User:ApisAzuli/m

Stefan Hartmann, Deutsche Sprachgeschichte, Grundzüge und Methoden. 1. Auflage, Narr Francke Attempto, 2018. pg. 240, 241, 253, 254 (b.e.m.):

> Fritz (1998: 8 [= Fritz, Gerd. Historische Semantik. Stuttgart: Metzler]) sieht die historische Semantik als „Prüfstein für Bedeutungstheorien“, insbesondere im Blick auf Aspekte wie die Abgrenzung von Semantik und Pragmatik oder die Trennung zwischen sprachlichem Wissen und Weltwissen, die in einigen Theorien sehr rigide vorgenommen, in anderen hingegen praktisch nivelliert wird.

> [... Der Methodenteil] wendet sich anschließend der Frage zu, wie man ein nicht wirklich „quantifizierbares“ Phänomen wie Bedeutung empirisch untersuchen kann.

> [...] Für stärker empirisch und/oder methodologisch ausgerichtete Studien muss man (derzeit noch) in die Anglistik ausweichen, z.B. zu Allan & Robinson (2012).

> Bedeutung hingegen ist nichts, was man direkt sehen oder gar zählen kann. Wir sehen dem Wort blümerant nicht an, dass es ‚flau, unwohl‘ bedeutet. Wenn wir seine Bedeutung kennen, dann entweder weil wir das Wort im Kontext aufgeschnappt und seine Bedeutung erschlossen haben oder weil sie uns jemand erklärt hat. Wenn wir Bedeutung als mentale Simulation verstehen, können wir nicht wissen, welche mentale Simulation das Wort wohl in einer Hörerin, sagen wir, des 18. oder 19. Jh. ausgelöst hat.

pg. 263

> Dieses Kapitel hat die Darstellung der distributionalen Semantik bewusst sehr knapp gehalten und daher die verwendeten Distanz- und Ähnlichkeitsmaße weitgehend unerklärt gelassen. Einen sehr guten Einstieg zu semantischen Vektoren bietet Levshina (2015, Kap.16 [= Levshina, Natalia (2015). How to do linguistics with R. Data exploration and statistical analysis. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.]), auf deren Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitung auch die hier vorgestellte Analyse basiert.

Wilhelm Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, 12. Auflage. 2020 pg. 45

> Herkunft und [...] Genealogie [...] der Germanenstämme [...] sind aus den antiken Zeugnissen nicht mehr eindeutig eruierbar. (Dazu ausführlich Timpe 1998 [= Timpe, Dieter 1998: Geschichte. In: Die Germanen, S. 2ff.])

Hans Henrich Hock, Brian D. Joseph (2009): Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship, An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs 218). Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, New York. pg. 206, 207

> As a consequence, non-linguists are much more aware of – and fascinated by – the SEMANTIC purpose of language. This is especially true for the meaning of individual words, i.e. lexical semantics. Linguists, by contrast, find lexical semantics extremely elusive and therefore difficult to deal with, because meaning is inherently fuzzy and non-systematic (see § 2 below [= The inherent fuzziness of meaning – polysemy, semantic overlap, metaphor]). They greatly prefer to deal with the much more “orderly” structure of language.

> [...] The result of this indirect encoding of meaning through combinations of meaningless speech sounds is that there is no direct relationship between meaning and the sounds which spell out the words that convey meaning. In other words, the relationship between meaning and form is ARBITRARY. (See § 4 below.)

R.L. Trask, Language and Linguistics, The Key Concepts , Second Edition ed. Peter Stockwell, Abingdon, New York: Routledge 2007

> Saussurean Paradox

Hmm, similar to the two envelopes paradox, the fallacy lies in the assumption of a cooperative society.

> Semantics

> ... One type of meaning is intrinsic to the linguistic form containing it, and is always present in that form, while the second type of meaning results from the interaction between the linguistic form of an utterance and the context in which it is uttered. Today we understand semantics as properly the study of the first type, while to the study of the second type we give a new name: pragmatics (a term actually coined by the American philosopher C.S. Peirce in the nineteenth century). Failure to make this distinction had earlier proved a severe obstacle to progress.

> Semiotics

> ... The influence of the central linguistic concept of structuralism (another of Saussure’s contributions) has led semioticists to attempt structuralist interpretations of a wide range of phenomena. An object of study, such as a film or a cycle of myths, is viewed as a text which communicates meaning, and that meaning is assumed to derive from the orderly interaction of meaning-bearing elements, ...

