's _Principles of Linguistic Change_ (in
two
> volumes) as introductory reading.
>
> We don't know if the change *s/*z > *s^/*z^ spread to all the
corners of
> the Old Albanian dialect network. All we know is that it affected
the
> dialects ancestral to Modern Albanian.
>
> Piotr