NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/lang/8954

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From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jan 93 02:39:25 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

>
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>Also to be noted is the quite limited range of likely orders of the three
>>elements ( s v o ), especially given the huge preponderance of languages
>>where S precedes O for what have been claimed "universal" reasons, so that
>>essentially we are dealing with SVO, SOV, VSO as the possibilities with few
>>exceptions (and some will argue on theoretical bases that V and O must be
>>contiguous as members of a single constituent, i.e. VP. [)]
>
>Contiguous?  As in VSO?
>
Having in three weeks been to "learned" meetings on both coasts, had a car
and a furnace "die" on me, and having purchased a new car, I find I must
apologize for not making myself clear, which I did not do in the above
paragraph.  Which paragraph was intended in support of the poster's position
and that of a couple of others replying to hubey@pilot.

I should have subdivided my claim.  Thus, order of syntactic elements is
not as useful as some other procedures of diachrony.  On the one hand,
there are only six possible orders of the "basic" sentence elements OSV
(using alphabetical order to avoid prejudice --actually I would prefer
C rather than O, but was attempting to be reasonably pleasant under the
circumstances).  Second, only three of these (as one can determine from
that oft cited "any elementary textbook") occur as basic orders with any
frequency in the world's languages, and two are usually labeled "rare".
Then, as has been pointed out, closely related languages often differ
in the order of these elements, while many hundreds of unrelated languages
have an order such as SVO.  This makes the order of elements somewhat
more like typology, which we eschew in positing relatedness.

I remarked, and should have kept those remarks to a separate paragraph (or
paragraphs) that a number of respectable linguists have suggested principled
reasons for the preponderance of only certain orders.  One such suggestion
has been that there is a (quasi)universal "pragmatic" principle which places
subjects before objects, thus disfavoring orders which do the contrary.  A
quite separate suggestion, on quite different bases, is that since the V and
the C form a "constituent", namely VP, orders which interpose S between these
are disfavored.  This last argument depends upon certain views of the linguists
who use it (verb sap).  I did not intend either to claim one or the other of
these as "my own invention", nor even to espouse it.  I had presumed that
those who had any interest in it, as did the poster to whom I replied, knew
all of this background.  (If I were a syntactician, I might instead want to
have warm feelings towards an "abstract" basic order V (NP1) (NP2)...., or
perhaps V (Ag) (Inst) (Goal)....And would allow certain movement rules to
rearrange these:  if you were to label any of them as, perhaps, "alpha"
I could then tell you ambiguously, move alpha, or perhaps "shove it".
>>>[Mark Rosenfelder:]

>>>The comparative method's reliance on lexical items and paradigms in
>>>determining the descent of languages is thus eminently reasonable; these are
>>>the things that change the slowest in a language ("slowest" here resting not
>>>on additional linguistic theory, but on the observed history of real
>>>languages).
>>
>>Actually, its reliance on regular phonological correspondences between shared
>>lexical items and paradigms.  The lexical items themselves are too subject to
>>borrowings to be reliable, and especially so in all but a narrow subset of
>>the lexicon.  Which of course the poster knows well, hard though it may be
>>to convince those who have never done the great quantities of 'donkey' work
>>involved in real linguistic comparison.
>
>Lord Rea's Scott Horne-like laconicities are sometimes difficult for the
>from the edge of unorthodoxy.  The poster will attempt to comply.  The poster
>believes Lord Rea to be observing that there is feasting and rejoicing in
>the linguist's study when a regular morphological alternation is discovered
>within paradigms, e.g. that exemplified by dico /di:ko/ vs. dice /di:tSe/ in
>Italian; whereas the same alternation if it were observed only between lexical
>items (e.g. cento vs. caro) would cause only sighs which are bitter, because
>borrowing could not be ruled out.  The poster shares this preference, of
>course, but does wonder how Lord Rea approaches languages such as Chinese, in
>which morphological alternants are, to put it mildly, rare.  The poster had
>better also emphasize that regular phonological correspondences are, as Lord
>Rea says, where the action is; the above alternations are but instances of
>a regular sound change, and reconstructions are based on such regular sound
>changes rather than on comparisons of lexical items per se.

I am puzzled as to why, since I was briefly supporting most of his arguments
and adding material which, I assumed, he might look kindly on, he laments
my lack of prolixity.  I tend to follow Ulfila's admonishment in his
rendering if Matthew VI 1:  Ni filuwaurdjaith0.  (the final symbol is intended
to be a theta, since I cannot manage a thorn, even for my own crown.)

I am especially sorry that he found it necessary to resort to the device of
ad hominem slurs and insults, which in the direct form he has used I had
always regretted on a newslist part of whose label is "sci."
I do not recall Scott Horne, whose postings I enjoyed (if that is the
appropriate word) to have been either succinct or supportive of mainstream
positions as was mine.  I can, of course, provide a few controversial
notions of my own, especially in things Latinic and Romance to unconstipate
the too conservative when the mood is on me.  Cultivons nos moutons, as
the French say.