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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Language and genes
In-Reply-To: mcv@inter.NL.net's message of Fri, 2 Dec 1994 10:48:09 GMT
Message-ID: <aldersonD079Hu.13u@netcom.com>
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Fcc: /u52/alderson/postings
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References: <634@percep.demon.co.uk> <D02y75.K2n@inter.NL.net>
	<aldersonD05uIB.Go4@netcom.com> <D06JCA.BMt@inter.NL.net>
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 1994 20:13:06 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <D06JCA.BMt@inter.NL.net> mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
writes:

>In article <aldersonD05uIB.Go4@netcom.com>,
>Richard M. Alderson III <alderson@netcom.com> wrote:

>>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_.

Let's take this deeper.  What, in your view, would constitute a metarule with
regard to language change?
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
