History and Sound Laws

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/1/99 11:10:25 PM, kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu replied:

<<If they were written, then by definition, they are not prehistoric.
"Prehistoric" means "before writing". >>

Not in the big world, it doesn't.  But I should have made myself clear.

When we speak about human history, "prehistoric" generally refers to matters
prior to "recorded history," "before a record or account of historical
events."  With the current acceptance of "oral histories", even written
accounts aren't really required.  (But understand that "prehistory" here is
really just a subtopic in the general realm of historical science itself.  I
will refer to that as history "in the big sense.")

On the other hand, even within the narrow terminology of linguistics, writing
should not be the test of what a prehistoric language is.

Perhaps the more accepted definition of a prehistoric language (I see it in
Lehmann and Websters) is a language where "sounds and forms have not been
preserved."  Writing may be irrelevant.

And that makes sense.  A modern preliterate language would not be
prehistoric.

What you are talking about is much more properly "preliteracy."

Linguistic facts assume historical facts.  Whether a language had writing or
not at any particular time or place is itself, first of all, a historic fact.
 NOT a linguistic one.  Linguistics may contribute to a finding, but it
doesn't have to.  We have no idea what Linear A says or what it sounded like.
 But we feel a great deal of historical certainty in saying that Minoan
Culture on Crete in that time period had writing.  There is strong historical
evidence that the Minoans were literate.  But the language itself is not
historically preserved.

Going back to what you first said:
"The only reason we're able to say anything at all about prehistoric
languages is that sound changes have a particular property, namely, they are
exceptionless...>>

I replied:
<<In fact, by definition, we don't know anything directly about the sounds of
prehistoric languages.   So we don't know, by definition, if the sound
categories included exceptions or not.  But we have decrypted prehistoric
languages without any knowledge of what sounds the characters represented.>>

My point still stands.  "The only reason we're able to say anything at all
about prehistoric languages is..." NOT sound changes.   In fact, historical
science can say a lot about prehistoric languages - distribution in time and
place, ethno-cultural context, probability of cross-lingual contact, literacy
or non-literacy, what evidence (typonym, onomastic, written record, etc.) can
properly be attributed to the time and place of that language, etc.  Even in
some cases, what the writing may have meant.

However, if we have no contemporary account of the sounds of a language, then
"by definition, we don't know anything directly about the sounds" of that
prehistoric language.

I wrote:
<<And another where the chronology of the loan is based on eroneous
historical information, so that the giver and taker have been confused.>>

On 9/1/99 11:10:25 PM, kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu replied:
<<The loans were were talking about were prehistoric loans, i.e. loans which
occurred before the languages came to be written.  So I don't see the
connection here with historical information.>>

Perhaps I was unclear again.  Writing or lack of it is irrelevant.  If you
are going to make a judgement about loans, you MUST do it on the basis of
whatever information history (in the big sense, including "prehistory") gives
you.  You will not be allowed to have Germanic borrow words from Polynesian
in 700 BC, because "history" will not allow it.

My point was that your conclusions about loans are based on "historical"
assumptions about speakers of the two languages being coeval, being in
contact, and about how such linguistic events happened in historical time -
in the big sense.  In fact, you can't make any judgement about reconstructed
loans without it resting on the assumption of a great many "historical" (in
the big sense) facts.  If any of those historical assumptions are wrong, you
may get things wrong about those loans.  You may get, e.g., "the giver and
the taker confused."

Regards,
Steve Long