At 3:25:44 PM on Thursday, February 28, 2008, fournet.arnaud
wrote:
>>> This lengthy argumentation tries to demonstrate that
>>> Basque and Etruscan about 700 km away from one another
>>> and sharing about everything when it comes to
>>> phonological rules are to be considered *not* from a
>>> common ancestry.
>> No, it doesn't. If that's what you got out of it, you
>> really need to read it again, from the beginning, because
>> you plainly didn't understand a word that I wrote.
> I read them again as advised.
> "related languages that share the same phonological
> developments are more closely related than those that do
> not"
That quotation is taken out of context in a way that
seriously misrepresents what I actually wrote:
Perhaps you meant [by 'Languages are *especially* related
because they share the *same* phonological developments']
that related languages that share the same phonological
developments are more closely related than those that do
not, i.e., that they have a more recent common ancestor;
that is certainly likely to be the case, though it's also
certainly possible for languages to undergo similar
changes independently.
Clearly I did not make the unqualified assertion that
'related languages that share the same phonological
developments are more closely related than those that do
not'; I said that this was likely to be the case.
> "if the existence of that common ancestor *could* be
> demonstrated, it wouldn't matter whether Basque and
> Etruscan shared phonological developments."
> So What am I supposed to understand ?
> I consider these statements are obviously conflicting.
> I agree with Statement 1
> I think Statement 2 is stupid.
Then in all likelihood you simply don't understand Statement
2. Since it's both straightforward and rather obvious, I'm
at a loss to know what I might say to make it any clearer,
but I will try once more. The existence of a common
ancestor of Albanian and French has been demonstrated. The
fact that these two languages show very different
phonological developments does not affect that demonstration
or put that relationship in doubt.
Brian