At 3:59:44 PM on Friday, July 16, 2004,
enlil@... wrote:
> Jens:
>> I do'nt
> First of all, it's "don't".
> developped
Developed.
> I don't reject your Celtic examples as impossible here but
> I just don't see the need for it in IE when everything can
> be explained without this further complexity. I mean, how
> could one tell whether one initial cluster is truly a
> cluster and which one isn't. It would be impossible. So
> what 'careful analysis' shows anything? What is shown by
> any analysis is that Syncope did exist and that some
> clusters are indeed the product of Syncope. I admit to
> generalizing Syncope for all clusters but... that's
> Occam's Razor in practice.
No, it isn't. Ockham's Razor is an injunction against
multiplying entities unnecessarily. Where there is no
evidence that a particular cluster is the result of syncope,
a postulated cluster-breaking vowel is an unnecessary
entity.
What you're actually using here (and elsewhere) is a
principle of maximal generalization: the maximal
generalization of the observation that some clusters are the
result of syncope is the hypothesis that all clusters are
the result of syncope. What you get, barring error, is a
complete reconstruction consistent with the data; this is a
reasonable working hypothesis when the distance between
evidentiary support and generalization is small, but the
further you generalize beyond the evidentiary support, the
more likely it is that you're creating an elegant fiction --
playing algebraic games with what are no longer even the
ghosts of departed quantities, for no better reason than an
apparent conviction that any answer is better than none.
At that point you lose any real explanatory power. Internal
consistency and consistency with the available data are
minimal requirements, not proof of correctness, and an
It-Might-Have-Been-So story isn't in itself an explanation
of anything.
Brian