Re: Etymology of the Italian surname 'Brighenti'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 1:53:39 PM on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 2:14:49 AM on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, tgpedersen
> >> wrote:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>>>>>> But I think the *-en- > *-in- spread as
> >>>>>>> hypercorrection from those strong verbs being
> >>>>>>> regularized, see
> >>>>>>> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.html
>
> >>>>>> Why? At best your fixation on shibboleths makes you a
> >>>>>> blind man claiming that an elephant is very like a rope.
>
> >>>>> The traditional explanation claims two separate rules
> >>>>> caused *-en- > -in- in 2,3sg, 'pre-nasal raising' and
> >>>>> umlaut; my explanation has no such causal overlap.
>
> >>>> The verbs *bindanã 'to tie', *helpanã 'to help' and
> >>>> *werpanã 'to throw' are all Class III strong verbs and
> >>>> started out with identical root vowel (*e) and identical
> >>>> conjugations, but only in the first was the *e of the
> >>>> root raised to *i throughout the present. You want
> >>>> analogy to extend i-umlaut of *e from words like *bindanã
> >>>> to completely unrelated words like *hringaz, but not to
> >>>> words like *helpanã; that's very implausible. It's much
> >>>> simpler to note that nasals have a tendency to raise
> >>>> preceding /e/ anyway, so that the observed change isn't
> >>>> particularly surprising; there's no need to invoke
> >>>> dubious psychological explanations. (And for all I know
> >>>> there may be other reasons to keep the two separate.)
>
> >>> You've gotten half of it, but you haven't quite thought it
> >>> through.
>
> >> No, *you* haven't thought it through. Or if you have, your
> >> bizarre sociolinguistic axioms make it a case of GIGO.
>
> > This habit you have of using value judgments as premises
> > in your line of reasoning, is that something you have
> > carried over from your day job in math? 'Oh, what a nasty
> > number, I don't like it'?
>
> That isn't a premise: it's a conclusion.

No. A conclusion has premises. Your 'conclusion' has no premises. And
a conclusion without premises is an opinion.

> >>> What I claim is that in the class III verbs,
> >>> analogy-leveling was done in -en- verbs, not in the
> >>> others, or rather, that, of all the 'faulty' (by the then
> >>> standard class III paradigm) levelings, those of the -en-
> >>> verbs survived (were preferred by those who mattered), the
> >>> rest didn't. In that period of uncertainty, -in- was
> >>> substituted for -en- also in other contexts by presumably
> >>> the same people, or those who wanted to emulate them.
>
> >> As should have been clear from my post, I understood that
> >> this was your claim. And as I said, it's implausible and
> >> unnecessary.
>
> > It is clear from your post you didn't. This my proposal,
> > chronologically:
>
> > 1. Umlaut causes stem vowel /e/ > /i/ in (among all else)
> > 2,3sg, 2pl of Gmc. class III verbs
>
> > 2. In verbs with originally *-en-, the -in- forms are
> > substituted by generalization into 1sg, 1,3pl, in the
> > rest, -en- is similarly substituted into 2pl.
>
> > 3. The -en- > -in- substitution spreads to the rest of the
> > vocabulary.
>
> I know. That's exactly what I understood you to be
> proposing.
>
> > You conflated 2. and 3.,
>
> I did not. It is clear that you did not read my post
> carefully enough.
>
> > thereby labeling 2+3 a kind of umlaut which of course it
> > isn't.
>
> Indeed it isn't, and I did not say that it was.
>
> > I don't 'extend i-umlaut of *e from words like *bindanã to
> > completely unrelated words like *hringaz, but not to words
> > like *helpanã'.
>
> Obviously I'm talking about the result, not the process.
> Your English is good enough that I sometimes forget that
> you're not a native speaker.

So you're criticizing the arbitrariness of a rule that singles out
verbs in /en/ for generalization and leave out those in /el/. Yes,
that is arbitrary, but that is exactly the same problem that the
standard theory has in defending why there is a general rule /en/ >
/in/, but not one /el/ > /il/.

> [...]
>
> >>>>> Two rules causing the same one effect is a sign the
> >>>>> theory was designed wrong.
>
> >>>> Unless there really are two different things causing the
> >>>> same effect.
>
> >>> And the other examples are?
>
> >> Of what?
>
> > Of two rules causing the same one effect.
>
> >> And who cares?
>
> > Oh, so you did know, you were just being contrary.
>
> No, I didn't. You could have been referring to other
> examples demonstrating that two different rules were
> involved in this particular effect; in fact, I was leaning
> slightly towards that interpretation.
>
> >> I was objecting to the general statement.
>
> > The only surefire way to do that is to provide a
> > counterexample. You didn't.
>
> Waste of time. Look around you: the world is full of
> effects that can be caused in more than one way.

'having two causes' is a predicate of a model of the reality, not of
the reality. If you can't come up with an example. I'll assume you
don't have one.

> >> In any case, your comment was a non sequitur. First, there
> >> are two different effects: raising of *e to *i when followed
> >> in the same or the next syllable by a high vowel, and
> >> raising of *e to *i when followed by a nasal in the coda of
> >> the same syllable. The latter occurs without the high vowel
> >> trigger, and the former occurs without the nasal.
>
> > You must have misunderstood something. This is a
> > restatement of the traditional explanation, not a premise
> > which supports it or disproves my alternative proposal.
>
> It isn't an explanation at all: it's a description of the
> observed facts -- you know, the ones that you're trying to
> explain. It's a descriptively correct statement, whatever
> the explanation of the observations may be.
>
> > Circular.
>
> Pfft. It's just a description, so it can't be circular.

Nonsense. As you should know, if you have a set you can define it
either by enumeration or by a defining function. There can be several
of those. You use as generating function the rules you root for, and
then you claim it's just a description. That's circular. The rules I
propose would generate the same instance, but without overlap.

> >> Secondly, your explanation still leaves you with the two
> >> rules i-umlaut and pre-nasal raising: making the latter an
> >> indirect, psychosocial consequence of the former does not
> >> change its status as an independent rule or magically turn
> >> it into a form of i-umlaut.
>
> > If I make one of the rules a consequence of the other,
> > then it is dependent on, not independent of that rule.
>
> You think that you've isolated the cause of pre-nasal
> raising and that it has to do with the outcome of a
> different sound change, but descriptively there are still
> two distinct phonological facts. And you don't make one
> rule a consequence of the other; you make it dependent on
> the outcome of the other, which is not the same thing. Your
> (3) would not be a necessary consequence or inherent part of
> your (1) & (2) even if your account were correct.

I didn't claim I reduced the number of rules, if that's what you mean,
I reduced the overlap between two rules.


Torsten