Accepting fewer etymologies

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/20/99 2:53:17 AM, petegray at btinternet.com wrote:

<<Unless the system determined by or exemplified by the "fewer" examples can
actually be shown to be regularly true for a significant proportion of the
words accepted as cognate, then it remains unproven.   If the system itself
is used to decide which words are cognate, then there is a danger of the
argument being circular.

Peter>>

And consider the criterion for choosing which small sample of etymologies
will yield the sound rules - "inherent plausibility."   I don't at this point
have any clear guiding examples of what "inherent plausibility" may mean.
But one would only ask what potential sound rules - occurring outside that
rather subjective criterion - are being eliminated.

The answer seems to be that discovering these lost true cognates are not
worth the cost of the false cognates they bring with them.

But doesn't the elimination of some potentially critical sound rule put into
question the validity of any "cognate" you find?  If you don't have Verner's
Rule, doesn't Grimm's Law look quite faulty and therefore unusable?  Doesn't
that lead you to finding something less ambitious than those "laws" to
decribe your system?  And can't that possibly lead you to using your narrowly
"derived" sound laws to find a list of "inherently plausible" cognates that
were never really there?

Regards,
Steve Long