Excluding data

[Larry Trask]

On Mon, 27 Sep 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> I'm concerned that the current extent of the thesis on early Basque
> phonology is already based on the subset of data restricted by your
> non-phonological criteria.

But how can this be so?  How can my non-phonological criteria for
selection affect the phonological properties of the words selected?
Please give me a reply of substance, and not just vague, dark hints that
something or other sinister is going on.

Further: what *alternative* criteria do you propose for identifying the
Basque words which are most likely to be native and ancient?  I've
already put my criteria on the table.  What are yours?

> This thesis is the basis of many of your
> comments as immediately below and I muse over the question which
> should come first, the rules that declare a word's form to be
> "curious" or the systematic and rigourous analysis of all the words.

My observation that a particular word has a "curious" form has
absolutely nothing to do with whether it goes into my list or not.
In my view, the words <ke> `smoke' and <mutur> `snout, muzzle' have very
curious forms indeed, but they meet my criteria and so must go into my
initial list, whether I like it or not.  Once I've chosen my criteria, I
have to stick to them.

When I observe that a given word has a "curious" form, that happens
because I've already done a good deal of work on Pre-Basque phonology,
and I already have a pretty clear idea of what's going to emerge when
the whole thing is done -- though, as I've already said, I do expect to
find a few surprises waiting for me.  But I never exclude a word merely
because I judge it to have a "curious" form.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk