Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated

On Jul 26, 5:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 25, 10:56 am, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Jul 25, 9:37 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

What is this "hard sound / soft sound" crap?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

To answer that I need to know if you think "reductive sound change" is
meaningful.

What's it supposed to mean, that it "reduces" the number of letters
you spell it with? Of course it isn't "meaningful."

Actually, I think he picked this one up from me. I think there is a
reductive tendency in sound change, in that changes which reduce the
strength of articulation (lenition), the number of segments (deletion)
or differences between segments (assimilation) are more common than
their opposites (fortition, insertion, dissimilation). It is something
like the "principle of least effort" that used to be invoked.
Needless to say, I am not responsible for whatever role analys...
wants it to play in his cockamamie scheme.

Ross Clark
.

Quantcast