NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/lang/8983

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 9.2 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!tdat!tools3!swf
From: [e-mail] (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Correlation Lengths of Language Changes
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Jan 93 21:23:26 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <1993Jan7. <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
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Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Hubey) writes:
|>
|> I'm sure you think you said something very clever but you didn't. What
|> I wrote was about general relationships among objects of all types.
|> What we have done is to induce an isomoprophism between mathematical
|> objects and real objects. This is how math works and how it models
|> the real world. How many times do i have to repeat this?

Gack!  You simply cannot seem to understand Rich at all!

O.K. - I *do* know what isomorphisms are.  I agree that this is how one *specifies*
a mathematical model of reality.  But *not* how one establishes shuch a model -
that requires supporting data.  Just any old isomorphism does not a theory make!

|> > Beg pardon?  What has borrowing, casual or otherwise, to do with the word order
|> > of French or the morphological typology of English?
|> >
|> > (Hint:  The correct answer is "nothing.")
|>
|> I already explained this and the answer is not nothing. Large level
|> changes at the lower levels can produce changes at the higher levels.
|> This is the nth time. You should make sure you've understood what I
|> said before lecturing me on whether I've understood Bynon, or Lyons or Chomsky.

But where is the evidence of large scale borrowing of the sort you want?
[Oh, here I will admit that Rich hasn't quite managed to follow you, but I
can understand why - your ideas have no support in the actual data].

So you say that French is the result of massive borrowing of Latin vocbulary
into a non-Romance base language.  Where is the evidence?  How could such
happen anyway?

|> > Do they?  Languages seem to be perfectly happy with some (sometimes large)
|> > levels of ambiguity.  Any how do any of the processes you name bring about a
|> > reduction in ambiguity?
|>
|> Ahh, the historic method again or should I say its misunderstandings?
|>
|> Do  you think all languages have reached their final stage ?
|>
|> Let's look at the other extreme. What would happen if in English
|> 'I' meant 'I' or "you" or 'she' or......
|>
|> Do you think that language changes are uncorrellated random processes?
|>
|> Do you know what correlation means ?

Gack again!  Look, at least *try* to understand the comparative method!
This bunch of shit is totally irrelevant - it has nothing to do with either the
comparative method or what Rich is trying to say.

|> > Do you know what caused the revision of this original hypothesis?  Your old
|> > shibboleth, the comparative method.
|>
|> I don't doubt it. It was based on words. It still doesn't seem as if
|> you understood what I wrote.

Perhaps because it borders on gibberish to someone who knows how languages work.

|> Finally, we're getting somewhere. Let's see. 'Morphology'!! What is
|> it?  Is it how nouns are derived from V-forms ? Or is it how V-forms
|> are derived from N-forms? Is it both ? Is it more? Is there another
|> level at which this kind of thing happens?
|>
|> Which level phenomena occur(change) more rapidly? Are you getting
|> the drift yet? Maybe you should re-read what I've been writing
|> all this time.

Oh, perhaps - but what Rich is trying to say is that change occurs at *all*
of your levels at about the *same* rate (- Or that it may even occur *faster*
at what you call the 'higher' levels).
|>
|> > *WHAT* word-borrowing?  You keep coming back to this, without presenting any
|> > concrete evidence for any borrowing in any language.
|>
|> And the comparative method rests on the whole and only premise that
|> certain words don't get borrowed. Let's see.  Some words get borrowed.
|> TV, radio, automobile, etc. technology, innovation, etc.

See, you *still* do not understand the comparative method.  Rich himself has
*already* said that *any* word can be borrowed.  This is *not* the comparative
method - it is your caricature of it.

The comparative method is based on the premise that changes in languages tend
to be *regular*, and that *patterns* of changes are systematic.  A word is
treated as inherited to the extent that it matches a *systematic* change,
and is considered borrowed to the extent that it *violates* the regular system
of changes.

|> But this is 20th century. What kind of language did people have
|> 4500 CE? Was it so advanced that they could not borrow an abstract
|> concept like pronoun ? Why? 'This man', 'This woman' is good enough
|> for come languages even now. Why couldn't uncle, brother be an
|> innovation? It's an abstract concept, isn't it? WE're talking
|> about primitive people in the stone age.

Now you are getting into some very odd prejudices about what 'primitive' people
were like!  As Rich has said - pronouns seem to be *fundamental* to language!
[I agree with him here - deixis is a core process - even your example includes
it - 'this' is a deictic element in "this man"].

Yes relational terms can be borrowed - especially when a culture undergoes a
substantial change in its kinship system.  But the idea that stone age man
didn't bother with a kinship system is just plain garbage!  It is sociality
that largely defines humanity's differences from the apes - we almost certainly
had complex kinship systems for as long as we have been on this planet.
You seem to be as ignorant of anthropology as you are of linguistics.  The
study of kinship systems is a large part of that science, and there are more
different kinship systems amoung what you call 'primitive' people than amoung
us civilized people.

Stone age cultures are *not* as simple as you seem to think they are!  These
people are (or were) as interested in abstract ideas as we are!  They too asked
questions about the meaning of life and the structure of the world.  And they
have come up with many complex profound philosophies to answer these questions.

|> How about the beech tree business? Who says that the word was a name
|> for beech and that it got perverted and that the people lived in
|> an area where there beech trees ?  What if it meant pine? And the
|> people lived in an area where there were lots of pine trees.

Sigh.  The exact meaning of the PIE word that became English "beech" is still
quite controversial.  But that it might have meant "pine" is just plain silly,
even as a *borrowed* word it would come out closer to the original meaning
than *that*!  Names for living things change is well understood ways.  A good
example is the English word 'robin'.  This 'started' out as the name for a
small Old-World Thrush with a orange-red breast.  It still means that in England.
But when our ancestors came here to the Americas a few centuries ago, that bird
was nowhere to be found.  However there was a very similar bird - a slightly
larger New-World Thrush with a bright red breast - so we just transfered the
word to the similar form.  This is historically attested, it happened in a
well-documented time, so there can be *no* doubt as to what happened here.

Thus a word for "pine" would never be applied to a tree as different as the beech.
But there are many similar trees - especially oaks with beech-like leaves and
bark (Pfaw - there is an American tree called the "chinkapin oak" - where
"chinkapin" is an alternate name for some types of beech).

|> ... And what if the abstract concept of 'tree' came
|> at a much later time?

Get real!  The only people that would lack a general word for 'tree' would be
those living where there *are* no trees! In fact so-called 'primitive' peoples
often have a *better* vocabulary for describing living things than 'modern'
languages.

|> And is this the only way things can happen? Or are indulging in
|> binary thinking again--this way or that way but nothing else.

No, he is *not* saying it is the only way things can happen - he is giving an
*example* that does not fit into your model as it has been presented.

It is presented as a piece of *contrary* data.

|> Did Etruscan completely disappear or are some of its genes and
|> chromosemes live on in Latin (genetics, you know how it goes.)

Sigh - that is not the sort of language used by linguists.
But - there are *some* borrowed Etruscan words in Latin.


It really would help if you took the time to *understand* the approach you
are trying to replace!  Your "criticisms" would be much more coherent that way.
Rich Alderson (not to mention me) might even be able to understand them.
[In case you missed it - I do not find your ideas much more comprehensible
than Rich does - I still cannot fathom exactly what you are trying to propose].


P.S.  It would help if you would stop treating Rich Alderson like an idiot.
He most certainly is not - he is a competent, generally reliable, expert in
historical linguistics.  He *knows* what he is talking about.

--
[e-mail]            (formerly tdatirv!sarima)
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