From: Torsten
Message: 66797
Date: 2010-10-24
>And for sacrificial technology, says Douglas, if I understood him correctly.
> >but the point is that the constrast in Danish was once part of a
> set of shibboleth allophones separating 'rustic' from 'upper
> Copenhagen' sociolects, which has now been neutralized and the two
> forms have undergone lexical canonization based on idiosyncratic
> circumstances of the individual entry. I imagine similar processes
> took place eg. in Rome when the old Patrician/Plebeian
> (Latin/Sabine?) divide dissolved in favor of something new.
>
>
>
> Famously, certain Latin words do not show the expected sound change.
> The reason is that they are borrowings from a rural dialect that did
> not share those changes. They tend to be words for farm things:
> cow, plough, and so on.
> This process can surely be found in almost any language? It doesI think that it means in this context, where we are discussing procedure, that if you argue for an split sound change, you should provide the sociological provenance of each alternative, because if you don't, your sound change will be an optional sound change, which we don't want.
> not mean "optional sound change"; it means more than one dialect
> as a source of vocabulary.