Re: [tied] Pronunciation of "r" - again?

----- Original Message -----
From: "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Pronunciation of "r" - again?


> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > There is no other language on Earth, I
> > believe, that has general English /r/ in non-preconsonantal or
> > pre-codal position (I have heard a similar /r/ in preconsonantal
> > position in Dutch, and Mandarin has a somewhat similar /r/ but
> > I think this too is only postvocalic). I deeply wonder what
> > possible reason there is for English being so extremely atypical
> > among modern languages, and why would /r/ change in a direction
> > opposite to that of almost every other language on the planet.
> > But then I think that's to be expected in a language where "long
> > i" is phonetically /ay/, "long e" is /i:/, and "long a" is /ey/ -
> > what other language that uses the Roman alphabet has such values
> > for the vowels?
>
> But what does the spelling system traditionally used for
> a language have to do with the nature of that language
> itself? Other languages have gone through series of vowel
> changes no less convoluted than those of English, the
> only difference being that their writing systems have been
> periodically updated, or else they've undergone no major
> sound changes in the time since they first began to be
> written.
>
> I've never really made any deep study of English, but in
> all my reading over the years I've never come across any
> mention of English posessing _any_ linguistically atypical
> features, much less of it being "extremely atypical among
> modern languages" as you would put it. There are several
> students of English on this list who will please correct
> me on that if I'm wrong.
>
> The only real mystery about English is why it hasn't been
> provided with a better writing system by now.
>
> > Now, I must learn about Nostratic - I am completely ignorant
> > in this field. So it is generally accepted that Arabic is
> > indeed related to Indo-European?
>
> No, it is not. The existence, and various reconstructions,
> of Proto-Nostratic stand on grounds in no way as solid as
> those upon which Proto-Indo-European stands. The former is
> an interstesting idea, while the latter is a proven fact.
> It isn't methodologically proper for any claims about Proto-
> Nostratic to influence our reconstruction of Proto-Indo-
> European.
>
> Sadly too, Nostratics seems to be especially attractive to
> "monad chasers". :^(
>
> David

***
Patrick:

What is methodologically proper is to inspect evidence from all sources for
the determination of any question.

Proto-Indo-European has progressed as far as it can without recourse to what
can be learned from comparison with other related language families.

As for "monads", I think the question is still open as we continue to find
ever more infinitesimal somethings that underlie - well, everything.
Leibnitz may have the last laugh after all.

***