Re: Orthography supporting sound changes?

Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote: 
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Aidan Kehoe wrote:


> So you switched the topic, without notice, from spelling pronunciation
> to "language shift." They may look to you like the same thing, but they
> most assuredly aren't.

The topic was how spelling pronunciation interacts with sound changes. I
haven't seen anything ruling out language shifts between related dialects
and the changes of sound inherent in that as "sound changes" in the
specialised sense, and indeed the definitions I've seen leave room for such
an interpretation; please provide something ruling this out, if you have it.


No. Scientists don't bother thinking up explanations for why every
imaginable contingency does not occur. You provide an example of it
happening, and we'll try to explain why it does.



Depends on the science.  Mathematicians frequently study why things
don't happen.  A famous example being Fermat's Last Theorem.  A huge
amount of effort has been expended over the years to prove that
something does not happen.  Squaring the circle and trisecting angles
are other examples of a lot of effort spent on proving something
impossible.

Umm. Maths is not a science (in any sense relevant to this discussion).
A mathematician's "does not occur" is qualitatively different from a scientist's "does not occur".

Colin
.

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