Szemerenyi pg. 15, 16

> 2.2 Divergences in Meaning

> With regard to meaning, however, the facts themselves compell us to adopt a much more liberal attitude. [Examples omited]

> This is not to say that in the development of meaning only irregular and unaccountable changes are to be found. Certain general tendencies are recognizable even in semantic change.

The example of "Zaun" ~ "town" amounts to [E.x x ~ y ] != [ A.x X -> Y : x > y ]

> It follows that, in language comparison, priority must be given un-conditionally to the form. If two forms correspond exactly or accord-ing to the rules, this compensates for some degree of discrepancies in the meaning. On the other hand, if two forms cannot be referred to a 'common denominator', this is not offset even by total agreement in meaning. For reasons of form, deus (still deiuos in early Latin) can no more be connected with θεός than with English god.

Challenge_accepted.jpg

The remainder of the chapter is nevertheless interesting.

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Fink, Angela and Goldrick, Matthew. "The Influence of Word Retrieval and Planning on Phonetic Variation: Implications for Exemplar Models" Linguistics Vanguard, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015, pp. 215-225. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2015-1003

Moneyquote:

> Over the past several decades, an increasing number of empirical studies have documented the interaction of information across the traditional linguistic modules of phonetics, phonology, and lexicon. For example, the frequency with which a word occurs influences its phonetic properties of its sounds; high frequency words tend to be reduced relative to low frequency words.

Corno, Stefano. "“Denn die Götter lieben das Verborgene“. Parokṣa-Etymologien als Zeichen einer gespaltenen Realität." Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft : Organ des Studienkreises "Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft" und des Werkverbands "Geschiedenis van de Taalkunde", Münster : Nodus-Publ. 2022 Vol. 32.1: 1-15, pp. 1, 6.

> „Denn die Götter lieben das Verborgene“. Dieser Rätselhafte Satz, der etwa

> Zwanzig Mal in den Brāhmaṇas zu finden ist , erläutert eine ganz spezielle und

> für uns ungewöhnliche Bedeutung der Etymologien bei den Indern. Mit diesem

> Satz (parokṣakāmā hi devāḥ) setzen nämlich die Brāhmaṇas eine doppelte In-

> terpretation voraus, und sogar eine doppelte Sprache, auf der einen Seite die

> Sprache der Menschen, auf der anderen Seite die Sprache der Götter. Das Wort pa-

> rokṣa, das mit „verborgen“, „geheimnisvoll“ übersetzt wird, hat dann in der späteren Literatur eine technische Bedeutung erhalten.

> 2. Parokṣa-Etymologien

> Im Vergleich zu Yāksa, der einfach eine oder mehrere Verbalwurzeln neben

> dem zu überprüfenden Wort verzeichnet (wie in (4)), erscheint die Etymologie

> in den brahmischen Texten ein literarischer Prozess. Die sprachlichen

> Techniken, durch die ein Wort etymologisiert werden kann, sind vielfältig.

> Manchmal handelt es sich um Sprachspiele und rhetorische Figuren, wie z.B. Polyptota.

There follow too many quotes, a gold mine!

Beekes, Robert S. P., de Vaan, Michiel. "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction. Second edition". Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2011.

This goes in the same direction as Szemerenyi but is more reserved. pg. 55:

> It is not an exaggeration to claim that it was this insight [the Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze] more than any other which laid the basis for comparative linguistics as we know it today. As we shall see, it has not been possible to demonstrate a similar operation of rules for morphological changes, nor for semantic or syntactic changes, and it is this which leads us to the conclusion that sound changes provide both the foundation and the main premise upon which comparative linguistics is built. Indeed, it is only by means of the sound laws that it is possible to prove that a particular explanation cannot be correct, for the sound laws are rule-governed and they do not allow exceptions.

pg. 56 (emphasise mine):

> [Examples omited ...] Because the exceptions could all be explained, usually very simply, the conviction began to grow that all sound change is governed by rules: in fact, we can even use the term ‘sound laws.’

> The principle of regularity is criticized at regular intervals. Some linguists argue that there are always exceptions which are not governed by a rule, and this is indeed often the case: comparative linguistics happens to be a historical science, and it is not always possible to discover explanations for everything that has happened in history. For this reason, a useful discussion between both points of view is not really possible. One side will always push forward those examples of exceptions for which no rules have been found, while the other side, if it cannot provide a solution, will always come up with the same answer: the explanation simply still remains to be found, or will never be found, but there is an explanation.

