2012/5/14, Tavi <
oalexandre@...>:
> (...) *akWa: isn't a Celtic word, much less Gaulish.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Celtic *akWa: > Gaulish *apa:
You can say - quite paradoxically - that Potomac isn't an English
river name, but you'll never dare to say that London isn't an English
name. Of course, London isn't a Germanic name, it coesn't belong to
the hereditary component of English language, but there has never been
a moment in which English didn't have the name London.
If you maintain that there's have a been a moment or more in which
Gaulish didn't have *akWa: > *apa: (*/kW/ is necessary in order to
obtain Gaulish /p/) you have to postulate that Gaulish came to Gaul
shortly before the first mention of Gauls by Ancient Authorities,
unless you prefer to view Apa-names as Indo-European formations on
*h2ap- 'water' (in that case you'll think that Gauls have become
acquainted with apa-names only after non only the Celtic
dephonologization of /p/, but also the emerging of a new /p/ in
p-Celtic. Is it correct?
>
>> A model (your one) starts from the axiomatic rejection of synonyms in
>> the same language and concludes that *ab- and *akWa: must go back to
>> different layers.
>
> Tavi:
> I'd rather say "axiomatic negation" of the existence of multiple layers.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
A theorem is made of axioms, definitions, hypotheses, a thesis, its
demonstration, a conclusion, and corollaries.
As I've more than once stated, I've just an axiom: the
Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze.
My hypothesis is to apply IE sound-laws to the maximum amount of
linguistic material of early attested IE languages.
My thesis is that such an application doesn't leave anything
unexplained or explained just by further ad-hoc assumptions.
My demonstrations are the (thousands) regelmässige etymologies I produce.
My conclusions comprise the negation of the necessity of the
existence of multiple layers.
You may challenge one or more of these phases.
If you want to dispute an "axiomatic negation of the existence of
multiple layers", you have to look for another person than me.
If you question the "axiomatic negation of the existence of
multiple layers", you are questioning an axiom of someone else, not my
one.
Is it clear?
>
>> Another model (my one) starts from their factual
>> co-existence and projects it back to the (IE) prehistory of the first
>> historically known local layer (Gaulish).
>
> Tavi:
> Exaggerating a little, you could also devise a Proto-World or "Adamic"
> language with all required lexemes, morphemes and "sound laws", and
> derive all present-day languages from it, but I'm afraid this won't give
> us any insight into human linguistic prehistory.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Linguistic inquiries can be useful to this perspective or to the
one about the origin of the Faculty of Language. Generativists'
Universal Grammar clearly privileges this latter one. Linguistic
Reconstruction is manifestly relevant for the former one. One may
question if all natural/historical languages continue just one or more
protolanguages, but the method to try to reconstruct it / them doesn't
change.
(Since the common ancestor of all present-day human males has lived
many millennia later than the common female ancestor of all modern
humans, I'll label Proto-World - the language of the first modern man
- as "Evic" rather than "Adamic", reserving "Adamic" to the language
of the last common ancestor of all modern human males)