From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 57103
Date: 2008-04-10
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
>> Now it's theoretically provable that Chinese could have verb
>> inflection. As a rule, the earliest texts in Old Chinese do not
>> show any morphology but this is because it's not written not
>> because it did not exist. We have clear proofs of that.
> Of?
There are clear proofs both in the writing system and the rhyming pattern of the ShiJing that Chinese had morphology.
>> In order to prove verb inflection, one would have to sort out all
>> variant readings in old texts, check if the traditional variants
>> are valid and try to see if some variant readings display a
>> constant pattern that can be traced to person or number. It's
>> theoretically possible. This requires an amount of knowledge and
>> patience that makes PIE studies a child's play. I suppose nobody so
>> far has been bold enough to try this research. And it would also
>> require a highly accurate reconstruction system for proto-Chinese
>> 3500 years ago. It's like looking for a ghost's finger prints.
> What's stopping you?
I have other targets with higher priority status.
If I achieve reincarnation into a monk, I'll have plenty of time for that.
> I feel your predicament. You're not quite sure what I'm saying, but
> you really, really want to disagree with me, and you have no facts,
> so you say something else.
I don't want to disagree with you.
I'm just point at the fact that your statement about verb inflection in Old chinese is unproved.
It's neither wrong nor right.
The current level of understanding of this issue does not permit to assert anything certain.
Arnaud