From: Torsten
Message: 65959
Date: 2010-03-12
>As I keep telling you, but you don't seem to get it.
> > > > > > My proposal is to start from a form with a nasalised
> > > > > > vowel, thus
> > > > > > *saN- -> *so:, and
> > > > > > *saN-i- > *so:m-i
> > > > > > so that the seed, so to speak, of the -m- Thomsen notices
> > > > > > is absent in suo, is wrapped up in the basal vowel.
> > > > >
> > > > > If you allow for an -i suffix, you could as well allow for
> > > > > an -mi suffix.
> > > >
> > > > Why would I add an -m- to the suffix, when I can derive it
> > > > from the nasality in the root? Occam.
> > >
> > > Why would you assume nasality in the root rather than in the
> > > suffix, if it only occurs in the suffixed form?
> >
> > But I have nasality in the root already; it's the *saN- of my
> > *saN- "wet stuff" ->
>
> Still just hypothesis.
>Please do. I'm not stopping you.
> > > > The claim that some language which was substrate to Saami was
> > > > spoken all around the Baltic is not so unreasonable.
> > >
> > > No, it's not so unreasonable. But taken this one instance alone,
> > > it is not reasonable either to think that this WAS the case.
> >
> > Let's take some more then:
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50246
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50252
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50254
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50264
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50268
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50271
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64056
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64057
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/57180
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/56270
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50267
> >
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62590
> >
> >
> > ...
> >
> > ...
>
> This probably needs a different topic to digest...
> Some of these look fairly good, others don't appear to be requiredIf you have any actual factual questions, don't hesitate to ask.
> to posit for Pre-Samic, yet others seem to require your usual
> substratal variation hijinx. I did not see anything requiring a
> fully circum-Baltic distribution; being shared with
> pre-Scandinavian and pre-Samic, which would have gained its first
> substratal loans in southern Finland seems to suffice.
> > > > > The words should be linked because they're all part of yourYou are mistaken. I'm not.
> > > > > proposal, and because they should be linked, you are
> > > > > proposing this specific proposal? Holy circularity, Batman.
> > > >
> > > > My proposal is that the words are linked, yes. Do you have a
> > > > problem with that, Robin?
> > >
> > > If you try to use your proposal to argue for it, then I do.
> > > Which is what you appear to be doing here:
> > > "It includes 'sump' "swamp", thus it is not well-limited toYou got it all wrong again. It's 'if we assume they come from something identical, then we assume they come from something identical'.
> > > putative derivatives of the Uralic 'mouth' word"
> > >
> > > My argument of semantical well-limitedness is based on the
> > > data; your "counterargument" appears to be based on just
> > > restating your proposal.
> >
> > But the semantics of "swamp" also occurs in Finnic *so:- which
> means that if we posit that the semantic 'suck' group and the
> semantic 'swamp' group are from the same substrate language, they
> would have been indistinguishable in that language.
>
> It is again a circular argument that "if we assume (or 'posit')
> they come from something identical, then they come from something
> identical".
> We can only reconstruct "suck" back to *suk/p, and "swamp" back toNo, but as I wrote earlier, we have
> *swa/ump, which are not identical.
> (BTW Scand. *swu- would naturally simplify > *su-, so no need toThat leaves Engl. sump, German Sumpf unexplained.
> assume alternation on that part, just the usual a/u.)
> I do not see how the existence of *soo implies anything for theDo someone say it implied anything?
> Germanic items.
> > > > but then I got the idea that it could be handled by derivingI repeat: Do you have any factual objection here? Please answer the question.
> > > > the auslaut consonants from the diphthongs which were the
> > > > result of the denasalisation of the nasal vowel I posited for
> > > > another reason (that of accounting for the a/u alternation).
> > >
> > > This is where you go off the track of conclusions and into the
> > > woods of wild speculation.
> >
> > Do you have any factual objection here?
>
> Yes: you have provided no factual argument.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#Candidates_for_the_Soma_plant
> > > > > Actually, "sap" looks like it remains quite finely separate
> > > > > as well.
>
> > > This is what your runeberg.org link lists under "sump" as well,
> > > but I don't see why that would be the same root.
