Re: Stacking up on standard works

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

>
> Broadly speaking, that's a feature, not a bug. In
> particular, when such a derivation is possible without
> unreasonable contortions, it necessarily has primacy.
> This isn't to say that it can't be displaced if a better
> derivation is found, but the bar for any alternative is
> pretty high.
>
> > I politely disagree. IMHO this approach is like trying to
> > collect apples from a tree regardless of it being an
> > apple-tree or not (of course, if you choose the wrong tree
> > you won't collect apples at all).
>
> Which pretty much tells me that either you completely
> ignored the qualifications in what I wrote, or you don't
> understand how such reconstructions are actually done. The
> point is that if you find something that looks very like an
> apple in reasonable range of an appletree, the default
> assumption is that it is an apple and did fall from that
> tree.
>

IMHO what IE-ists call "PIE" looks more like a bramble than an appletree. If you had read Don Quixote, you'll know he mistook wind mills by giants.

> > That is, you can't simply use "PIE" at will to derive a
> > Latin word without considering 1) the productivity of the
> > "root" *wed- 'water' in Latin and 2) the words 'glass' and
> > 'woad' in other IE languages.
>
> You certainly can, if a defensible derivation is available.
> Indeed, you *must*. *Then* one can argue about how
> convincing the derivation actually is, and part of that
> argument way well take (1) and (2) into account.
>

1) The root *wed- is only attested in zero-grade in Latin unda 'wave'. Also the proposed sound shift *dr- > tr- doesn't look as a "regular" one.
2) Words for 'glass' and 'woad' in other IE languages aren't derived from 'water'.

When combined, (1) and (2) make De Vaan's etymology unfeasible.

> And I'm getting really fed up with your silly scare quotes.
> I don't give a damn about your private terminology: 'PIE'
> has a well-accepted and well-understood meaning, and you can
> damned well acknowledge that fact and use the term properly
> instead of pretending that everyone is out of step except
> you.
>

I'm affraid your last statement is grossly inaccurate. As I said several times, I belong to a minority group of researchers who think the traditional PIE model is inadequate and have proposed an alternative view.

I'd also recommend you moderate your tone ("fed up", "I don't give a damn", "damned"), as it doesn't really help to have a *scientific* discussion.

> I know that you're not capable of reliably recognizing bad
> work, and I strongly suspect that 'laziness' is just an
> insulting code word for 'willingness to take seriously views
> that broadly fall within the mainstream of IE studies'.
>

DeVaan's work is full of points where further investigation is clearly needed, but instead of recognizing this, he apparently tends to give "hints" like e.g. ferrum could be a Phoenician borrowing. In a wider context, my remark refers to the unwillingness of most IE-ists (although fortunately not all) to broad their research outside the walls of mainstream IE studies, which include the study of substrates, comparison with other families, and so on.

I didn't intended this as "insulting", but if you feel "insulted", I bet you've got a problem.