From: johnvertical@...
Message: 66810
Date: 2010-10-25
> I don't know why this seems so hard for some people to understand. A change in a sound is no less of a law if it has two outcomes. For example, n > l (opt.) is the same as a law n > l OR n > nThese are correspondences. Laws, by definition, don't have "or"s. You can call your components n > l and n > n laws individually, but not their disjunction.
> (analogous to 2 or -2 being the square root of 4).And "square root" in this sense isn't a function, so a fair analogy.
> Many of these changes are known. Instead of criticizing my methods, learn about what is already known. For example, in Salishan, n and l alternate. There is no regularity, no dialect mixing, only optionality. In a loanwoard like school > skun, it's easily seen by linguists, the people who speak the language know about it, there's nothing else to say. The alt. l/n exists across most of the Americas, and obviously is either from the parent l. of them all, or an incredibly old areal change, borrowing, etc. Since it is also found throughout Asia, nothing else is likely.It sounds like you are confusing different phenomena. This example is what we usually call "free variation", a situation where [l] and [n] represent the same phoneme. It is not at all the same as an "optional" change from *one* phoneme to *another* - and which is also not the same as a situation where a free variation later ends up frozen in place (commonly irregularly) due to loanwords or later changes introducing a contrast between the sounds in variation.
> It's not weaker to invoke optionality if that is what is seen. Historical linguistics involves finding the right explanation; if optionality exists, then optionality must be given as the explanation.Unlike with free variation you can however never have evidence strictly for "optional phonemic change", as doublets can also represent dialect/sociolect mixture, onomatopoetic or ideophonic variation, even mispronunciations or typos.
> For example, Italic opt. changed tl > kl (probably tL > kL at the time), but some, for no reason, have attempted to make the Latin change alone regular (depending on morpheme boundaries). This is a complete waste of time to attempt to adhere to a theory of total regularity that is unproven and proven wrong.Perhaps. Your approach where "optionally" is always sufficient would howver appear to be one where we don't bother seeking Verner's law and simply state that Germanic has "optional" medial voicing. Or indeed, we could state that Grimm's Law is optional as well and not bother sorting later loans apart from inherited Germanic material.
> As to "any word in any language could be derived from any word in the same or any other language, merely by tailoring the "optional soundlaws" to achieve the desired result", are L aestus and iussus to be "without root connection" merely because deriving both from -dht- would risk irregularity? Are Osc puklo- and L pullo- so different from *po:tlo- > L po:culum that a different explanation is needed?These, not really. Your IE-New Guinean etc. macro-comparanda, most certainly.
> Ignoring optional changes as the explanation has led to long and foolish arguments and too much effort put into what has been made complicated by ignoring the simple. Greek opt. w- / h- from opt. w > xW > h, so IE u- > G hu- from u > wu > xWu > huThere's nothing simple in optionality as you must specify for each and every applicable word separately whether it undergoes the change or not. Explanations like "onomatopoetic variation" at least allow to cut some classes of words away in one swoop.