Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated

On Jul 25, 7:14 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 25, 6:30 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 25, 3:10 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

The hoi polloi are constantly trying to vandalize language ("buh-bye")
while the linguistic elite either preserve or even fortify (John
Mclaughlin's lyrical, resonating "bye-bye").

You have this bizarre, elitist, perhaps caste-driven (are you a
Brahmin?) notion that language change is a deliberate, consciously
driven process that is imposed on language by low classes and resisted
by high classes, which is tterly ridiculous, and until you understand
that, there is no point at all in your attempting to comment on it at
all.

Bad choice of words -

On whose part?

the language preservers take good care of how
they speak (enforced by subtle, unconscious peer pressure perhaps) -
rather like personal grooming - and perhaps it becomes routine for
them to always speak well.

Bull***. NO ONE consciouusly "takes good care of how they speak" at
all, or even at most, times. Labov, whom you so ignorantly invoke
below, showed in his very first publications -- his dissertation --
that conscious control of diction is shockingly easy to overcome, even
in the most self-conscious (scil. lower middle class female) speakers.

The language destroyers do it simply by not taking care of how they
speak and also because they lack the ability to always remember
complicated rules of grammar( prakrit speakers gradually stopped
using the dual number for eyes, feet etc. for example),

NO ONE in the entire world is even aware of the "rules" they obey
during speaking, let alone "remembering" them.

Now apply the theory on a vast scale to IE languages (one language was
not subject to reduction at all) - and the whole PIE establishment can
be made to come crashing down.

Whatever "reduction" may be, the suggestion that Sanskrit was "not
subject to" it is asinine. Sanskrit turned into Prakrits, and
incidentally was also remembered because the traditional texts were
memorized in their original form, with the aid of works like Panini's,
and eventually written down.

sanskrit never "turned" into Prakrit -

What is your brilliant theory of where the Prakrits came from?

just as Centamil never turned
into Kotun Tamil. Up until the Prakirts actually started breaking
down grammarians were aware of Prakirts and Sanskrit coexisting and of
course the linguistic elite preserved sanskrit and jealously guarded
Prakritisms from creeping into it (not always with complete success
because eventually some prakrit words entered Sanskrit).

So much for your idiotic theory.

It is likely that Sanskirt was not anybody's first language for every
day use by the time of Patanjali.

Good. You understand that much.

That factor doesn't lie dormant,

waiting for the language to reach a French-like state before it kicks
in... this factor is *constantly* present, creating a perpetual
tug-of-war between different directly opposing forces, with languages
getting pushed around in a space of possible states, with no stable
resting point.

What Nathan is trying to say, but since he teaches at an elite liberal
arts college he does not usually face persons for whom words of one
syllable may be too complicated, is that if "reduction" continues
unabated as you seem to think it does, then there would be no
communication at all; but since _everyone_, even the Untouchable,
needs to communicate by language, the mechanisms that operate on every
language at all times include methods that _increase_ the
distinctiveness of speech, with no deliberate input whatsoever from
anyone, no matter what caste or class they belong to.

No mechanisms operate on language (except perhaps the impossibility of
parents being able to transmit their language exactly to their
children). Thats only a college professor's way of trying to get a
grip on how the speakers of a language interact with it.

Very good. You're not a Chomskyan.

People say the stock prices move randomly - but thats only a model for
the cumulative effect of thousands of investors making deliberate
decisions to buy sell or hold. No "mechanism" operates on stock
market investors - and yet the outcome of their actions makes it look
a "randomizing" mechanism operates on stock prices.

Very good. You're a disciple of Rudi Keller, who adopted Adam Smith's
"invisible hand" image to describe language change.

In the case of language there is no need to resort to mechansitic
models of how languages change - Labov has already shown the way to
identify the social strata that tend to affect language in
identifiably different ways.

You know the name of Labov, though you don't have the slightest idea
what his work has consisted of for more than forty years.
.

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