> >
> > I think the connection is here
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma
>
> Your creativity is mildly amusing. I'll note
> 1) Soma isn't a mushroom
> 2) Amanita muscaria isn't associated with swampsI agree that it probably shouldn't, but language insists is is:
> 3) A substrate behind Indo-Iranian cannot without further argument be assumed to also lie behind Scandinavian/FinnicNo, soma was probably a Wanderwort. Cf.
>Yes, that is your assumption, but you can't use your assumption to prove things, as you pointed out yourself.
> > The problem is, the semantic dividing lines you can set up for my
> > proposed set of reflexes of *saN-, do not match similar semantic
> > dividing lines in reflexes of *daN-.
>
> Semantic dividing lines are not required to conform to any pattern
> if these are originally unrelated roots.
> But perhaps you can elaborate on what you mean by "similaritiesAn example is the dividing line you set up between the "suck" and the "sump" roots.
> between semantic divisions"?
> > > Try not proposing sound changes based on single forms if youYou misread me. This is what I meant:
> > > strive to be held in higher esteem.
> >
> > I told you already, I don't.
>
> The *saiwa stuff sure seem'd to be such a case.
>What seems to be the case here is that you either don't understand, or don't want to understand that there is no burden of proof on me. I'll give you a last chance
> > > it seems to be quite possible to just speculate
> > > without ever getting to the level of real arguments.
> > > At that point the burden of proof (or, more correctly, burden
> > > of argumentation) is still on you.
> >
> > What? When?
>
> Perhaps you do not fully understand what the term means.
> It's not a legal or moral obligation;Of course it is, or it wouldn't have been called 'burden'
> it means that no proposal can be _logically_ correct by default,Read the Popper article.
> just by force of having been proposed.
>No.
> > > > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65616
> > > > > > as. solian etc, cf. Danish søle "mud, slush"
> > > > >
> > > > > OK. I still do not see how this makes the salt/island
> > > > > semanticgap any smaller.
> > > >
> > > > No, it's a problem, but greater men than myself have ignored
> > > > it before. Who knows if the reinterpretation of *saN- as
> > > > "immortalizing (?) will bring them any closer. Sacred island?
> > >
> > > And there's it again - a conviction that there is something to
> > > be solved here.
> > If you are convinced there's nothing to be solved, what are youAnd how is this relevant?
> > doing in linguistics?
>
> There's a distinction between "not convinced that X" (aka
> skepticism) and "convinced that not X" (aka disbelief).
> > > I'll continue to simply reject the comparision if you cannotThe guy who first proposed a connection between *saiwa- "lake" and *saiwala- "soul" is the one who committed the original sin. I'm just trying to find a semantic connection between them. The rest are trivial.
> > > come up with any argument better than "they all have /sal/" for
> > > why we should attempt to relate these.
> >
> > They have to with "soul", "immortality", "truth" and "the
> > otherworld". That's why it's interesting to find out how they are
> > related.
>
> "Salt", "saliva", "island", "slush" have nothing to do with those
> topics.
> Do you really not see how illusory all this is is????
> > > > The alternation is also manifested as a/o:, BTW.Eg. the *draN- "draw" verb
> > > >
> > > > Germanic: cake/cookie, hat/hood etc and the whole Class
> > > > VI strong verbs
>
> > > /o:/ is not /u/.
> >
> > That's true, but those alternations seem to appear in the same
> > contexts.
>
> Which are?
> > > Whatever happens in the verbs is obviously some kind of inherentAblaut is very wasteful of vowels. Most likely the actual entrance class was the reduplicating class VII, which when de-reduplicated (into class VI) had compensatory lengthening.
> > > development involving ablaut and possibly some generalizations
> > > (esp. since not all of these are limited to Germanic).
> >
> > That's what I'm saying. There must have been a time between PIE
> > and PGmc where the language had ablaut-based verb paradigms from
> > PIE, but nothing else, ie the weak verb paradigm didn't yet exist.
>
> Most probably.
>
> > Verbs loaned at that time would have been too drastically changed
> > to be recognized if patterned on the existing ablauting verbs,
>
> How so?
> There's no reason the loan-givers would still have to recognize the? No, but the loan-receivers would.
> word,
> and it would be sufficient if your pre-Germanics would have hadThe old-fashioned reduplicating paradigm, most likely.
