At 1:04:13 AM on Saturday, July 5, 2008, stlatos wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
> <liberty@...> wrote:
[...]
>> 'Aptya'/'Athwiya' is indeed an irregular correspondence,
>> but one on obviously much more solid ground than
>> 'Thraetaona'/ 'Targitaus'.
> Yes, of course, but the principle that changes might occur
> in only one word in a language and still be valid and
> identifiable must be used for both.
It is an empirical fact that irregular changes occur, not a
matter of principle, and there is no guarantee that isolated
instances can even be identified, let alone demonstrated.
Even when an irregular relationship is very likely, the
details of the change are generally undemonstrable in the
absence of intermediate forms. There is obviously some
value in finding a plausible pathway, but in the case of an
isolated change it isn't subject to confirmation; it's a
Just-So story, and the proposed 'rules' have no real
evidentiary support.
> You can object to the particulars of my reconstruction,
> but not the theory behind it.
I do in fact object to one of your fundamental
methodological principles: crudely stated, that if two words
might have a common source, they do, at least if you can
come up with derivations that you find plausible. As I
think Piotr once commented, it leads to multiplication of
phonemes and derivations full of metatheses, assimilations,
and dissimilations that often seem rather ad hoc. It also
makes you too ready (in my opinion) to dismiss the
possibility of language-internal derivation in favor of
common ancestry followed by complex sequences of sometimes
very irregular sound changes.
Brian