Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated

On Jul 30, 1:43 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 30, 12:57 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jul 30, 10:27 am, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Jul 30, 8:20 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:45 am, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 29, 11:07 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 29, 6:29 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I keep trying to point out to you that Sanskrit was probably never
used for commonplace transactions and that being mostly used for
chanting (probably in chorus), religious rites and metaphysical
treatises for an esoteric audience would not subject it to the
neogrammarian sound changes - but you don't want to understand it.

Becase no language in the entire history of humanity has such a
history.

Sez you.

And everyone else who has ever studied language seriously.

You obviously have no citation for this - since I think I am the first
to explicitly point out that Sanskrit might never have been used as a
spoken prose language for everyday activity.

That would be because it's self-evidently asinine.

Its very simple - either its so asinine that nobody would even think
of dismissing it - in which case you were not truthful when you wrote
"and everyome else ..seriously".

You have confused yourself (again). What I, and every other linguist
in the world, "sez," is that no human language has ever existed that
was not subject to sound change. (There's no such thing as
"neogrammarian sound changes," no matter what you may find by googling
crackpot websites.) And every other kind of language change.

If it has been dismissed by others, then you should be able to cite
somebody to that effect.

The facts of language change were soon recognized when non-European
and non-Classical languages began to be studied, first in Africa (see
the work of Bleeck, Lepsius, and many others), then in India (I'm sure
you have heard of Caldwell), then in North America (Boas, Kroeber, and
their 20th-century successors): Indo-European was soon seen to be an
ordinary language family that follows all the same principles of human
language as any other family.

The main difference from almost all the others is that we happen to
have historical records of some languages from IE.

Where, in your imagination, did Sanskrit come from? Are you going to
tell me Ganesh wrote it with his tooth?

Short attention span?

It was created as a necessity to express the Vedic hymns with the
appropriate degree of gravitas (ha ha) from the raw material of Proto-
prakirt - the dialect of the so called PIE that was prevalent in the
ArYAvarta-SaptaSaindhava area at that time.

Sorry, the passive voice won't do. "It was created ..." provides no
information at all.

The standard model says that PIIr came to India already possessing
lexical and grammatical elements to which neogrammatical sound changes
can be applied to derive Sanskrit.

Try learning what "Neogrammarian" means. Sound changes do not "apply"
to (something or other).

do you know what "neogrammarian means" ?

Yes, I do. I have even read some of the articles in which the
neogrammarian principles were first set forth. You don't, and you
haven't.

yes they do. Do some
googling and you will find this usage is reasonably common.

I don't care what you find by googling. "Sound changes" do not
"apply." Language changes, and it changes in highly regular, albeit
unpredictable, ways.

If I ask where did PIIr get its grammar from - the answer would be
PIE. And if I ask where did PIE get its grammar from - "from PrePIE".
But eventually you have to "change the subject" as below

No, eventually (maybe 150,000 years ago) you get to the origins of
human language, on which there is much speculation.

Thats absurd. how has that reply circumvented the difficulty of every
cause requiring a previous cause?

That appears to be a religious statement.

My question is about the complexity of Sanskrit grammar - did that
arise in the Sapta-Saindhava or was the alleged language that came in
to India and Iran already have it?

What makes you think Sanskrit is any more "complex" than any other
human language?

or say that it was creatively developed by the speakers.

I am simply crediting the the development of PIE grammar to the people
who attestedly used it for the first time to such breathtaking
effect. I think they totally invented a grammar to go on top of
Proto-Prakirt and also euphonized its sounds - and "tat jaNasa
samskritham" (lets see if anybody picks up on this inside joke).

It doesn't matter when something is first attested. Do you think there
was no Albanian before 1700? That there was no Kwakiutl before 1890?

Fine. so are you asserting that the language that allegedly came into
India/iran already had something close to Skt grammar? To postulate a
language from which Sanskrit emerged due to mechanical processes flies
in the face of parsimonious theorizing (that would apply to Greek and
Latin too, but once you assume Sanskrit arose through a creative
generation process from Proto-prakirt, then it would be parsimonious
to explain greek and latin largely from proto-prakirt).

