--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S & L" <mbusines@...> wrote:
> Andre Du Nay is an "anonymous" Hungarian guy. Unfortunately, right
now, I
> cannot remember his name.
> I would take very carefully a book printed by Corvinus Publishing
and make
> it available on an irredentist web site like Corvinus Library.
>
> S o r i n
As I said in earlier postings:
"I don't approve of people pulling stunts like that" [i.e. publishing
scholarly work anonymously]
and [about Du Nay's book]:
"Put on the WWW, predictably but sadly, by Hungarians
with territorial claims" [i.e. the Corvinus lot].
-o-o-o-o-o-
But that does not diminish the fact that Schramm should have referred
to it (which is the reason why I mentioned it) not does it diminish
the fact that the book is a highly informative and competent piece of
work from which one can learn a lot.
In that connection I would like to reminisce a bit.
(1)
Back in the seventies I used to do dialectological field work in a
Croatian village. I befriended a local intellectual and we spent long
evenings discussing all sorts of issues. Quite naturally I also
brought up my own results. I was shocked when at a certain point my
friend urged me not to publish one of those results because "The
Serbs could take advantage of it to prove that Croatians don't
exist". This struck me as fundamentally mistaken. You can't prove
that something does not exist by pointing to some abstruse linguistic
detail having to do with dialectological classification. Yet
subsequently my friend turned out to be right. I came across highly
knowledgeable and cultivated Serbs (and Slovenes) who explained to me
that Croatians don't really exist precisely on the basis of the
argumentation my friend had predicted. Now who is wrong here: the
undersigned for reporting the results of research or my Balkan
friends for drawing untenable conclusions?
(2)
In 1982 the Russian linguist Andrej Zaliznjak proved that the
medieval Novgorod dialect continues a variety of Slavic that failed
to carry through the Second Palatalization. Now as everybody knows,
the Second Palatalization happens to be an otherwise Common Slavic
innovation that must have taken place around 600 CE. In other words:
Russian is traversed by a Common Slavic isogloss. That is an ordinary
scholarly result. My own language (Dutch) is traversed by isoglosses
that are earlier than the departure of Saxons to the British Isles.
There is nothing strange or horrible about that and it naturally does
not lead to territorial claims. Yet I vividly recall a congress in
the late nineties where a keynote speaker used the inflammatory
word "separatist" to characterize Zaliznjak's result. I met Zaliznjak
(who happened to be present) just afterwards and he was visibly
shocked. "The only thing I'm interested in is the truth (istina)" is
what I recall he said. And I would like to ask again who is wrong
here: Andrej Anatolevich for publishing the results of his research
or the idiot who uses the word "separatist"?
I don't think I need to add to this but I apologize for my tone.
Balkan linguistics brings out the worst in people.
Willem