From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 54756
Date: 2008-03-06
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 9:51 PM
Subject: [Courrier indésirable] Re: [tied] Grimm shift as starting point of
"Germanic"
> ****GK: Yes. I can see where you're coming from. And I
> don't disagree with any of it. But my point was a
> little different. The Germanic language family as
> presently constituted,
Now there's the problem.
> and as historically attested
> from at least ca. the time of Caesar if not slightly
> earlier, must have possessed a certain number of
> "unique characteristics" in order to be considered
> something sui generis.
'As presently constituted'. If Germanic had close relatives then,
which later disappeared, Germanic as constituted now and Germanic as
constituted then is are not identical. It is not the same thing. If
part of the Germanic family, say, the North Germanic languages
disappeared from living memory, 'Germanic' to future generations would
be something much more narrowly defined than the family we understand
it as today.
> It was not Celtic, it was not
> Latin, it was not Greek etc.. And it was sui generis
> no matter what the relationship of its structures
> (lexical, syntactic, morphological etc..) was to PIE.
> I understood you to imply that we had no clear way of
> establishing a timeline for the emergencce of any of
> these structures (incl. Grimm, the most "defining"
> one).
That's not so, see my answer to Arnaud.
==========
I must have missed something.
But I'm ready to read it again.
I tend to agree with G.K. that
you need a set of observable features
to describe a sub-family
otherwise it's uncontrollable.
A.
=================
> So let's try a bit of retroactive logic.
> We can assume, can we not, that by the time Caesar
> spoke of the Germani, enough of these characteristics
> existed to justify his belief as to the
> distinctiveness of the Germanic language(s). We could
> probably agree that the Grimm shift had largely if not
> completely occurred by then.
OK.
> Let us turn our attention to the Bastarnae.
> According to Tacitus, they were a Germanic-speaking
> people. Torsten's "para-Germanic" hypothesis has no
> basis outside of his imagination. If we have to choose
> between Torsten and Tacitus it is clear who is the
> better witness.
Isn't that a nice argument? I remember the first time I used it
against you. It must have made a certain impression, after all.
'Para-Germanic' is seen from our perspective, not Tacitus'. If
WGermanic should solely survive, NGermanic would be 'para-Germanic' to
future Generations who only know WGermanic.
==========
What are the phonological features
that enable us to identify the Bastarnae
as kindof Germanic ?
A.
======
[Excess quoting trimmed. -Brian]