Re[2]: [tied] Grimm 's Law fact or myth: Gessman (1990)

At 1:52:03 PM on Thursday, May 8, 2008, mkelkar2003 wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <G.and.P@...>
> wrote:

>>> Grimm's Law, the `Germanic Consonant Shift," has
>>> evaporated.

>> I seldom bother reading MKelkar, but happened to read
>> this.

>> At one level, Grimm's Law is simply a factual description

> The languages are factual. Grimm's Law is not. It is
> theory of what could have happened.

As Peter very clearly explained, at its most basic level
Grimm's Law is a straightforward statement of empirical
fact, namely, of the observed relationships between certain
Germanic consonants and their non-Germanic counterparts. It
is emphatically *not* a 'theory of what could have
happened'.

[...]

> The languages like Enlgish and German are facts but
> "Germanic" languages is not a fact and so is PIE.

Your ignorance really is incurable, isn't it? It's not just
the languages that are matters of fact; the relationships
that justify grouping certain languages together as Germanic
and, on a larger scale, as IE are also matters of fact.

[...]

> From my long presence here, what I have found is many
> members are not able to take an objective view of anything

If so, you are surely the prime example. No one else here
is both so committed to an ideological premise and so
completely uninterested in linguistics except as it bears on
his ideology.

[...]

Brian