Re: Heyas all!

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Trace Erin Kern wrote:
> > Good point. Biology more than culture shapes what sounds a language
> > possesses.
Well, it has a *lot* to do with what happens, but as I just discussed in
my post about teleology in conlanging, it takes very little effort to find examples
of a soundchange in one language occurring when precisely the same kind of
environment in another language exhibits *no* tendencies to that same
change at all.   What I think happens, is that statistically speaking,
certain phenomena (like consonant clusters) trigger the *possibility* of
sound change, but in themselves do not accomplish the change (like inserting
an epenthetic vowel to break those clusters):  it's a necessary
but not sufficient qualification.

> Well, actually my point was that even a Human people could violate those
> prejudices.  As Tom (?) pointed out, Latin is a rather gentle-sounding
> language, and yet the Romans were a militaristic people.
Well, I think I said that I thought Latin and Greek both were "crisp"
languages, neither soft (like IMO French) nor harsh (like IMO German).

They say that people who are beautiful in human societies are viewed
as such because to the beholder, that person's features lie close to the
average of all other people the beholder has ever viewed.  For me,
Latin and Greek, analogistically, lie closer to the average than others
more extreme.

> > I understood half of what you just said. <sheepish grin>
>
> My apologies, I realize I probably used more technical language than
> necessary.
Can one be a linguist and not?  It's the curse our profession has been
given.  ;-)

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
proletariat that I have a problem with. - Alfred Wallace
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