From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 58409
Date: 2008-05-08
----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Grimm 's Law fact or myth: Gessman (1990)
> The languages like Enlgish and German are facts but "Germanic"
> languages is not a fact and so is PIE.
That can't be true. Languages can't be facts. A fact is a true
contingent statement, ie statement about something in the world. I
think that what you want to express is that the existence of the
English and German languages are facts, or that the English and German
languages exist. After that you state that certain families of
languages don't exist. It is true that collectives don't exist in the
same fashion as individuals do, since they are defined, explicitly or
implicitly, as sets of individuals having characteristic properties in
common, and the way in which these properties are selected is based on
social convention. Therefore, collectives don't exist in the ordinary
sense, their 'existence' in our languages is a matter of convenience.
And therefore it is meaningless to deny the existence of a collective
category, at the most one might argue that is unpractical, or
ethically undesirable, etc. If I should choose to argue in the same
essentialist fashion as you, I could say:
'Fido exists, but dogs don't, nor do animals'; or
'MKelkar exists, but Indians or Hindus don't, therefore MKelkar is
neither an Indian nor a Hindu'.
Would you be satisfied with that?
Torsten
***
Patrick:
I think you are on the right track with this answer, Torsten.
Facts can be difficult to determine.
German and English are facts because they are observable repeatedly by
anyone.
Germanic and Indo-European are _not_ facts because they have not been
observed.
They are, however, very efficient explanations of the facts we can observe.
Adjustments to Germanic and Indo-European can and are made regularly. A fact
cannot be adjusted unless the observation was initially faulty.
Secondly, I do not see Mr. Kelkar pushing his interpretation of history
though that may be his ultimate motivation.
***