From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61863
Date: 2008-12-04
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
>
> On 2008-12-03 21:50, Arnaud Fournet wrote:
>
>> Well,
>> If this principle were true, we'd be left with only short words like /u/
>> after 200 000 years.
>
> I said "other things being equal". Getting shorter is easier than
> getting lengthened. Entropy takes care of that.
========
Other things being equal, language is not just about talking,
sometimes it's also about being understood.
That's why people get to say more and longer things than this principle of
Entropy.
I'm afraid your Judeo-Christian background is too sensitive to "Decay
Rules".
You once said you read Martinet "Economie des Changements phonétiques".
It's much against Entropy.
A.
========
>
> Have you really had a look at the distribution of the three variants? I
> strongly suggest you should do so if you want your opinion to be taken
> seriously. Here are some hints: <ouk> is found before vowels; <oukH>
> before words with initial /h/. Aspiration in sandhi is common in Greek:
> *kata-hodos --> kat'-hodos > katH-odos 'descent'; but _deaspiration_
> before vowels is neither attested nor phonetically motivated. It follows
> that
>
=========
I looked at it,
It follows the general rule of about all those "short words", like apo, epi
etc,
Are you suggesting that epi should be reconstructed as ep(H)i ?
Ou(k)(h)(i) is not alone to exhibit that kind of (de)aspiration.
A.
=========
>
> As regards <ouk> versus <ou>, the latter is found before consonants
> (including an etymological digamma). Again: the loss of a final
> consonant before another consonant is both natural and common
> cross-linguistically (cf. Eng. an ~ a or the French liaison rules). I
> leave the final conclusion to you as a homework assignment.
> > Piotr
=========
Sometimes, unetymological consonants can intrude.
For example, popular French mouche à -z ailes bleues "a fly with blue wings".
That's why I was asking if there is other words than oukhi that display that
"extra" k(h).
I'm sorry if you feel a little bit annoyed,
but i'm not that much convinced yet.
A.