From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 58413
Date: 2008-05-09
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
>
>> >The languages like Enlgish and German are facts but "Germanic"
>> >languages is not a fact and so is PIE.
>
>
> > '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.
>
=========
Torsten's answer was indeed very sharp and relevant.
I disagree with the statement that German or English is a fact.
The problem is about defining what a language is.
Is Dutch and German two dialects of the same language ?
What about Schwyz ? is it German ?
and what about Black English or Jamaican English creole ?
Are these dialects of English or separate languages ?
There is always a kind of convention about what a language is.
Chinese dialects are extremely different,
but they are not considered separate languages by the Chinese tradition,
even though a Pekinese would never be able to understand anything to Haikou.
It's about as clear as Armenian when you're an English speaker.
Arnaud
============
> 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.
>
===========
The ontological status of PIE "reconstructions" is unclear.
There is a strong positivism in the word "reconstruction"
implying that we can actually reconstruct what has disappeared.
the first quality of "reconstructions" are to account for lexical "data"
and the comparative method circularly tells us what the "data" are.
they acquire a temporal value because we assume these algebraic formulas
stand for something that must have existed before.
but ultimately,
the questions remain :
Are these formulas real "words" ?
Are they the shadows of real "words" on the screen of the comparative method
?
Are they artefacts created from scratch by the comparative method ?
Are they fake ?
Would another method yield something different ?
What about the 60% of the words contained in IE languages not accounted for
by the comparative method and so called "PIE" ?
Arnaud
===========