---- Original Message ----
From: tgpedersen
To:
cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 3:11 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: swallow vs. nighingale
>>>> A short "leap aside", if you please. I perfectly know that
>>>> this is a list on IE, not Nostratic, but I only want to show
>>>> several examples of irregular development of initial groups
>>>> which is the subject here. This irregular development is
>>>> documented well in Altaic, and especially in Mongolian. Only
>>>> some examples:
>>>> u ~ 0: Mongolian usu - Turkish su (< sub) "water" (cf. also
>>>> Buriat dialectal (so: Mongolian) hub ~ sub "river..."
>>>> (adjective))
[...]
>>>> There exist much more such examples. Naturally such
>>>> disappearings of initial sounds are not regular in any of
>>>> cited languages.
>>> Why 'naturally'?
>> Dear Torsten, I wrote "naturally" because I think so. And I think
>> so because of the knowledge I have. I really hope that you do not
>> understand why "naturally", and that your question really was not
>> to be provocative. Sorry, I do not like quarrels. We may be of
>> different opinions but it does not means that we must provocate
>> one another.
>> Anyway, I would never ask such a question because the situation
>> seems to me clear. Obviously not to you.
> That's right. That's why I asked you the question and why you didn't
> ask yourself the question.
>> "Naturally" means that disappearing of initial sounds is not
>> regular in Altaic, however they occur in some words.
> No it doesn't.
> The latter statement states as a contingent fact, that disappearing
> of initial sounds is not regular in Altaic, however they occur in
> some words. But if you add 'naturally' in front of it, you are
> saying that this fact is derived from something else, some higher
> principle which you don't mention.
>> It was a notice for those who have little knowledge on Altaic. If
>> disappearing had been regular, I would not have put it as the
>> argument. And if anyone else had put such examples as an
>> argument, I would have guessed that the examples must illustrate
>> some irregular changes. There would not have been another
>> possibility unless my opponent had been schizophrenic or he had
>> not thought logically.
> That's your reason for putting statement 2). I still don't know what
> your reason was for preceding it with 1) 'naturally'.
The main subject of this discussion is not the meaning of the word
"naturally" but the problem if there exist irregular phonetic changes
or not. And really, boring of side threads instead of the main one
might even make the reader confused.
Anyway, here is my explanation for you if you still have so much
troubles with understanding my words. Webster's New Worlds Dictionary
defines "naturally" as, among others, "as one might expect" (and not
"naturally", as you writes, Torsten). The discussion was on irregular
phonetic changes. I gave a list of some phonetic changes in Altaic.
And I wrote that the cited chages are "naturally" irregular. The
reader might expect that I had quoted them on purpose - even if that
was not stated literally. Instead, I wrote "naturally" - to confirm
that the examples had really been quoted with the purpose to
illustrate the thesis that irregular changes do exist. If I had
omitted that word, there would not have been any relation between the
list of quoted examples and the previous thread.
I had really thought that that would be read by people who know the
meaning of the word "naturally". But obviously I was wrong. You,
Torsten, did not realize that the English word "naturally" means "as
one might expect". But now you know it, I hope. Nevertheless, I think
that all is clear now, and I think the topic is closed. EOT, like
people write on popular mailing lists. Really, let's talk about more
serious problems instead.
>> All I wanted was to show that irregular disappearing of initial
>> sounds is present in other languages than IE as well. If no
>> examples were known or discussed in the literature, we should
>> consider seriously the discussed hypothesis that some birds names
>> in some IE languages are borrowings from some substrate.
> Obviously at some level you must have sensed that there was a
> possibility you chose to ignore, namely that those words in Altaic
> with 'irregularly' disappearing initial sounds themselves may have
> come from a substrate in which they were regular.
Not 'irregularly' but irregularly, without quotation marks. There are
several circumstances which make the degree of probability of such
possibility very low.
1) Various sounds disappear, both (various) vowels and consonants. If
the discussed hesitation had been due to substrate influence, we
might have expected that it would have been a trace of a
morphological element there, with the function of article for
instead. But such an alternating element should be invariable.
Instead of an invariable element we observe a set of very
miscellaneous alternations.
2) Influence of substratum should be the strongest on peripheric area
of a language group, or on territory occupied by a given language not
very long ago. Anyway, we should observe differences in strength of
substrate influence on the area of the group. We do not observe such
an effect in the case of Altaic.
3) We cannot observe that longer forms would exist in one group of
ethnolects (dialects, languages etc.) while shorter forms in another
group of ethnolects. Instead, in a given dialects we have longer
forms of some words and shorter forms of another words. In other
words, the changes are not areal, and we cannot explain them by areal
phonetic processes (either in Altaic languages or in substrate
languages, if they were the source of these words). The only
explanation that would make sense would be that the variable element
was a morpheme in substrate - in some word forms it was present, and
in some words it was absent.
4) Some of anlaut variations are specific for single dialects: while
one dialect of a given language has the full form, another dialect
has the shorter form (without the initial sound). We cannot point
what languages were the substrate - and naturally we cannot reject
their existence in the past only because of this. However, if the
substrate does not exist any more now, the process of borrowing must
have happened in the past, and rather in the distant past, probably
in the period when modern dialects and languages had not existed yet.
A substrate language could not influence dialects of languages which
had not formed.
