From: dgkilday57
Message: 71610
Date: 2013-11-20
---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:2013/11/15, dgkilday57@... <dgkilday57@...>:> > [...]*Bhr.: This is ny no way astonishing, it's what diachronic phonology
>
> [DGK:]
>
> Clearly I misunderstood your previous post. If I read you correctly now,
> you are not trying to dump the accepted protoform of Pan-Germanic 'thousand'
> with initial *þ-, but you are proposing an additional protoform with initial
> *d- to explain ONLY the OHG forms with initial t- and their descendants.
>
> If I understand this proposal, it would seem to require not one but three
> incredibly astonishing coincidences. First, your rival protoform differs
> from the usual one only in the first phoneme.
requires. It would be much more astonishing if the protoform of both
were the same, but its outcomes differed in their first phonemes, to
be sure unless one were a loanword, but in order to have a loanword
You have to make sure diachronici phononology makes it possible.
You've thought to "later Middle Ages": tu^sunt is three to five
centuries earlier. Find a better chronological frame and I'll have
nothing against it
> Second, there is no trace of*Bhr.: i) the existence of the Common Germanic word in Gothic cannot
> your protoform in Gothic, where we would expect it because the prefix _du-_
> was productive there (e.g. _duginnan_).
exclude Gothic had a rival form *du:sundi, unless You have a secret
record of all Gothic compounds ever used;
ii) let's concede Gothic really lacked *du:sundi: we have to concede
Old Upper German as well didn't have /t/ < /d/ < Germanic */þ/ yet (in
fact its only trace would be OHG tu^sunt itself beside tru^bo,
tru^ba);
iii) Gothic's lack of *du:sundi has no effect on the survival of its
match in German (German obvioulsy doesn't continue Gothic) - this
would be a trivial, not astonishing, coincidence (if at all; the fact
that a prefix remains productive in a language has nothing to do with
the persistance of it in a PIE compound in another language, be it of
the same Germanic class or not) - while Old Upper German's lack of the
sound law makes the loanword hypothesis anachronistic
Third, your protoform is reflected
> only in part of High German,*Bhr.: this is no problem, Old Norse too has too mutually irreductible forms
[DGK;]
And Salian Frankish, but these are best explained as hypercorrections arising from the impression that 'thousand' was a compound of 'hundred'.
> and the reflex happens to have the same form*Bhr.: Whan we observe an irregular variation between synonyms words
> that a borrowing from Upper German would have.
inside a language family, we have six possible explanations:
i) reflexes of a hitherto unknown proto-phoneme;
ii) reflexes of a hitherto unknown combination of known phonemes;
iii) regular outcome of a sound law with idiosyncratic phonological context
iv) difference in word formation (same root + different affix(es) or
vice versa)
v) loan from a language with different diachronic phonology
vi) no connection
Here, i-iii are impossible, because both variants are attested in the
same language and the phonological context is exactly the same. We are
so left with iv-vi. If it isn't vi (that would be disappointing, but
only that would really be an astonishing - just one - coincidence),
only iv and v are left. Everybody prefers v, but iv is correct (not
necessarily true; just correct, which v till now isn't yet). It would
be more economic to have v, because You wouldn't have to postulate the
activation of one more PIE potential form (my etymon) till historical
times, but until You cannot independently predate Upper German /t/ <
German /d/ You have to postulate such pre-dating, which is much less
economic than postulating the real existence of just one PIE
potentially existing regular compound (the chronological extension of
a sound-law is epistemologically heavier than the activation of a
compound out of 11,000,000,000,000,000 regular PIE compounds;
compounds are very numerous, virtually almost countless like phrases
and sentences, but compounds with fixed number of elements - here, two
members - are countable)
>*Bhr.: May I let You remember You've written "the most plausible
> Any reasonable scholar would conclude that borrowing is highly likely,
> whether or not he found the scenario of _Tausend_ and _Traube_ spreading
> northward with the wine-trade plausible.
explanation is the expansion of commercialism northward from Florence
in the later Middle Ages", i.e. some centuries later than OHG tu^sunt
&c.? Now You would have to suggest that the most plausible explanation
is referred to a time when Florence was an obscure hamlet of herdsmen
and fishermen
[DGK:]
No, my explanation does not require that OUG _tu:sunt_ had to start spreading northward immediately after it was formed, when Florence was a mere hamlet. Both _tu:sunt_ and *tru:bo could have minded their own business in Upper Alemannic for several centuries, and only started spreading when Florentine commercialism and the wine-trade did.
> Your devotion to Mario Alinei's*Bhr.: Hahahah, everybody will be happy to know that Alinei's
> immobilist doctrine has gone off the deep end. Obviously Alinei exerts a
> hypnotic hold over his doggedly devoted disciples, and so you are incapable
> of accepting movement of European peoples, and loanwords in their languages,
> in Pre-Roman times.
doctrine is that tu^sun is a loanword from Old Upper German unattested
dialects! Alinei thinks 'mediaeval' dialects were already spoken - in
their historical phonology - 11,000 years ago... You would be a much
more devoted disciple; evidently I support a complete different
scenario (which, by the way, is the commonly accepted one), i.e. that
PIE dialects had their PIE phonology till Bronze Age or even later. I
happen to coincide with Alinei's theory - like You do with reference
to tu^sun - in just one case: that PIE dialects were already PIE in
Upper Palaeolithic (but Alinei, like many old-hashioned Italian
Scholars, wants a 'simplified' PIE phonlogy, without laryngeals, so
the coincidence is more virtual than effective)
[DGK:]
The logical conclusion of Alinei's model would lead us to the Flintstones.
> Since I know nothing about counter-hypnosis or*Bhr.: As You see, nobody - least so Alinei - supports my ideas, so
> deprogramming techniques, this is something that I and others must accept
> about you when discussing languages.
You can spare caring for counter-hypnosis until I succeed in
convincing somebody
[DGK:]
What about Gianfranco? You defend his Basque theory, and he fails to support your ideas? Such ingratitude!
> But with OHG we are a millennium or*Bhr.: and half one removed from Late Middle Ages
> more removed from Alinei's purported era of palaeolithic continuity,
> and I*Bhr.:, so why should Kluge &c. have written there's no explanation for #t-?
> cannot fathom anyone going to such extreme lengths to avoid recognizing a
> loanword.
>
[DGK:]
They did not. "Lautlich zu erwarten wäre nhd. d-", they wrote s.v. tausend, not "es gibt keine Erklärung für nhd. t-". See the comments s.v. Docht: "Der Anlaut t im Ahd. und Mhd. beruht auf einer auch sonst zu beobachtenden [sic] Weiterverschiebung (vgl. tausend)." Other examples of OHG or MHG t- from Gmc. *þ- can be found s.vv. dempfen, deuten, deutsch, Donner, dorren, dörren, du, Ton 'Lehm', Trümmer, and tunken, probably s.v. Truhe, and in my opinion s.v. dunkel (which I prefer to connect with _tunken_ and Lat. _tingo:_, not with ON _dokkr_). Your method of constructing a ghost lexeme for each example would turn High German into a haunted house. On the other hand a Weiterverschiebung would have to be either a regional third consonant-shift or a sporadic wandering of d- to t- which would make Sean Whalen jump for joy. I prefer instead a Sonderverschiebung, with Gmc. *þ- unaffected by the High German shift, but developing regularly in normally accented words into *t- in (at least) Upper Alemannic and Upper Bavarian, and *d- in Central German dialects.
In principle this hypothesis is testable by examining the geographic distribution of t-anlaut in these words, something which I intend to do in coming weeks.