Re: More Etymology!

On Feb 16, 4:14 am, "Franz Gnaedinger" <f...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 15, 9:41 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



I have no idea what's "missing" from Magdalenian, since we have no
information about Magdalenian other than some vocabulary items.

For the record, I asked you to point out one
characteristic feature of language that is missing
in my reconstruction of a language I call Magdalenian.

What is _present_ in Magdalenian that is not present in any human
language is the property that every word consists of a consonant, a
vowel, and a consonant, and these three elements can be permuted so as
to provide semantic variations.

Or two vowels and one consonant. I didn't yet
explore the possibilities of three vowels or three
consonants.

Even worse.

My assumption is that early words
were very short,

Yes, Franz. It is an ASSUMPTION. You have never offered an ARGUMENT
for why you think "words" would be "very short." The Magdalenian
period is not "early" in the context of human development.

and I posed myself the question:
what happens when one uses just words of one
or two or three letters or phonemes? This is the
usual scientific proceeding: you make a reasonable
assumption (early language having consisted of
short words) and look what comes from it.

No, first you state why such an ASSUMPTION should be considered
"reasonable."

How far
can you go on the basis of your assumption? Using
only very short words has surprising consequences.
There aren't too many words, so you begin to
turn them around.

What evidence is there for "turn[ing] them around"?

This turning around of words
is quite frequent, you can observe it in children's
babbling.

No, you cannot. You have provided no data whatsover from the study of
babbling.

Or in the history of language - Old
German Lieli meant wild vine, the word became
Lieni,

No, one "word" did not "become" another word. If these data are
accurate, then there was progressive dissimilation (a fairly uncommon
occurrence, in fact).

then L and N were swapped, Nieli, Niele.

No, they were not "swapped." Metathesis is a special, and not all that
common, case of dissimilation.

Inverse forms and permutations were given
related meanings.

The passive voice is not used in such statements. Who "gave" these
meanings?

You can observe a similar
process in the name seeking procedures of
companies in our days: they generate computer
permutations of letters, looking out for a name
for a new product, and they have to check
whether a pleasing new name alludes to a
phonetically close word with an innapropriate
meaning, then the potential name in question
is ruled out, and the search for a new product
name goes on.

What on earth does that have to do with anything?

The name finding algorithms
may be the topic of a doctoral thesis of the near
future, I dare forsay - if such a dissertation has
not yet been written.

I'm sure numerous dissertations have been written on the naming of
consumer products, as well as handbooks for advertising professionals.

Short words confine the
possibility of language, but, as every restriction
does, it opens specific possibilities, in this case
the possibility of giving permutation groups of
short words related meanings, so that a word
has not only one single meaning, but, as in
music, overtones coming from the other variants
of the permutation group (positive overtones
coming from close versions are also welcome
in names of new products).

Funny, none of the thousands of languages with "short" words have the
problems you suppose they would, and they do not resort either to
"permutations" or to computer manipulations to come up with new
vocabulary.

In the sciences,
all ideas must be tested, even seemingly crazy
ones, for you never know.

And "testing" the "idea" of "permutations" is accomplished how?

And in doing so,
3,000 people go astray, inevitably, yet others
can learn from their failure and avoid the same
mistakes. All the people who go astray in the
sciences contribute to the progress of the
sciences: they pave the way for number 3,001
who will succeed. Back to the Magdalenian level
of language. Some 15,000 years ago, the verbal
morphospace (a loan from biology) would have
been more or less filled up, and so, with hindsight,
we can speak of permutation groups. Permutation
groups were not intended and fabricated right
from begin, they slowly emerged as inverse forms
and permutations were given related meanings.
Hans Hass, a biologist, once filmed an Indian
market place from above, and showed the film
at normal speed: you saw plenty of people
crossing each other's ways in the crammed
market. Then he showed the same film at
a high speed, and suddenly patterns emerged,
now you saw streams of people. The same
effect was used in the film Koianisquatsi (or so).
The Magdalenian level of language would be
the same: a compression of time that conveys
processes along rules (giving inverse forms
and permutations of words related meanings)
into patterns (permutation groups obeying my
four laws of Magdalenian). I told you this many
times. I tell you again. So that you can snip my
answer again, and tell everybody I don't provide
arguments ...

Kindly excerpt from your above maunderings exactly those passages that
you believe constitute an "argument."

Analogies are not arguments (nor are any of the above analogies in the
slightest bit apt, but we know that's not going to prevent you from
typing and typing and typing them again and again).

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: More Etymology!
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