Re: DBG

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
> My point of view from the start was that there is
> no known criterion to distinguish these two parts.
> >
> > ****GK: There is Caesar's opinion, an excellent one,
> > based on information passed on by many local Gauls,
> > esp. Iccius and Antebrogius of the Remi (DBG 2:3).
> > This is much more reliable than speculative
> > reinterpretations two thousand years removed.****
> > ==========================================
>
> A.F : We don't even understand what the word "Gaul" means.
> Obviously, both Gallia and Belgica include tribes that have
> definitely non-indo-european features :
> Haedu living near the Arar river
> Carnuti living near the Atura rive.
> These names with a_u scheme have a non-indo-european profile.
> And they just happen to be tax-exempted by the Romans
> because they helped Romans against the P-Celts Gauls.
>
> And both areas include tribes that have definitely p-celt features.

Which tribes north of the Somme-Oise line have what p-Celt features?

> So this dividing line is falsified by DATA !!!

If the above question can be answered in the affirmative.

> Caesar's opinion is untrustworthy.
> My method is to start from facts and data

Which you disregard if they don't fit your preconceived ideas, eg DBG.

> If Caesar is ok with facts and data, I just do not care.
> If Caesar is not ok with facts and data, I care even less.

You don't care much for that Caesar dude, it seems.

> You are tinkering with data and fancying about with "borders"
> and language invasions.

Personal, nasty and without factual content.

> And Sorry to be especially harsh and brutal, you say I speculate :

No you're not.

> Please Remember that story about straw and beam in the eyes...
> ==========================
>
> > A.F :
> > I don't know who is reinterpretating speculatively. So far, I made
> >it clear that I deem DBG as not trustworthy.
>
> Why?
>
> A.F : it collides with obvious facts about toponyms and hydronyms.
> =================================

Which?

> A.F : I believe in facts above all, not alleged words.

What is an alleged word?

> You blindly believe what people say.

Personal, nasty and without factual content.

>
> > So far, my approach is based on historical phonology : I consider
> >that we have enough data kept in sufficiently precise state to be
> >able to make documented statements about what is what, what is
> >clear, what is unclear. And From this lexical and phonological
> >basis, duly ascribed to known (or supposed) languages, we can try
> >to figure out a scenario, without forgetting Occam's razor :
> >undocumented languages do not exist.
>
> What's an undocumented language? Do you mean PIE?
> =======================
> I mean this "belgian" stuff.

Oh, you mean you think Belgic doesn't exist? I knew that already.

> PIE is a body of data and hypotheses that display coherence.
> "Belgian" does not.

Please explain.

> If Belgian and other Germanic invaders displays no data and no
> phonological and traceable features : this is the eight letter word
> I said I would not write anymore.

What??

> or undocumented languages
> in a more academic verbatim.

What does that mean?

> > I will not move from this way of dealing with this Gallia /
> >Belgica dichotomy, the nature of which is to be determined and is
> >not to be postulated ex nihilo (or because dixit Caesar).
>
> Get off the horse, Napoleon. BTW ex nihilo and dixit Caesar are two
> different things.
>
> >Caesar's DBG is just (a bit of) data : not an untouchable principle
> >upon which everything has to rotate like the Earth around the Sun.
>
> I don't think anybody has required anything to rotate around BG.
> It's just data.
> ============================
> A.F :
> All Data are not be be blindly swallowed.

I think this means you think Caesar is wrong?

> This body of data appears to be untrustworthy.
> ==============================

You are repeating yourself.

> > As a starting point, I consider this dichotomy as totally
> >unproved. Otherwise, I suppose it would be easy to provide the
> >necessary data.
>
> Kuhn has demonstrated the northern boundary of Celtic placenames
> with several typical Celtic placename elements.
>
> ===================================
> A.F :
> I previously wrote that Kuhn's has demonstrated nothing :
> there are obvious data lacking : Condette etc

You got that wrong. Kuhn said those names thin out strongly north of
the Somme/Oise line, not that they were entirely absent.

> there are obvious absurdities : Dunum don't occur in flat lands.

Why shouldn't it? And why does dunum follow the same line as the other
Celtic placenames Kuhn traced?

> THe word Nantu that displays this a_u scheme is most probably
> a non-Indo-European word, that can help us determine where
> non-indo-european people were inhabiting.
> It does not help determine Celtic positions.
> This nantu word has no PIE cognate and appears in the Alps area :
> an area with the most obvious reservoir of non indo-european
> features.