> some particular form to generalize from.
> A nice parallel for this kind of a process is theI am glad to hear that you are finally recognizing something.
> "triliteralization" of loanwords in Hebrew I've seen mention'd
> sometimes.
>No, because I think the lengthening was compensatory for the loss of the reduplication syllable, cf. the long vowel in class IV pret. pl. (*gegbum -> ge:bum)
> > Thus we only have to explain the a/o: alternation, which think
> was from a/a: (and then of course there's the problem of why only
> verbs with root vowel -a- were loaned).
> >
> > > Or do you have any examples where a paradigmatic alternation
> > > was retain'd when loaning?
> >
> > No, and as you can see, I don't need to assume that either.
>
> That appears to be what you are doing, actually. If a/o: is from
> pre-Germanic a/a:, the only reason to assume a substrate
> alternation of similar sort behind these would seem to be if you
> think that the Germanic alternation was modelled on an alternation
> extant in the substrate. And that was exactly what I was talking
> about.
> Or if you think it's Germanic-internal after all, obviously then itTrue.
> cannot be the same process as a/u alternation in substrate loans.
>I took the *-n# -> *-r# over from Miguel's PIE proposal.
> > > > > > Give an example of r > n.
> > > > >
> > > > > Proto-Algonquian > Arapaho, Atsina, Ojibwe.
> > > >
> > > > I don't find that in Wikipedia. Examples?
> > >
> > > For Ojibwe, the guy I got these from was referring to this:
> > > http://tinyurl.com/yfyznx3
> >
> > There appear no /r/ for Proto-Algonquian in the table.
>
> See next note.
>
> > > (Note that Proto-Alg. *r was previously reconstructed as *l.)
> >
> > Maybe they should have left it at that.
>
> Which reminds me of a yet another possibility for a different
> explanation for your assumed ar/an alternation: *l > n, or *l > r.
> > > > > "A split happens for no specific reason" (ie. your 1st-stageYou may have problems staying on the subject instead of smearing your opponent.
> > > > > split into a:/aG/aw/u:/uG/uw) is not an explanation, just a
> > > > > more complex re-statement of facts.
> > > >
> > > > You could say the same of Grimm's law. And?
> > >
> > > Grimm's law has no splits - and is not based on idle speculation
> > > on what pre-Germanic might have look'd like, but on systematic
> > > external cognates.
> >
> > From the point of view of all of IE, Grimm's law has a split,
> > namely between Germanic (and Armenian) and the rest. And it's
> > based on idle speculation on what PIE might have looked like,
> > considering systematic non-Germanic cognates.
>
> You may have problems understanding either the meaning of the word
> "speculation", or how the comparativ method works, or both.
> The fundamental difference between Grimm's law etc. and theOk, so you argue that the source of the a/u alternation might be a non-nasalized vowel *o, and now you nasalize it again?
> substrate case is that we KNOW the different representations in
> fact come from different languages.
>
>
> > > > > Or varying reflexes of an *o.
>
> > > > > One word: "Merger"
> > > >
> > > > /a/ merged with /u/?
> > >
> > > *o merged with *a or *u.
> >
> > That would be possible, but it wouldn't explain the forms with
> > prenasalised auslaut.
>
> It doesn't attempt to. Those I could explain from, say, nasalized
> vowels.
> Or just prenasal auslauts that were there to begin with, wheneverOccam.
> we do not have any alternation.
> > > > > Not every word has prenasalized alternants, or labial/velarThese words have variants with nasals.
> > > > > alternants. I conclude that nasalization alternation is
> > > > > independant of labial/velar or a/u alternations.
> > > >
> > > > Your conclusion is unwarranted. There is also the possibility
> > > > that the prenasalised variant have been discarded.
> > >
> > > If in most cases there's no nasal variant, Occam suggests it's
> > > because there never was one.
> >
> > Occam suggests either a solution which loses nasalisation or one
> > with one group having nasalisation and one without.
>
> No, for words that lack variants with nasals, Occam very much does
> not suggest loss of nasality; Occam suggests no nasality.
> Does your impression of Occam also suggest, say, loss of anlautBlah-blah-blah. Syay on the subject.
> whenever there is none? Loss of rhotic whenever there is none? Loss
> of vowel length whenever there is none?