Re: elementary Sanskrit blunder by Harvard professor

analyst41@xxxxxxxxxxx skreiv:

a clarification. I don't mean that the form of every word must have a reason.

Actually, there's no opposition to your claim that reasons exist, but because you claim regularity where there's very little of the sort, and because you keep telling what linguists don't do. Linguists and philologers put much effort into the search for the reasons of every irregular form. And not only for linguistic reasons. Loans can tell much about both the involved societies at the time. As is the case with the IA words in Mitanni.

There's nothing new with the interest for borrowing of numerals. It's known that when a whole row of numbers is replaced it's usually due to trade being conducted in a foreign language. A single number could be the result of some advanced sociolingiuistic mechanism -- perhaps having a central position in some imported aspect of culture, like the legal system, new military tactics or the myths of an incoming religion, or perhaps being a way to avoid a shibboleth. These things are much more difficult to solve, but they do happen. The first two ordinals seem to be in a special position ... oh, I see there's an other thread for that now. But often, in spite of all research, from all possible angles, the reason will remain unknown, hidden in a distant past or due to influences one can't trace.

If a speech community has a more or less stable language and if at a
certain point in time, (due to contact or innovations by a subset of
the community ) more than one form becomes possible for some words,
the form(s) that ends/end up winning would be governed more or less
deterministically by reasons that come from the stable parts of the
language.

For some reason -- for some value of reason -- likely an odd sociolinguistic one, unpredictable in advance, but with some luck discernible in hindsight. Take a look at the system in Swahili.

--
Trond Engen
- going for numbers
.

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