Re: Lat. gladius and Sorothaptic

At 8:48:42 AM on Tuesday, August 14, 2012, Tavi wrote:

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

>>> All things being equal, the "laryngeal" hypothesis is
>>> also what you call an "ad-hoc assumption".

>> It's a reasoned inference from the data, and about as well
>> supported as inferences in historical sciences can get. I
>> realize that you don't know much about IE linguistics and
>> haven't a clue about supporting claims with careful
>> argumentation, but this is ridiculous even for you.

> As usual, your assumptions about what I know are *wrong*.
> In IE studies, the term "laryngeal" doesn't describe a
> specific kind of consonant, but it's rather used as a
> wildcard for several different sounds reconstructed for
> earlier stages of IE which can't be defined with enough
> accuracy within the existing framework.

> My own criticism concerns the latter point, not the
> reconstruction itself.

Then you don't know what 'ad hoc' means.

> That is, I see no problem in reconstructing a consonant X,
> provided it can be described with enough accuracy.

So because the evidence is insufficient to pin down the
precise phonetic character of the laryngeals, you dismiss
the evidence that they existed and that there were probably
three or four of them? That certainly looks to me like a
serious failure to understand IE linguistics.