Re: Why there is t- in German tausend "thousand"?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:

>
> 2013/11/13, gprosti <gprosti@...>:
> >
> >
> > The question is *how* statistically probable it is that two words with the
> > same meaning, which share five phonemes in the same sequence, are in fact
> > two completely (historically) separate forms.
>
> *Bhr.: 100% probable.

It's 100% probable -- i.e., physically or logically necessary -- that two semantically matching words with a long, matching sequence of phonemes, but one non-matching phoneme, must have no historical affinity whatsoever?

In case it's unclear, "historical affinity" here includes the possibility that the two words are dialectal variants, that one is a loan from the other, etc.

Even if historical affinity doesn't include these cases, the probability is still not 100%, because the laws (= tendencies) of sound change are not laws of mathematics or physics.

It's not my fault, it's phonology. If two words

> differ by a phoneme, they are minimal couple. If two words have the
> same meaning, but different phonemes (even if just one: one is more
> than zero), they are synonyms. If You want to underline the
> statistically possible - although rare -

Rare = a low probability.

case that they are synonyms

> differing by just a phoneme, You can label them "paronymic synonyms".
> Are paronymic synonyms possible, or are we obliged to convert them
> into genetic cognates?
>

If

- a set of words shares a non-trivial number of consecutive phonemes (again, I would say 5 is a non-trivial number)
- they only differ in one phoneme
and
- there is no clear process (morphological or otherwise) whereby the words could have been independently created in each language from separate components

then I would say the most probable explanation of these words' similarity is common origin (which, again, can involve loaning).

This is not the same as dismissing a dissimilarity between phonemes (t- vs. d-, etc.) entirely.

> >
> >>

> >
> > Haplology is a similar type of process: e.g., standard Spanish shows the
> > simplification of *tenisista to "tenista", but no haplology of "narcisista"
> > to *narcista.
> >
> >
> *Bhr.: There's no haplology of *tenisista to tenista, rather there's
> a readjustment rule quite like that of narcisista:
> narcis-ismo > delete -ismo > add -ista > narcis-ista
> tennis (< French ten-ez) > delete -is > add -ista > tenn-ista
> (celt-a > delete -a > add -ista > celt-ista)
>

Proof?