From: stlatos
Message: 68127
Date: 2011-10-22
>Wrong, there was no unknown parent language at all, therefore any attempt to find one would only end in failure.
> At 2:58:32 AM on Saturday, October 22, 2011, stlatos wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <bm.brian@> wrote:
>
> >> At 3:44:21 AM on Thursday, October 20, 2011, stlatos wrote:
>
> >>> There should be no reason for any linguist to reject a
> >>> sound change because it's optional.
>
> >> Nothing except intelligence.
>
> >> Optional sound changes are a methodological nightmare; at
> >> best they are admissible only under the strictest
> >> controls.
>
> > I didn't argue against a regular sound change,
>
> I'm not talking just about your present argument. I'm
> talking about your approach in general. It's as unsound
> methodologically as Greenbergian mass comparison, albeit in
> a different direction. In some ways it's worse: at least
> mass comparison can suggest starting points for serious
> comparative work.
>A supposed "Proto-World" would be the ancestor of PIE among others. I have said nothing about it.
> [...]
>
> >> Failure to recognize this leads to such crap as '[a]ll known
> >> languages not currently classified as IE are actually from
> >> one branch of IE: Indo-Iranian'.
> >>
> >> (<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62316>)
>
> > You have no way of knowing whether this is true, so
> > don't say it's false.
>
> It's unadulterated rubbish. Even if monogenesis is true,
> it's most unlikely to be demonstrable, and it's historically
> impossible that PIE is 'Proto-World'.
>I have described what I observed using known types of changes. If it's not what you or anyone else expected, that doesn't matter to me and is no reason to change any part of it.
> >> They also (as Douglas pointed out) obviate any need to
> >> look for real but highly non-obvious sound laws.
>
> > Attempts to find a "real but highly non-obvious sound law"
> > often lead to linguists attempting to fit a law that must
> > be tailored to fit every case, with a strange set of env.
> > and env. exceptions, that obviously doesn't come from
> > reality but instead from attempting to fit regularity
> > where none exists, making them unlikely.
>
> And pseudo-explanations employing optional changes,
> metatheses, and dis- and assimilations ad libitum are
> better?