Re: Fr/lat/ru tu-vous/tu-vos/ты-вы: etymology ?

On Sep 26, 3:41 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"What's the capital of Hungary?" I asked.

"It's Trimsham," he replied.

Skeptical, I checked an atlas and found that the capital of Hungary is
Budapest. "Why did you give me a made-up answer?" I asked. He responded,
"You had a question and I proposed an answer. That's not making up an
answer."

If someone really tells you the capital of Hungary
is Trimsham, you can wrong him by opening an atlas.
When I give you an answer, you can't as easily dismiss
it. Which is why you don't even discuss with me, you
always escape to a meta-level.

Speculating and making up explanations in your head in lieu of looking
for actual information that exists out in the world isn't research.

So tell me that the fabulous painted caves in the
Franco-Cantabrian space are just in me head.

Did it ever occur to you that there's already an answer? Have you also
reinvented the wheel?

I ask you as everyone else in sci.lang: did you ever
wonder why French and English have a double way
of saying 'ego', je moi, I me. Nobody gave me an
answer, not even Peter T. Daniels who knows almost
everything about linguistics (not the same as language,
alas).

There isn't any a priori reason to suppose that your answer is *good* in
the first place. It's arbitrary and you molded it until it pleased you,
but there isn't anything about that process that would give anyone any
confidence that it matches what actually happened.

You don't know how my interest in this question arose.
It was back in 1974, when I studied art history at the
university of Zurich, and met someone who knew Marcel
Duchamp and gave a talk at his home. I was intrigued
by Duchamp, his language and his sayings. Once
he spoke of "a little game between 'je' and 'moi'."
What did he say with this comment? I wondered,
for a very long time, and thirty years later, when
starting my Magdalenian experiment (spring of
2003) I suddenly found an answer. I had no time
to make up my answer, I just had memorized
a sentence that intrigued me, I let it sleep for
decades, and then I got my answer.

The meta part is introduced by you right at the point where you venture
to present some arbitrary musing of yours as information, as a response
to a person who asked a question for information, not because he wanted
to indulge your penchant for guessing games.

Only meta-statments by you, no single word whether
you once wondered about je moi / I me, and whether
you remember someone pointing out this curious
double form. I found an answer (as explained above),
and it leads further. It is clear to me that humming
Mm and Nn mark presence, which may well be the
reason for me my mine, moi mon ma, mein meine
meins, mio mia, ..., for ego-words beginning on 'n'
in Australian languages, and for nous nos noi as
a plural form of ego. Accordingly, the you and he/she
form are no humming sounds but are produced in
the front of the mouth: you (lips protruding), tu
(the same), toi, etc. As I said many times: I study
language on the physiological level, and I asked
people in here many times whether I am the only
one to do so. Seems like it. In my opinion, this
way of studying language is promising, and young
students should get a chance of hearing about new
ideas. I myself was very grateful for those teachers
who told me and us about new ideas in any field.
I am really lucky that I had such good teachers,
and now I do the same for young people who like
to learn something new that isn't (yet) in the
textbooks. I don't write for you, Harlan Messinger,
nor do I write for Peter T. Daniels, nor do I write
for Prof. Dr. Nathan Sanders. And please don't
underestimate young people.

.

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