From: tgpedersen
Message: 59637
Date: 2008-07-26
>Linguists, like historians, are in the same position as attorneys.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> > On 2008-07-24 23:03, gprosti wrote:
> >
> > > What I'm wondering is: what empirical evidence is this gradient
> > > of plausibility based on? For example, the empirical evidence
> > > for the probability of semantic continuity ("wolf" > "wolf") is
> > > (I would suspect) that linguists constantly see semantic
> > > continuity over the history of the languages they research,
> > > suggesting a high probability of occurrence. I have never seen
> > > this type of justification offered for the probability of a
> > > given semantic change. To clarify what I mean: one could offer
> > > a single example of the change "wolf" > "jackal", but that
> > > would be one example out of hundreds or thousands of potential
> > > cases. To establish the likelihood of the change, it seems one
> > > would have to use a larger sample size than one.
> >
> > To assess its _probability_ (empirically, and ex post), yes, one
> > would. But this branch of linguistics is a historical discipline;
> > it often has to deal with phenomena that don't happen often
> > enough in replicable conditions to be approached statistically.