From: tgpedersen
Message: 60305
Date: 2008-09-25
>Like calling a premise-less 'conclusion' an opinion? No.
> At 10:59:35 AM on Wednesday, September 24, 2008, tgpedersen
> wrote:
>
> > --- 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:
>
> [...]
>
> >>>> 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.
>
> Indeed. Which I did not trouble myself to state. Nor do I
> intend to do so now: it would require a rather lengthy
> essay, and it wouldn't do a bit of good anyway. I could
> refer you to a good book on sociolinguistics and language
> change, but that wouldn't do any good either.
>
> > Your 'conclusion' has no premises. And a conclusion
> > without premises is an opinion.
>
> It is both a conclusion that I've reached and an opinion
> that I now hold as a result of having reached it. Are you
> quite finished with these silly word-games?
> [...]I hadn't thought of that one. It seems it goes just as far towards
>
> >>>> 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/.
>
> That's only half of the problem. Not only is there no
> evident reason to generalize from an exceptional subclass of
> verbs, but there is no evident basis (e.g., in analogy) for
> generalizing from verbs to nominals and prepositions.
>
> > 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/.
>
> So you've paid no attention to the fact that pre-nasal
> raising is a natural phenomenon that occurs elsewhere; I
> know of no evidence that pre-lateral raising of /e/ is
> natural.
> [...]But that's what you are using in your reasoning. The set can be
>
> >>>> 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.
>
> Because it is, of course. A set, mathematical or otherwise,
> can have more than one description. The description may
> suggest a particular construction of the set, but it does
> not in general *entail* a particular construction.
> In this case I did not say by what mechanism the observedI caught you with your thumb on the scale, and now you go sulk in the
> effects (raising of *e to *i before tautosyllabic nasals and
> raising of *e to *i when followed by a high front vowel in
> the same or the next syllable) occurred; I merely said that
> they are observed -- which they are. How they are
> accomplished -- by distinct mechanisms that break down along
> the lines of that description, or by the sequence of events
> that you envision -- has no effect on the observation
> itself, which is describable in precisely the terms that I
> just used. Until you understand this basic fact, there's no
> point continuing the discussion.