--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
wrote to Mayuresh Kelkar:
>
> What do you expect when you use a popularization by a
> non-specialist? The reference in question is John
> McWhorter's popularization The Power of Babel: A Natural
> History of Language. One would have to be quite ignorant of
> the subject or deliberately dishonest to present this as a
> representative description of comparative reconstruction.
>
> By the way, I see that you're still grossly misrepresenting
> Merlijn de Smit by quoting him out of context.
He's grossly misrepresenting McWhorter as well, as has been
pointed out to him more than once before.
Please see my post below made in reply to him on the matter
of the daughter-in-law word and McWhorter, over a year ago!
This is offered so that list members may see for themselves
exactly how Mayuresh is taking us all around in circles, by
going back over things that have been already been explained
to him in some detail, and explained again, and again, and
again!
David
From
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivilization/message/68546 :
--- In
IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
<smykelkar@...> wrote:
> --- In IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
> <liberty@...> wrote:
> >
> > No, he gives cognates for the word "_daughter_-in-law".
>
> No. McWhorter (2001, p. 45) refers to these words as meaning "sister
> in law."
Dictionaries are available online, I know for at least Sanskrit,
Greek, Russian and Latin, so you can confirm for yourself that
these words mean "daughter-in-law", not "sister-in-law". Are
you seriously trying to say that McWhorter actually thought they
meant "sister-in-law", or that a published work of his contains
such an error? What is your own immediate source for this notion?
You haven't actually read any book by McWhorter yourself, have
you?
> > Calvert Watkins adds "In a patrilocal and patriarchal
> > society (such as most, if not all, early Indo-European-
> > speaking societies) where the bride went to live in her
> > husband's father's house, "daughter-in-law" and "bride"
> > were equivalents."
>
> Tautological. The patrilocal nature of IE societies is itself
> inferred from these and i bet many more "cognate" words!
Are you seriously trying to deny that the ancient Latin
culture, as it is historically attested, never mind any
linguistic reconstructions, was patriarchal and patrifocal?
Are you seriously trying to deny that the historically
attested culture of the ancient Greeks was patriarchal and
patrifocal? The historically attested culture of the Vedic
people? The historically attested culture of the ancient
Slavs? The historically attested culture of the ancient
Medes and Persians? The historically attested culture of
the ancient Celts? The historically attested culture of
the ancient Germanic tribes?
You are assuming that the idea came from a linguistic
reconstruction or comparison, but that is not the case.
It's an obvious conclusion from studying the earliest
recorded history of various Indo-European peoples.
> This is ultimately tautological. The genetic relationship is itself
> inferred from congnate words and if a couple don't fit the pattern
> they become irregularities. I would just throw Sanskrit and Russian
> out of the IE "family."
No, irregular feminines like those in question are not judged
so on the basis of cognates, but on their position within
their _own_ languages. The -us ending is normally a masculine
ending in Latin, and so a word referring to females ending in
such in Latin stands out as irregular without bringing any other
language into consideration. The -os ending is typically a
masculine ending in Greek, and so a word referring to females
with that ending stands out as irregular in Greek, without any
cognates in any other language having anything to do with it at
all.
> It has EVERYTHING to do with majority. What is regular and what is
> irregular is decided on the basis of majority only. If four of these
> seven languages were lost to the ravages of time the conclusion
might
> look very different.
No, because as I said above, it is not based on just this one
set of cognates, but upon the typical form of the masculine
and feminine endings, some form of which are found on EVERY
NOUN IN EACH OF THE LANGUAGES IN QUESTION.
> Not at all! It is poor science. In science entropy or disorder
> or chaos always increases. A tornado ripping through a junk yard
> cannot reassemble a car automatically.
Yes, I'm sure we've all seen this argument used by creationists
before.
> A ripen fruit rottens eventually but *never the opposite*.
> Irregularities don't become regularities like the IE linguist
> assume happened in case of Sanskrit.
By your logic all language should have broken down by this
point in time to the point where nobody should be intelligible
to anybody else. However it doesn't work that way. In every
language for which we have any historical evidence for a period
of its evolution, we find irregular forms being replaced by
newer more regular ones. That's called "evidence". It is not
enough for you to merely believe something impossible, when
there is evidence that it has happened.
> The original perfect forms have suffered corruption. In the case
> of snusha Russian has suffered the least corruption.
It was popular, over a century ago, to speak of "corruption"
in languages over time, but that is no longer done by linguists,
who know better. Languages evolve, just like other human social
institutions, just as biological systems. They do not corrupt.
--- In
IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
<smykelkar@...> wrote in another post:
>
> continued..
>
> What must have happened in the past is quite obvious.
Is your scenario here really that "obvious"? I don't see as
you given anything in the way of evidence for it.
> The Brahmin elite of India took their perfect Sanskrit language
But Sanskrit is not perfect. It has its own irregularities,
redundancies, ambiguities, etc. just as any other human
language.
> (which they have still preserved painstainkingly over thousands of
> years) to nearby territories. The language was eventually taken up
> by less developed civilizations and people with heavier tongues.
What exactly is a "heavy tongue"? Do you really believe that
to be a scientifically sound concept?
> Thus the origina language got corrupted. This simple truth is
> unbearable for the modern materialistic, Marxist, pseudo
> secularist, eagaliterian, liberaterian mind to swollow.
If so, then should an opposite scenario be any easier for
someone on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum to
"swallow"?
Let's not worry about what is easy to swallow and by whom,
since that applies to everybody alike, and just stick to
logical arguments.
--- In
IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003"
<smykelkar@...> wrote in still a third post:
> continued...
>
> Therefore as IE linguists would have it- the corrupt word snusos ...
Not "corrupt", merely not in accord with a more common
pattern of forming feminine nouns.
