Re: swallow vs. nighingale

> The subject here is birds names. Because they are words with unclear
> word-formation structure as a rule, this is why there is so much
> irregularities in their development.

Why is their formation unclear, as opposed to the non-birdsnames of
the same languages, if they are not loans?

> As for me, there is nothing strange in it.

And to me, there is nothing strange in borrowing from a substrate
language.

> And, as a consequence,

As a consequence of your claim the bird names are prone to being
irregular you see nothing strange in them being irregular?

> I see virtually no reason to suppose that "a bird language", a
> postulated source for many bird names in western Indo-European
> languages, ever existed.

Obviously you don't.

> Of course it might have existed - but we could not prove it then.
> The observed irregularities are too weak evidence,

But you just ruled out the irregularities as evidence by claiming they
were caused by something else? How can you then consider using them as
evidence?

> and they all may be due to development of inherited vocabulary,

Which is especially irregular for birds' names?

> or due to borrowing wandering words from various sources.

So the birds' names are either regularly irregular, or borrowed from
several sources, but under no circumstances borrowed from just one
language, because we can't prove that?


Torsten