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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Language and genes
Message-ID: <D06JCA.BMt@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <634@percep.demon.co.uk> <D02y75.K2n@inter.NL.net> <aldersonD05uIB.Go4@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 10:48:09 GMT
Lines: 45

In article <aldersonD05uIB.Go4@netcom.com>,
Richard M. Alderson III <alderson@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <D02y75.K2n@inter.NL.net> mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
>writes:
>>What is there to understand?  You can list (in principle) the changes that
>>took place in the transformation Latin => Spanish.  But there are no
>>"meta-rules" (no interesting ones at least); everything is in the details.
>
>Well, there are historical linguists with a grounding in theoretical phonology
>who would disagree with you.  I offer myself as an existence proof.
>
>As an undergraduate, I wrote a paper on Latin vowel reduction, as seen in the
>"principal parts" of the Latin verb, based on the synchronic and diachronic
>work on vowel systems done by Donegan, and one on the unlikely nature of the
>"voiced aspirates" which argued on principles of naturalness for a fricative
>interpretation.
>
>I wrote an honours thesis on the single-vowel analysis of Proto-Indo-European
>that argued for a surface vs. abstract vowel system similar to those posited
>for certain languages of the Northwest Caucasus, in combination with the same
>kinds of vowel processes as in my Latin paper.
>
>(Actually, my thesis topic came out of a comment by Pat Donegan:  If PIE only
>had one underlying vowel, why wasn't it high, back, unrounded, and nasalized?
>That's just as likely as mid-high and front for a single vowel that changes so
>much...)
>
>For a number of years I've been looking at the accent system of classical 
>Greek in comparison with that of modern Japanese and other pitch languages, 
>in an attempt to better understand the Greek grammarians' descriptions of the
>accent system of their language.
>
>In all my work, limited as it has been over the years, I've been as interested
>in how Indo-European studies could inform synchronic phonology as in how 
>modern phonology could explicate Indo-European.  So I would say that the 
>"meta-rules" are there, and interesting--and highly detailed.

This sounds all very interesting, and it's the kind of things I'm
interested in, too.  However, I would refer to it as the _rules_
of language change, not _meta-rules_.   

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