> ... was perfected in Sanskrit to snusha ...
Not "perfected", merely remodeled on the analogy of the
more common pattern of forming feminine nouns.
> only to be corrupted AGAIN in Marathi "soon" and Punjabi nu etc.
No, not only not "corrupted", but these forms have not
joined the typical masculine declension, have they? In
the natural evolution of these two particular languages,
the nouns endings have simply been lost.
> Ha! Thats just bull shit.
No, it's the simplest logical argument explaining all of
the observations. You can't understand that however, because
you're unaware of the majority of the observations, and not
interested in explaining them in any case, as you've admitted
more than once before.
What are you afraid of, Mayuresh?
In any case, let us at long last let the list see the actual
example of a reconstruction of which you've been trying to
offer a distortion. It is to be found at
http://www.bartleby.com/61/8.html .
Please read the article at the above address if possible,
rather than as appearing below, in order to see the diacritics
and special phonetic characters properly displayed.
- begin quote -
An Example of Reconstruction
Before proceeding with a survey of the lexicon and culture
of the Indo-Europeans, it may be helpful to give a concrete
illustration of the method used to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-
European vocabulary and a brief description of some of the
main features of the Proto-Indo-European language. The
example will serve as an introduction to the comparative
method and indicate as well the high degree of precision that
the techniques of reconstruction permit.
A number of Indo-European languages show a similar
word for the kinship term "daughter-in-law": Sanskrit snus.á,
Old English snoru, Old Church Slavonic snukhá (Russian
snokhá), Latin nurus, Greek nuós, and Armenian nu. All
of these forms, called cognates, provide evidence for the
phonetic shape of the prehistoric Indo-European word for
"daughter-in-law" that is their common ancestor. Sanskrit,
Germanic, and Slavic agree in showing an Indo-European
word that began with sn-. We know that an Indo-European
s was lost before n in other words in Latin, Greek, and
Armenian, so we can confidently assume that Latin nurus,
Greek nuós, and Armenian nu also go back to an Indo-
European *sn-. (Compare Latin nix [stem niv-], "snow,"
with English SNOW, which preserves the s.) This principle
is spoken of as the regularity of sound correspondences;
it is basic to the sciences of etymology and comparative
linguistics.
Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Armenian agree in showing
the first vowel as -u-. We know from other examples that
Slavic regularly corresponds to Sanskrit u and that in this
position Germanic o (of Old English snoru) has been changed
from an earlier u. It is thus justifiable to reconstruct an
Indo-European word beginning *snu-.
For the consonant originally following *snu-, closer
analysis is required. The key is furnished first by the Sanskrit
form, for we know there is a rule in Sanskrit that s always
changes to s. (a sh-like sound) after the vowel u. Therefore a
Sanskrit snus.- must go back to an earlier *snus-. In the same
position, after u, an old -s- changes to kh (like the ch in
Scottish loch or German ach) in Slavic; hence the Slavic word,
too, reflects *snus-. In Latin always, and in Germanic under
certain conditions, an old -s- between vowels changed to -r-.
For this reason Latin nurus and Old English snoru may go back
to older *snus- (followed by a vowel) as well. In Greek and
Armenian, on the other hand, an old -s- between vowels
disappeared entirely, as we know from numerous instances. Greek
nuós and Armenian nu (stem nuo-) thus regularly presuppose the
same earlier form, *snus- (followed by a vowel). All the
comparative evidence agrees, then, on the Indo-European root
form *snus-.
For the ending, the final vowels of Sanskrit snus.á, Old
English snoru, and Slavic snukha all presuppose earlier -a
(*snus-a), which is the ordinary feminine ending of these
languages. On the other hand, Latin nurus, Greek nuós, and
Armenian nu (stem nuo-) all regularly presuppose the earlier
ending *-os (*snus-os). We have an apparent impasse; but the
way out is given by the gender of the forms in Greek and Latin.
They are feminine, even though most nouns in Latin -us and Greek
-os are masculine.
Feminine nouns in Latin -us and Greek -os, since they are
an abnormal type, cannot have been created afresh; they
must have been inherited. This suggests that the original Indo-
European form was *snusos, of feminine gender. On the other
hand, the commonplace freely formed ending for feminine nouns
was *-a. It is reasonable to suggest that the three languages
Sanskrit, Germanic, and Slavic replaced the peculiar feminine
ending *-os (because that ending was normally masculine) with
the normal feminine ending *-a, and thus that the oldest form
of the word was *snusos (feminine).
One point remains to be ascertained: the accent. Of those
four language groups that reflect the Indo-European accent
Sanskrit, Greek, (Balto-)Slavic, and Germanicthe first three
agree in showing a form accented on the last syllable: snus.á,
nuós, snokhá. The Germanic form is equally precise, however,
since the rule is that old -s- went to -r- (Old English snoru)
only if the accented syllable came after the -s-.
On this basis we may add the finishing touch to our
reconstruction: the full form of the word for "daughter-in-law"
in Indo-European is *snusós.
It is noteworthy that no single language in the family
preserves this word intact. In every language, in every tradition
in the Indo-European family, the word has been somehow altered
from its original shape. It is the comparative method that permits
us to explain the different forms in this variety of languages
by the reconstruction of a unitary common prototype, a common
ancestor.
- end quote -
Finally, I would like to comment on your posting style.
In this case, as in too many others to count, you have
sent off three replies to the same post. Why not take
some time to think, and then give one complete reply to
one message? Moreover, and worse in my opinion, is that
in each of your replies you quoted the _entire_ original
post, along with each of your successive separate replies,
wasting both bandwidth and people's time by making them
scroll through all of it.
Please delete all irrelevant material, all sentences that
are not being directly responded to, as a matter of courtesy
as well as to save bandwidth.
David W.