Using Dictionaries (was Re: Greek question (night?))

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/15/99 5:22:43 AM, Bob Whiting wrote:

<<...But I must also admit that part of the reason that I didn't respond to
your question was that I found it difficult to understand what was being
asked.

As I remember your question, it was "Does it matter that /t/ does not appear
in most of the nom. singulars? ... Why is the /t/ not regarded as just a
fairly common stem that sometimes emerges in root and sometimes doesn't?"....

<What I asked was why the nominative singular (in those languages in which
they occur) was not in considered in reconstruction.>

The answer is that they are....>>

This is one of those unusual times when the question I asked was not
remembered, not understood, misquoted and then quoted back verbatim and
answered, all in the same post.

I do appreciate you taking the time to address these things and I learned
quite a bit from your explanations.

But my question was specifically about the way the word was being
reconstructed in the posts on the list.  I looked back again and for the most
part the nominative (in those languages where it occurs) was not mentioned.  I
now attribute that to the knowledge of those involved who all knew but did not
say that (in the case of this "night") the nominative form was irrelevant -
based on the phototactics of the various languages mentioned.

I wrote:
<<The answer that both you and our moderator have given is that they are I
guess "truncated" forms,...>>

You replied:
<<"Truncated" is not really the right term.  The disappearance of /t/ in this
position in both Greek /nuks/ and Latin /noks/ is simply the result of a
phonotactical rule:..>>

On closer consideration - with regard to "nos"(Welsh), "noc"(Pol),
"nux"(Greek) and "nox"(Latin) - whatever the process, the result are all
truncated.  No doubt about it.  I looked up "truncated" in the dictionary and
it hits the nail on the head.

<<The phonotactical rules that produce <nox> are not operative for
<nocturnus>.>>

<nox> came out of */nokt-s/> */ts/ > */ss/ > /s/
"by a normal phonological rule" - how is <nocturus> (adj) reconstructed?

<<It's not a question of "solving the problem"; .... It is a matter of a
tradeoff between ease of articulation and the level of morphological
differentiation needed to disambiguate meaning that the users of the language
resolve with even thinking about it.>>

Sounds like classic problem-solving to me.  "Disambiguating" is definitely
problem-solving.

I wrote:
<<After all, to say that only the "ablative" form survived is to suggest that
the word now carries the additional grammatical baggage of the ablative.>>

You replied:
<<Sorry, but huh?>>

In Romance languages like modern French, it is said that "in all but a few
cases, the oblique – often the ablative – form survived the loss of Latin
inflectional morphology,...while the nominative did not..."   I don't think I
need to remind you that the nominative is "often" the least marked form.  The
markings you refers to includes those related to the ablative as a
"grammatical case expressing relations of separation, source, cause or
instrumentality,... not found in the nominative."

Voila.  The ablative's extra grammatical baggage.  In letter (and verse, if
need be.)

<<Contrary to popular opinion, dictionaries do not define words (Academies do
that, or try to) but only record usage...>>

Time to send an angry letter to Noah Webster.  In the absence of an Academie,
of course, dictionaries can and have "defined words according to their proper
usage" or their common usage.  Contrary to non-popular opinion, dictionaries
have had a powerful effect on usage and definition - as Mr. Webster's did.

There should be NO question that "usage" overwhelmingly says that the
"definition" of a word is the "dictionary definition."  And the dictionary
says that the "definition" of a word is the "meaning of the word."  If you
think "dictionaries do not define words..." your usage is so uncommon it has
not been recorded in Webster's.  Being an American, I tend to go by Webster's.

 <<When you get right down to it, nobody really knew his Homer except Homer.>>

And when you get right down to it, nobody really knows your posted message but
you.  Although I occasionally appreciate Zen and the aloneness of oneness and
all that, this is obviously a bit too much.  We do know what Homer meant most
of the time, and his intention was to be understood.  Language's #1 function
is communication and Homer was damn good at.

<<"I know what it says, but what does it *mean*?">>

But that is a whole different can of worms, isn't it?  Since the changing
meaning or function of words can be quite independent of their structural
linguistics.  When I read the word "gay" in an old novel, I am reminded that
phonology cannot tell me how or why it came to mean what it means today.

I wrote:
<<...can a stem ever be seen as something like a vestigal case ending in
reconstructing PIE - not part of the original word, but a compounded form that
produced a universal "stem" in the daughter languages?>>

You wrote:
<<If by "stem" you mean "root augment" this is a very complex question that
has been discussed extensively without reaching any particular
conclusion....The problem is that "root extensions" don't behave
mathematically.>>

So the answer is: ...maybe.

Regards,
Steve Long