Of course the last immediate ancestor of Sanskrit was almost identical
to Sanskrit!

In fact, we can get a very good idea of what that last immediate
ancestor looked like by comparing Vedic and Old Avestan, since they
are so similar that they were probably mutually intelligible: what
they have in common was what their immediate ancestor was like.

Where do you think "Proto-Prakrit" came from?

I don't know and its not relevant for my theory. I'll reconstruct it
and if greek etc and the later prakirts come out of through standard
methods, that would be the justification.

If your theory can't even account for the origin of the languages that
are most closely related to Sanskrit, then it's a pretty lousy, and
useless, theory.

Maybe once you've prepared your 1000-page monograph showing exactly
how this bizarre scheme of yours operated, the people who know what
they're talking about will be able to refute it item by item. But long
before you get to page 50, you will have discovered how ridiculous it
is.

This is just anti-amateur bias.

Then stop talking like an amateur, and DO WHAT YOU CLAIM.

Toby Griffen (and I think the glottalists) say the exact opposite of
the standard model as to the direction of Grimm's law sound changes -
why aren't they "bizarre" ?

Since you clearly don't know what Grimm's Law says or means, you are
clearly in no position to understand either their position or what it
means.

Its unbelievable how many times you have exhibited apparent ignorance
of Toby Griffen's work on "germano-european". Since Toby Griffen has
a website - you probbaly do know what he is proposing and you don't
want to face it since it exposes the astoundingly glaring
contradiction of a reputable scholar claiming that what started off
PIE theory (Grimm's law sound changes from PIE to proto-Germanic ) had
the direction of the sound changes in reverse.

I know Toby Griffen. We have presented papers at the same meeting
several times. Toby Griffen is a Celticist. He is not widely (or at
all?) cited in the specialist literature. I have no idea what his
"germano-european" is. I have no reason to suppose that his maverick
view -- if you have in fact characterized it accurately -- has found
any acceptance whatsoever.

The "glottalic theory" had some vogue twenty years ago, but it was
soon shown to create far more complications than it resolved.

Note that you have not offered a single datum in support.-

Not true. I have already undermined the supposed lynchpin of the
dethronement of Sanskrit as practically a dialect of PIE - Grassman's
Law - by suggesting that what happened in "chakAra" etc. was not
"palaltalization but "change to a palatal" (thanks Nathan for the
terminology) for euphony. I have also given examples of sanskrit
changing a palatal to a velar for euphony.

"Euphony" is an excuse used by 19th-century philologists to account
for things they could not yet explain.

I don't know about a 800 page book - but I think I should be able to
come up with 50-100 pages of text and however many pages of data to
support my viewpoint.

Then do it, and shut up until you do.

Let us know when you've submitted it to a journal that publishes Indo-
European studies.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated
    ... neogrammarian sound changes - but you don't want to understand it. ... And every other kind of language change. ... obtains) during most usage of sanskrit stopped neogrammarian sound ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: More Indo european follies
    ... (i.e., Sanskrit was pretty much the same, or very little removed from, ... the original PIE language from which all the others derived) and only ... Insisting that 'the conventional model' is as good as some gibberish ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated
    ... which correspondances between velars and palatals are found, ... inconceivable that PIE had a palatal. ... ancestor language having a palatal, ... Sanskrit as PIE for cases when sanskrit's sounds could not have ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Indo-Aryan Migration in <<Several Waves>>
    ... >> discern that the language talked about is PIE since it is artfully ... > They don't appear to be suggesting archaic Sanskrit. ... the hypothetical Proto-lndo-European language ... ... and since there is no mention of PIE after the "hypothetical PIE" ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Indo-Aryan Migration in <<Several Waves>>
    ... >> discern that the language talked about is PIE since it is artfully ... > They don't appear to be suggesting archaic Sanskrit. ... the hypothetical Proto-lndo-European language ... ... and since there is no mention of PIE after the "hypothetical PIE" ...
    (sci.archaeology)
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