Re: Gmc. w-/g-, j-/g-

At 6:09:12 PM on Saturday, October 22, 2011, stlatos wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>> 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.

> Wrong, there was no unknown parent language at all,
> therefore any attempt to find one would only end in
> failure.

You don't read very well: I said nothing about finding an
unknown parent language. I'm talking about the kind of
evidence that prompts one to suspect that a group of
languages might be related. Mass comparison can produce it.
It cannot, however, establish that such a relationship
actually exists.

>> [...]

>>>> 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'.

> A supposed "Proto-World" would be the ancestor of PIE
> among others. I have said nothing about it.

<splork!!>

So you don't even recognize the immediate implication of
your assertion.

Substituting 'Proto-Existing-Languages' for 'Proto-World'
doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

>>>> 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?

> 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.

Nor any reason for any rational person to pay the slightest
attention to it.

Brian