Re: Nordwestblock, Germani, and Grimm's law

At 5:50:43 AM on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, Torsten wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:

[...]

>>> The direction "side" > "limb" is shown in the metaphor
>>> "wing" used in an attacking army (cf. Latin 'ala',
>>> German 'Flügel').

>> That's still "limb" > "side" too. "Wing" originally means
>> "limb" and its meaning is extended to the side of an
>> army.

> 'Wing' has the most diverse explanation in DEO, de Vries
> and Skeat.

Whatever the etymology of the word, you still haven't given
an example of 'side' > 'limb'. (The sources readily
available to me all derive it, if at all, from *h2weh1- 'to
blow'.)

>> Try again.

> I could arraign such forms as
> Dutch rechter-, linkerkant "right, left side"
> rechter-, linkerhand "right, left hand"
> Swedish högern "right wing/hand", vänstern "left
> wing/hand"

To what end? None of them shows 'side' > 'limb'.

[...]

> The basic distinction in military disciple, as manifested
> in the command language of parades is between being
> directly subordinated to the will of a superior, and being
> "on your own time" (within limits, of course). The
> mode-changing commands are 'Attention' and 'At ease'. For
> an army, getting through the landscape in a single file is
> done on your own time, so to speak, like the legions of
> Varus did at Kalkriese. Calling that formation, or rather
> non-formation "an arrangement of soldiers" is therefore
> misleading. It is, if anything, a lack of arrangement.

I think that you'll have a hard time persuading anyone who's
actually served.

>> Basic vocabulary does not tend to come from sophisticated
>> cultural concepts.

> That is generally assumed, and I think that's wrong.
> Vocabularies abound with words having suffered a
> sociological deroute.

>> Your assumed developments are on the same level as
>> /kokakola/ ending up as "red".

> A better example is "dirty white"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabelline_%28colour%29
> from "Isabella"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile

The second URL is irrelevant: all that we actually know is
that the color term is from the feminine name. The example
itself is irrelevant: the color term in question is hardly
basic vocabulary, and a personal name is not an example of a
sophisticated cultural concept.

>> I don't see you even trying to explain there how a single
>> *L could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.

> I assume you already know that the /L/ is meant to denote
> an unvoiced /l/. That's a rather rare phoneme, and tends
> to get substituted with exactly those combination when
> words containing it are loaned. Eg. the Welsh placename
> Llanberis is rendered in English as /klanberis/,
> /hlanberis/ or /lanberis/.

After simple <l(l)>, the most common English attempts to
represent the Welsh sound are probably <fl> and <thl>. The
<Fl> forms have given rise to well-known English surnames,
<Flewelling> (and variants) and <Floyd> (ditto), from
<Llywelyn> and <Llwyd>, respectively.

> The Spanish chose the digraph -tl- to represent Nahuatl
> /L/.

No, they used <tl> to represent the Nahuatl voiceless
lateral *affricate*, [tL]; Nahuatl [L] is an allophone of
/l/ and was represented by <l>.

Brian