"Uniformitarian Principle"

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/22/2001 2:41:08 AM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk writes:
<< ["Uniformitarian Principle"] = languages and speakers in the remote past
did not behave differently from the way languages and speakers have behaved
in the historical period.>>

Now, don't forget that you brought this "Uniformitarian Principle" up
specifically and especially as the support for your "rate of change"
statements about IE.

And whether it works or not for other aspects of historical linguistics (and
I think it does), it just doesn't work for your pronouncements about rate of
change.

You have no objective "rate of change" to offer for speakers in historical
periods.  So you really have nothing to extend to prehistorical periods.

<<To reject this position is to make historical linguistics impossible.>>

This is untrue. We can validly assume all kinds of uniformity and linguistic
continuity between the historic and the prehistoric - without buying your
subjective judgments about "rate of change" of IE languages.

There is plenty of room for "Uniformitarianism" in historical linguistics,
without claiming that it supplies you some kind of objective measure of
language "change" per measure of time.

<<Without the UP, historical linguistics would be no more orderly or
principled than a Michael Moorcock fantasy novel.  We need it.>>

But, unfortunately, as far as a scientific rate of change goes, you just
don't meet the qualifications.

Regards,
Steve Long