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Re: Time machine

From:Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>
Date:Friday, July 12, 2002, 14:30
On Fri, 2002-07-12 at 23:43, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
> --- Christophe wrote: > > > Indeed :(( . If ever someone manages to invent a time-travelling machine, > > there's a big chance that the first passenger will be a linguist ;))) . > > He or she will really have a hard time, then. Suppose that the machine will > work only once, what language would you elect to visit, then? > > I might go for Tocharian, but Proto-Indo-European seems rather tempting, too :)
Isn't PIE just a professionals' conlang and Common IE the name for the language itself? Bah, I'd like to stick to the future if I've only got one choice. Firstly, I don't believe I could survive without luxuries such as running water, always-available food, acceptance etc. Secondly, we can guess about what the languages have *been*. Our guesses about what they could be are even less reliable because we have little evidence. (My younger brother pronounces /}:/ so fronted, it's almost /y:/. There's every chance that is actually normal for his age group (it's not something I've ever noticed, so I couldn't say). In English, /y:/ has a history of unrounding. Perhaps it'll do it again? (I doubt it though. That corner of our phonology is busy enough as it is, what with /I/ trying to get as tense as it can, the [i;] part of /i:/ being what we judge the sound on, and /I@/ trying as hard as it can short of success to monophthongise, we don't need an [y:] trying to unround on us as well...)) Of course, if I could travel through time unlimitedly, mm.... just about anywhen. Progressively travelling backwards in time to see all the changes that took CIE and before to PDE. Mmm..... And eventually, to the genesis of language. Tristan.