----- Özgün İleti -----Kimden: Polat KayaGönderme tarihi: 23 Temmuz 2003 Çarşamba 18:40Konu: Re: [SPAM:61%] [bcn_2003] Fw: [b_c_n_2003] Fw: About claims of Mr.Polat KayaDear Mark Hubey,
Thank you for your writing. I understand and appreciate what you are
saying. The tools that you are mentioning probably are very valid
tools under certain circuimstances in linguistics. If there is no
intentional human interference in the normal evolutionary process of
words among dialects of a given language, and even the development of
loan words among unrelated languages, your probability theory, what
you call RSC (recurrent sound change) may work. But when there is
intentional interference and intentional rearrangement of words from
one language into another then out goes your RSC. Because this time
we are not dealing with natural changes of sounds but rather total
rearrangements of letters, syllables, i.e., everything that makes up a
word or phrase. This is a totally different ball game. This time one
is "anagrammatizing" a word or phrase from a known language into
another. The resulting new word is an encryption of the source
material. However, even though the initial text is shuffled, it is not
lost and remains embedded in the encyrpted new word (just like
encrypting today). In fact you will get nowhere by using your
probability of changing sounds, because not only have sounds been
changed but also the whole structure of the original text has been
changed. Now after having said this in response to your suggestions, I
will give you an example to clarify my point.
Ok, let's see. Somewhere I read that there are approximately one million acronyms in English
mostly technical stuff like LEM, DB, radar, etc. But this is appropriate for this era since we
have invented so many things that we need to name. Surely nobody wants to write "lunar excursion module"
all the time so we simply put LEM. But this era is this era and 5,000 years ago things were different.
Words are normally derived analogically e.g. via analogical extension. Nobody sat around campfires
drinking wine and inventing new words because there was no pressing need for it.
So nobody anagrammatized anything either.
In the so-called Greek mythology, the name POSEIDON is the god of
seas, waters, etc. I say this so-called Greek god was nothing but the
anagrammatized name of Deniz-Han of the Turanians. How so? I will show
you how. When one rearranges the name POSEIDON as DENIS-OPO, it is
readily seen that it is the anagram of Turkish "DENIZ-APA" meaning
"father of sea". Now I claim that this is not a normal change of the
name. As you can see, probablity played no part in this
transformation.
But probability does play a great part in showing that these exercises are useless.
One can take a word, take apart its letters/sounds and create new words from it.
And because there are so many possibilities, the probability that this particular reorganization
of the sounds is likely easy and thus meaningless.
So, again you have to stick to the rules of rational reasoning e.g. probability theory or
a good substitute for it e.g. RSC in historical linguistics.
After giving these examples, I rest my case. It is now up to others
whether they pay serious attention or not. I would like to state,
however, that when you tell me "but the RSC heuristic is sound, and
you have to somehow use something like it if you want serious
attention from them", you are imposing your artificial rules on me
which is not fair nor are they rules to follow. I have convincingly
demonstrated an original idea with realistic examples to support it
and in plain language so that everyone can understand it.
The rules are not artificial. They derive from sound rational principles and have been
codified as the axioms of probability theory circa 1930s by the great Russian mathematician
Kolmogorov. Surely as an engineer you should have more respect for mathematics than
those that have never even had calculus in college.
Thanks for conversing with me.
Best wishes to all.
Polat Kaya
July 23, 2003
Mark Hubey wrote:
>
> Mr Kaya,
>
> Your ideas are original, however, what the complains are about are
> different than
> originality.
>
> If we see a pattern in life which we think did not arise due to
> chance then we have to
> start suspecting that it was due to something else. The heuristics
> of historical linguistics (e.g. rules of
> thumb) are substitutes for the use of probability theory. The common
> heuristic of HistLing is
> the RSC (recurrent sound change). If the probability of a sound
> change X (e.g. some sound change)
> between languages A and B is p, then the probability of this same
> sound change occurring
> twice is p^2, three times is p^3, etc. Since p < 1, every time we
> multiply we get a number
> smaller and smaller. Thus our confidence increases that these RSCs
> were not due to chance
> and thus it was due to something else (e.g. borrowing/copying or
> genetic descent).
>
> If we use metathesis, anagrams, etc too often it is not convincing
> that these did not arise
> due to chance.
>
> I know that most HistLingers are ignorant of probability theory, and
> many things they claim
> are true are plain false and others dubious, but the RSC heuristic
> is sound, and you have to
> somehow use something like it if you want serious attention from
> them. The basic idea is
> always the same, e.g. show that the state of events is likely not
> due to chance.
>
> allingus wrote:
>
>>
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-- Mark Hubey hubeyh@... http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey