[tied] Re: root *pVs- for cat

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 4:34:51 PM on Monday, July 30, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 5:21:57 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> >>> <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >>>> At 5:14:06 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007, tgpedersen
> >>>> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>> Let me see if I understand this: You assume that other
> >>> people have questioned my decisions;
>
> >> No, I *observe* that this is the case. I also observe
> >> that you must have been aware of the fact, assuming that
> >> you read the source that you cited.
>
> > Oh, that is what you meant.
> > You can't question someone's decisions if you're dead.
>
> The Usenet newsgroup sci.lang would be a less inappropriate
> venue for this sort of sophomoric word game.

You mean like claiming that a dictionary that appeared in 1911 is
'questioning' something I wrote last week? How's that for intellectual
honesty?

> >> I don't see what's so hard to understand. If you claim
> >> that a word is 'non-foreign', and if this claim is
> >> important to the case that you want to make, and if you
> >> know that others have argued seriously against the claim,
> >> you have an obligation at least to acknowledge the
> >> existence of those arguments.
>
> > This is the sentence you're ranting about, right?
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/49407
> > "
> > You seem to have left out a number of non-foreign pairs of
> > items in p-/b- in McBain:
> > "
>
> > Your phrase 'others have argued seriously against the
> > claim' then translates (yes?) into "MacBain proposes that
> > some of these are foreign and mentions that others have
> > claimed that too". Right?
>
> Yes, of course.

Of course?? How can McBain in 1911 argue, seriously or otherwise,
against a theory that was proposed in 1959??

> > Now what was it you said about my personal honesty?
>
> That your unqualified assertion of non-foreignness of some
> of the words that you listed is sloppy to the point of being
> intellectually dishonest.

I was using my own definition of what I thought was non-foreign.
That's the problem, right?

> A more diplomatic version of the
> same objection is quoted above ('you have an obligation').

I am sorry that insulted your book. Please don't burn my embassy.

> I will add that I consider this obligation to rest most
> heavily on those who -- like you and me in this case -- have
> no real claim to expertise or authority.

I am touched by your sudden display of humility. But the fact that you
submit to authority doesn't mean I have to.

> [...]
>
> >>>>> in particular because you steadfastly ignore that
> >>>>> words in Germanic in p- are not Germanic words and
> >>>>> words in Latin with root vowel -a- are (with
> >>>>> exceptions) not Latin.
>
> >>>> Both are completely irrelevant to any point that I have
> >>>> tried to make.
>
> >>> Why is that,
>
> >> I explained in the sentence that immediately followed,
> >> still visible a few lines down.
>
> >>> and what was your point?
>
> >>>> An Irish borrowing from Latin or English is not
> >>>> evidence of Irish (or Insular Celtic) contact with some
> >>>> NWBlock language, irrespective of whether the word is
> >>>> native to Latin or Germanic, respectively.
>
> >>> Of course. But that was what was under discussion. Once
> >>> the question is settled, it's settled. What are you
> >>> trying to point out by repeating this truism?
>
> >> It's a direct response to your comment above ('in
> >> particular because you steadfastly ignore ...'): if you
> >> actually accepted this 'truism', you wouldn't have made
> >> that comment.
>
> > Why wouldn't I?
>
> Because you would have recognized that the comment was
> largely irrelevant.

Now, I accepted it as a truism, and as you probably know, truisms are
relevant to nothing, or else they wouldn't be truisms.

> >> Nor would you respond to suggested Gmc. or Latin sources
> >> of EIr words by wittering on about how the putative
> >> source can't be native in Gmc. or Latin, as if this had
> >> any bearing on Insular Celtic contact with some NWBlock
> >> language.
>
> > ??? If a word exists in Latin or Germanic, but isn't
> > native in them, it's native in some other language. That
> > opens a new possibility, namely that the loan could have
> > been made directly into Celtic from that language.
>
> In many, possibly most, of the cases under discussion this
> is wishful thinking on your part: there's a good match with
> the putative source, which comes from a language known to
> have supplied many other loanwards.

To be honest, wishful thinking is what I think of your attempts too,
but I prefer to steer clear of value judgements; they get you nowhere
in a discussion.

> >>>>>>> From your tentative position which is not a
> >>>>>>> position, how would you explain the many words in p-
> >>>>>>> in both p- and q-Celtic? [...]
>
> >>>>>> The DIL has only about 20 pages of <p-> words,
>
> >>>>> 'Only' 20 pages, in a language which abolished p-.
>
> >>>> Yes, only: that's 20 out of about 2500, a very small
> >>>> fraction. And that same language did a lot of
> >>>> borrowing.
>
> >>> I don't get it; are you saying that if that number is
> >>> small enough, we can pretend they're not there? [...]
>
> >> No.
>
> > Well, how is your remark relevant then?
>
> At the very least it's relevant in that it explains, in
> answer to the question implied by your scare quotes, why I
> wrote 'only' in the first place! But in fact I expected the
> comment to be read as a whole, including the second
> sentence, and I further expected the reader to make the
> obvious inference that in my opinion most of those
> relatively few <p-> words were likely to turn out to be
> borrowings from known sources (or derivatives thereof) --
> especially when I went on to support this opinion with an
> account of the first ~5% of the words.

It is actually obvious that you expect them to go away, one way or
another, and that you find their existence an embarassment.

> >>>> <Pács> is a borrowing of Latin <pax>;
>
> >>> That's possible.
>
> >> It could hardly be anything else: it's 'a kiss', chiefly
> >> in the religious context of 'kiss of peace'.
>
> > Yes, but that is the domain of those cognates I referred
> > to also.
>
> No, it isn't; it isn't even close. (And even if it were,
> that should be 'possible cognates'.

So one should distinguish between 'cognates' and 'possible cognates'?

> Or even 'very
> speculative cognates'.)

Value judgement.

> The Latin source, on the other hand, is a perfect fit on formal,
> semantic, and historical grounds.

Value judgement. It isn't becoming for a party in a discussion to
assign points; that should be up to the referee(s).

> >> I feel no great obligation to explain them: I don't know
> >> enough. And I prefer 'etymology unknown' to speculation
> >> unsupported by any real argument.
>
> > That's the safe option if you don't know enough and have
> > no ambition to change that state.
>
> 'Safe' is accurate but a bit tendentious. More to the
> point, it's generally the most intelligent option if one
> doesn't know enough; one's ambitions are irrelevant.

One's ambition to know more or not is not irrelevant to one's status
as ignorant.

> (And in point of fact my primary ambition *is* to learn more;

Would that include actually reading Kuhn?

> it's making a new contribution that I don't much care
> about.)

Suit yourself, Brother Jorge.


Torsten