Naturally, there is a chance that two forms, the full one and the
shorter one, existed side by side for centuries, and finally only one
of them has survived in one dialect and only one of them (but the
other one) in another dialect. But the question is how much the
chance is. Note also that we do not speak about only two dialects, so
the chance is much time less.
And the science differs from other forms of cognition in this, among
others, that the science rejects little probable solutions if one can
propose others, more probable (and simpler). The result is that, as
far as I know, most Altaicists reject the possibility that the anlaut
hesitations were caused by substrate. Simply, it would be too
complicated explanation, based on little probable events. On the
other hand, the possibility that initial sounds vanish irregularly,
in various time, and in various languages and dialects, is more
probable.
All the rest is the question of estimation of credibility of such or another
explanation. In my opinion (like in the opinion of many Altaicists), the
view that the hesitations of initial sounds is a result of irregular
phonetic changes, is much better motivated than any other view. I understand
that there are people who never admit the idea that irregular phonetic
changes exist, and I do not hope that I will ever convince such a fellow
believer. Discussion with such a person is simply a waste of time. The main
point in which beliefs differ from science is that beliefs are not open to
any arguments.
Nevertheless, the discussion would have sense if it appeared that the above
discussed circumstances are meaningless, ineffective, badly estimated etc.
Another reason for revision would be a piece of evidence that irregular
changes are impossible. However, while proving of existence of something is
enough simple, it is very hard to prove that something does not exist. Of
course, we may have doubts if something really exists. But it is more
important if we have also evidence.
>> But as I showed, such examples are known also outside the IE
>> family, and the presence of "fleeting a-" cannot be taken as a
>> serious argument for such a substrate.
> If you had only cited 2), the statement about the supposed irregular
> disappearing of initial sounds in Altaic, you would have had nothing
> but an analogy, and that is not enough for the conclusion you
> wanted, namely that the 'fleeting-a' is a 'regular irregularity' as
> that of Altaic.
No, "nothing but analogy" is enough. Namely, we talk about general laws of
language development in fact. Two antagonistic views must be considered:
a) irregular phonetic changes are possible
b) irregular phonetic changes are impossible.
I am convinced that the Altaic argument is enough for accepting the variant
a, and, as I presented, there are reasons for such a convinction. But if
yes, the presence of the a-mobile in bird names itself is not enough for
creating hypotheses of existence a "bird-substrate language" in the past.
It is true that the situation is not clear.
1) Personally, I am convinced that "somebody had been here before us" in
Europe, i.e. Indo-Europeans are not the first humans to live here. So,
existence of a substrate language for IE languages is very probable in
western Europe, practically certain. Which is more, I suspect that indeed,
there existed Semitic, or at least Semitoid substrate or adstrate (or even
superstrate) there. However, the anlaut alternations in two or three bird
names (and in one or two other words) cannot be proofs for anything.
2) Both forms of a given word, the one with a- and the one without it, may
have developed from an inherited lexeme. The cited Altaic examples show that
irregular phonetic changes in this position happen to occur in languages in
the world, so why not in IE. Which is more, some IE languages has preserved
traces of initial laryngeals, in more or less regular way (not all
Greek-specific initial vowels are from laryngeals, on the other hand in
Armenian not all laryngeals have left traces). Another IE-specific feature
of this type is s-mobile: its presence and absence seems to be quite
irregular. There is also base (even if less certain) for supposing k-mobile
and d/l-mobile (in IE words like "tear" or "tongue"). As explanations for
s-mobile, and possibly also for k-mobile and d(l)-mobile does not need
substrate influence, also a-mobile does not anything external.
3) One form of a given word may be inherited (or: borrowed already in the
common IE stage) while the other form may be borrowed to a specific branch.
The source may unnecessarily be Semitic, like in the instance of "ore"
(where the original source was probable Sumerian, and attested Semitic forms
were borrowed parallelly).
4) The word in question is a Wanderwort, and both its forms have been taken
from different sources "on its way". An example of this model may be IE
"apple" (with the a-less forms like in Latin "ma:lum" < *maHl- and with
a-having forms like English "apple" < *h2a-bl-, to mention the most known
variations, from earlier *mVl-/*-bVl-). Another example may be the
Balto-Slavic-Albanian term for "nut". In Slavic and Albanian only o-having
forms exist (Slavic ore^xU < *a-rais^a-, Albanian arrë) while in Baltic -
only a-less forms exist (Lith. ríes^as), both supposed to be from North
Caucasian source.
5) The observed similarity is only seeming, and actually both forms come
from two different IE protoforms.
Anyway, the only aim of my posts in this thread was not to negate existence
of Semitoid influence in western branches of IE. I have only called the
attention to the fact (yes, the fact) that the presence of a-/zero
alternation in several IE words does not give a base for reconstruction a
bird substrate or for any Semitoid influence (which, on the other hand,
cannot be rejected, but on a different base). Particularly:
a) there is no ground for the statement that the a-mobile is a trace of the
Semitic article,
b) the observed anlaut hesitation may be explained in many different ways,
not necessarily with the help of substrate.
Naturally, the discussed possibility cannot be fully rejected - but it is
less probable than other possible explanations. According to the most basic
principles of the science (like Occam's razor), such an explanation should
only be mentioned. Giving it too much credence (or treating it as an
argument for anything else) is a serious methodological mistake.
Grzegorz Jagodzin'ski
___________________________________________________________
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail.
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html