> Another attack on the principle of regularity has come from the field of dialectology. It was observed that sound changes spread, as it were, from word to word, and it seemed that they could stop at any given moment so that a sound might change in some words but remain the same in others. The answer to this problem is that the process of change will ultimately affect all words which the rule marks out for change. Comparative linguistics does not deal with languages still in the process of change, but rather, almost exclusively, with languages in which all change that could have taken place is now ‘finalized’ and ‘at rest.’

> Some words in a language are borrowed from related dialects, which either have undergone some change or none at all [...]

So we shift the problem to diatopy because that's so much easier than and completely independent from diachrony? NOT!

Necessarily this problem will repeat. The simple heuristics that follow are neat, similar to Schmidt et al.'s (2020) semantic changes, but what I'm really looking for is where the apology for arbitrary choices of cognates is justified in the first place (ie. trust me, I know what I'm doing, or the comment on Hippos in his dictionary).

p. 57 (emph. mine):

> 4.2 Sporadic sound changes

> There are some examples of sporadic sound changes, that is to say, of sound changes which only took place in specific instances and sometimes even only once.

> [...] The apparent irregularity of these developments is at least in part due to the fact that the very same group of sounds [...] are seldom found together.

> ‘Anticipation’ [...]

> Metathesis [...]

> Haplology [...]

> Onomatopoeias (words which imitate sounds) and other expressive words [...]

> Words which very frequently occur sometimes exhibit unusual ‘wear and tear’ [...]

> As we have seen, these are incidental changes which are caused by exceptional situations (they never actually produce a new phoneme). [...] These phenomena are distinct from the regular patterns of rule-governed sound change, and, again, do not in any way invalidate them.

The audacity is mounting. Section 4.3. concerned with Isoglosses is far too short to be worth anything, "Of couse, for us who work with historical written data, such transitional areas usually cannot be recovered."

pg. 60:

> 4.6 Phonemicization of changes

> Many changes in the development of a language are purely phonetic in nature and

are caused by adjacent sounds but without any phonemic change occurring. [...] These differences are called ‘allophonic’ (that is to say, they show two different allophones = forms of the same phoneme) and therefore the change in question is only ‘allophonic’ or subphonemic. [...]

> In a later phase of development these allophones can become independent phonemes. [...]

The example is remarkable: "Thus, the a in E. pan is much longer than the a in pat, the difference being explained by the influence of the following n and t, respectively. But the difference is an automatic one: we will always find the longer form of the a-sound before the n (and other voiced consonants), and the shorter form will always appear before t (and p and k)." This is, what, I don't ...

pg. 61-62:

> 4.7 Types of sound change and the phonemic system

> According to their effect on the phonemic system of a language we may distinguish

the following possible sound changes:

> 1. Change: A > B [...]

> 2. Merger (with an existing phoneme): A, B > B [...]

> 3. A > Ø [...]

> 4. Splits: A > A, B or A > B, C(, D, etc.) [...]

> 5. Emergence (among which epenthesis, excrescence): Ø > A [...]

Then follows "4.8 Phonetic classification of sound changes" (pg. 63). Didn't he just lay down that sound changes are phonemic? Phonologizing seems o be the key idea. Essentially, "We can only give a few examples here":

> As to their phonetic (and/or acoustic) motivation we can subdivide sound changes in a restricted number of groups: assimilation, deletion, insertion (these are the most common kinds), dissimilation, metathesis.

pg. 69 - 71:

> 4.11 Causes of sound change

> Finally we come to the question of why sounds undergo change at all. To begin with, we must distinguish between factors which are inherent to a language and those which are external to it.

> [...] Insofar as purely internal factors are concerned, all languages would long ago have reached a condition of ‘permanent rest’ if no other factors were involved. This seems indeed to be the case: languages which are isolated, and depend for change on internal factors only, undergo little change. On the other hand, it has been noticed that languages can undergo rapid change in a relatively short period, especially in times of social and political upheaval. We may conclude that the influence of other language systems remains the single most important factor underlying sound change.

> As an afterthought, it should be admitted that comparative linguistics is not able to tell us why the changes that do occur, occur at a particular place at a particular point in time, and not somewhere else or some time later.

From the preface to the second edition: "All main ideas about the way PIE is to be reconstructed according to the Leiden school can be found in Section III.2 of the bibliography. For all purposes, then, those may be regarded as the main references."

Chapters 5. - 8. ("Language change", pg. 75 - 98) and 9. - 10. ("Reconstruction", pg. 99 - 116) are no less interesting, but the moneyquote I thought I had remembered remains an illusion.