How is that relevant?

> You definitely have a very strange approach to data and the way
> things can be demonstrated and discussed.

Personal, nasty and without factual content.

> Overlooking data, making unsensical analysis and
> relying on the wrong words is not good work,
> and does not demonstrate anything.

Personal, nasty and without factual content.

> > ===========================================
> >
> > > These two parts hence being basically
> > > one and only Gaulish country and undividable,
> > > the alleged dichotomy having no whatsoever
> > > ethnolinguistic relevance.
> >
> > ****GK: Willful rejection of reliable data is not very
> > laudable even if wrapped in French Jacobin slogans
> > (:=))****
>
> Not Jacobin, Colbert, I believe. I saw a 17th century French map on
> which was included all the future provinces of France: Nice, Franche
> Comté, Alsace, Lorraine, Saarland, Flandres, and also all of the
> Netherlands. Is this project of natural borders at the Rhine still
> official French policy? That would make Vlaams Belang insurgents
> against their natural fate.
>
> ====================================
> A.F
> Let me remind you that the French invented the right for people
> to freely determine their present and future,

As Maggie Thatcher reminded you at the 200 year anniversary of the
French Revolution, the whole democracy thing was imported from Britain.

> and wage a 15 year long war against all European kings and queens to
> impose that point of view.

Exactly, 'impose'. After losing the colonial wars the French decided
that maybe they should try to emulate the system of their successful
neighbors, so they introduced a representational system from England
and the Dutch flag turned 90 degrees, and then elected an emperor and
attacked their neighbor again, this time to free them from monarchy
and tyranny.

> We made people vote to determine who they wanted to be :
> French or not.
> Most voted to become French and still are.
> The Swiss voted against and are Swiss not French.
> If this method we invented and promoted was applied throughout the
> world, many wars would be unnecessary.
> I don't think French people or Dutch people ever contemplated the
> idea that the Dutch were supposed to become French.

I don't think Colbert (I think it was) was particularly interested in
the Dutch people, it was their ports he was after.

> I have little to say about the obvious and increasingly painful
> inability of Wallons and Flemish to agree on anything.
> A divorce usually transform two people into two unhappy losers.

Or two happy winners, or in most cases, one happy winner and one
unhappy loser.

> > Which "reliable data" are you talking about ?
> >
> >
> > ================================
>

> >My naive point of view is that science deals with facts, concepts
> >and data. Feelings are something else, even though they interfere.
> ===========================
>
> de Gaulle had an idea of 'la douce France', wherever he got that
> idea from. I heard he sometimes signed himself 'mijnheer van
> Rijsel', since he was from Lille.
>
> A.F :
> You make very personal and ugly sounding remarks.

I learn from the best.

> And De Gaulle's name is obviously Flemish not French.
> It is strange that such a talented know-everything like you
> did not notice this obviousness.

Of course. The other name he used as a joke. Rijsel is Lille in
Flemish, as you probably know.

> How about the preposition ad plus the stem watw- of the epithet of
> the inscriptions MATRONIS ATVIMS and MATRONIS ATVABUS?
> http://www.karmantan.de/bilder/hinz/goetter.html
>
>
> ========================
> A.F
> you mean ad + watw can become atvims and atvabus ?

Actually, it was MATRONIS VATVIMS and MATRONIS VATVIABUS, and the
proposal was ad + vatv > Atuatu-ca

> > ==============
> >
> > So in a word :
> >
> > Caesar's description is not only unreliable : it is not even a
> >starting point.
>
> Because he doesn't mention the non-Celticness of these leftover
> tribes? But they might have become Celtic-speaking by Caesar's time.
>
> A.F :
> The problem is the word "might"

That's the central word of any hypothesis.

> You keep stockpiling hypotheses upon hypotheses.
> All this amounts to nothing.
> This is neither demonstrable nor falsifiable.

It would be falsified by evidence that the leftover tribes were
speaking something other than Gaulish or Belgic at Caesar's time.

> It is perfectly possible to write a description of France and leave
> out the vanishing languages of Flandres, Alsace, Brittany etc.
>
> ============
> A.F :
> LOL.
> Have you ever been in France ?
> Do you know how many languages are spoken here now ?
> probably more than one hundred.

I know and I stand by my description: It is perfectly possible to
write a description of France while leaving out the vanishing
languages of Flandres, Alsace, Brittany etc.


Torsten