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

From: gprosti
Message: 71598
Date: 2013-11-14

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>
> 2013/11/14, gprosti <gprosti@...>:
> >
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >>
> >> 2013/11/13, gprosti <gprosti@>:
> >>
> >>
> >> *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?
>
> *Bhr.: if they irreducibly differ even in just one phoneme in the
> root, especially word-initially, they ARE different by definition

Synchronically, yes.

> >
> > 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.
>
> *Bhr.: they are logical laws, otherwise one could not demonstrate
> whether a given etymological hypothesis is correct or not

I disagree. If enough data is gathered in support of a sound correspondence, a single exception does not immediately invalidate that correspondence (though it may suggest that the correspondence is more complicated than previously thought).

> >
> > 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.
>
> *Bhr.: well, phonological irregularity is NO probability,

Proof?

>
> >
> > 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
> >

By the way, I meant to write "semantically matching words" in the sentence below:

> > - a set of words shares a non-trivial number of consecutive phonemes (again,
> > I would say 5 is a non-trivial number)
>
> *Bhr.: Four out of five are suffixes or second members of compound,
> they are identical in both words in my etymology as well, so they
> cannot be taken into consideration
>
> > - they only differ in one phoneme
>
> *Bhr.: The root is constituted by two phonemes, so they differ at 50%
>
> > and
> > - there is no clear process (morphological or otherwise) whereby the words
> > could have been independently created in each language from separate
> > components
>
> *Bhr.: I can't understand. This is anyway not the case. A preverb
> *dhu, the root *h1es-, a participle in *-nt- and the feminine ending
> *-ih2 are trivial elements in Germanic Erbwortschatz

But how trivial is the combination *-h1s-nt(-ih2)?

Also, how widely attested is *dhu in the languages where it appears (besides this OHG form, only in Gothic, if I understood you correctly)?

>
> >
> > then I would say the most probable explanation of these words' similarity is
> > common origin (which, again, can involve loaning).
>
> *Bhr.: Were it so easy, I think Kluge, Mitzka, Seebold &c. wouldn't
> have had to wait for You in order to discover such a perfect solution.
> In such cases, the solution can be either in something they didn't
> know (like e.g. Hittite hapax tu-up-ra 'bound' or a kind of evil as a
> comparandum for Zauber, as I've proposed some years ago) or in
> something they couldn't admit, i.e. surely not diatopic variation or
> loans, but - as You too seem completely incapable to accept - the
> emergence of a couple of paronymic synonyms,

I'm not unable to accept them in principle, but I don't think they should be the default explanation for an irregularity in an otherwise regular correspondence (between forms of non-trivial size).

yet Old Norse þúshund
> (and Runic Swedish þūshundrað) vs. þúsund, Old Slav. tysęšti, tysǫšti
> &c. show a similar opposition
>
> >
> > This is not the same as dismissing a dissimilarity between phonemes (t- vs.
> > d-, etc.) entirely.
>
> *Bhr.: I really can't understand. Who dismisses and who doesn't?

You seemed to be contrasting your solution with the dismissal of the t-/d- difference.

> >> >
> >> >
> >> *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?
> >
> >
> *Bhr.: As proven by celt-ista, -ista does delete stem-final endings.

Not proof that every speaker of Spanish has done so every time they've formed a word with -ista.

> There's no word †narcis; tenista : tenis = narcisista : X, where X
> surely doesn't end in -is like tenis
>

Maybe this logic was operating in the minds of the people who originated "tenista", maybe not.