At 5:56:55 AM on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, tgpedersen wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
>> At 3:43:18 AM on Tuesday, May 16, 2006, tgpedersen wrote:
[...]
>>> But if there had been no records of Old English, and
>>> that's not an unthinkable situation, Trask's method would
>>> have forced us to disregard 'hound'.
>> No, it wouldn't: Goth. <hunds>, OSax. <hund>, OHG <hunt>, ON
>> <hundr>. There's nothing remotely comparable for <dog>.
> Alright, alright then: if there had been no records of Old
> English, and if no other Germanic language had existed,
> then etc. This is not the situation for English, of
> course, but there's no telling whether it's the situation
> for Basque.
I finally found some time to look at what Larry actually
said:
First, the Basque word for 'badger' appears in at least
seventeen regional variants. B and R have no business
selecting just one of the numerous variants merely because
it suits their purposes: that is unprofessional. With
this shabby methodology, they could equally have selected
some other single form if that had happened to suit their
purposes better, such as <asku~> or <azkenarro> or even
the very dubious hapax <akomarra>.
This appears to be quite different from the dog/hound
situation: <dog> and <hound> are distinct etyma, while the
Basque variants, despite their very considerable
differences, apparently have a common origin. (In a post to
the old IE list he said that '[c]omparative evidence points
to an earlier *<azkone>', from which, according to another
post to that list, most but not all of the variants can be
straightforwardly derived.) There is a considerable
difference between on the one hand picking one of several
*related* variant forms simply because that specific variant
fits one's theories, and on the other hand choosing one of
two *unrelated* etyma. In the former case, it seems to me,
one ought if possible to use a reconstructed ancestor of the
dialect variants; any etymology or connection that you're
proposing for one variant must (with suitable modifications
or additions) apply to the related variants as well.
Inferences drawn from <hound>, however, say nothing at all
about <dog> and vice versa.
Brian