Quick question on development of Spanish gender

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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Drydic »

I was unaware that giving data that supported my position but giving it drippingly sarcastic captions qualified as you providing evidence supporting your position.

And as for timeframe...I'll leave that to you to figure out. Hint: start by looking up the definition of timeframe.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Basilius »

Salmoneus wrote:And sorry for my cheap jibe, by the way. Just got a bit annoyed.
In fact, I think I understand you. Looking at it from a distance of a few hours that have passed, I realize that this stuff doesn't adorn a discussion of something related to science...
Drydic Guy wrote:I was unaware that giving data that supported my position but giving it drippingly sarcastic captions qualified as you providing evidence supporting your position.
No, it wasn't meant to be taken as evidence. But your link to that Wikipedia stuff didn't support your position - in the sense that the way just one link to a freakish article is being sold there as "the general scholarly opinion" is indeed amazing.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Drydic »

Basilius wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:And sorry for my cheap jibe, by the way. Just got a bit annoyed.
In fact, I think I understand you. Looking at it from a distance of a few hours that have passed, I realize that this stuff doesn't adorn a discussion of something related to science...
Drydic Guy wrote:I was unaware that giving data that supported my position but giving it drippingly sarcastic captions qualified as you providing evidence supporting your position.
No, it wasn't meant to be taken as evidence. But your link to that Wikipedia stuff didn't support your position - in the sense that the way just one link to a freakish article is being sold there as "the general scholarly opinion" is indeed amazing.
At least I've done something other than go HAHAHA LOOK HOW STUPID THIS PERSON IS HAHAHA.

Still looking for that book.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Salmoneus »

If that's "freakish", how about Ruhlen's "A Guide to the World's Languages", published 1991, which says of Indo-Hittite that it "has met with a decidedly mixed reaction. Although most linguists today reject it, a few accept it". It goes on to say that Anatolian is indeed "for most scholars simply a coordinate branch of I-E on a par with Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Albanian, etc", and that supporters of the opposing view are "a decided minority", although the community is still "divided". And it's not as though the book is hostile to the idea: on the contrary, he seems desparate to support it, offering possible psychological and political reasons why Indo-Hittite has not received an "objective appraisal", and naming the chapter on Indo-European languages "Indo-Hittite". If even Merrit Ruhlen, who believes in Indo-Hittite, can't do better than "divided" and "decided minority" and "most reject it", that doesn't say to me that the academic community is firmly in support of the idea.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Basilius »

Salmoneus: may I remind what this all started from?
Drydic Guy wrote:
Richard W wrote:It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
There's like 2 people that call it Indo-Hittite anymore.
That is, should I explain that I don't really care how many people use the term and how many don't, even if I'm indeed with the minority in this particular case? The number in the above quote wasn't intended to be an exact count, and I reacted to what I think it was intended to be. This is internet, and I can read people's minds (as the subsequent discussion demonstrates), didn't you know?
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Salmoneus »

That... is sort of my point. Drydic claimed that Indo-Hittite was a decidedly minority view these days, and had been for some decades. You claimed the contrary - having assumed Indo-Hittite was true initially, you backed this up by saying that the co-equal view was "deservedly a minority view today", and "nonsensical". When Drydic cited support, you said that it was "amazing" that wikipedia was passing off "a freakish article" as "the general scholarly opinion", and belittled those who don't hold the IH view. This looks like still claiming that IH is the general scholarly opinion and that non-IH is 'nonsensical', 'freakish', and 'deservedly a minority view today'.

Now when I give further citations that show that you are wrong, you claim never to have cared whether IH was a minority view or not - but that's the whole point of the argument. You didn't say "it's true that only about 2 people call it Indo-Hittite today, but actually I think that, unfashionable though it may be to say it, IH is actually the better hypothesis" - no, you assumed that IH was the only reasonable opinion, and said that it was the co-equal view that was now the minority - deservedly so, since it was nonsensical. But these things you have been saying are - and forgive the technical terms here - untrue, and incorrect. And when you say that that was never the point, this too is untrue and incorrect.

So thank you, but I don't think I need to be reminded what has been said. I can see it in front of me. Perhaps you should remind yourself of it.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

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You see, were it just the claim "that Indo-Hittite was a decidedly minority view these days", I might simply ask where this assessment comes from (I do doubt, even now, that it holds true today, in 2011, and among people who have their own opinion on the issue without checking out ridiculous stuff on the net), and (maybe) how some problems which (I think) follow from the presumed majority view are addressed. Or, more probably, just wouldn't comment, like I didn't comment on Richard W's statement about gender.

But the number given wasn't meant to be accurate (thank you for repeating it, BTW, this clarifies something for me about your own priorities in this discussion). On ZBB alone the term was used, or the idea of early split for Anatolian supported, by more than two people, certainly qualified to have their own opinion on the matter. "Like 2 people [...] anymore" was a dirty polemical trick trying to marginalize an opposing view. I said dirty, did you hear, Salmoneus? I responded to *that*, and I honestly tried (maybe failed) not to sound *as* offensive (the stuff I ridiculed wasn't Drydic Guy's own words, after all).

And, even though I did make a claim about what is and what isn't the majority view today, and could be wrong, I don't really care about numbers, for they don't affect my opnion on the issue itself or dirty tricks.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Salmoneus »

I don't know if this is all an elaborate face-saving technique, or you've forgotten to take your pills, or you just don't understand English common parlance.

There was no "dirty trick" played. The number two was what is known as hyperbole - Drydic was exaggerating for effect. When someone says "that view is only held by about 2 people anymore", what they mean to say is that the view is old-fashioned, out of date, and today only held by a small minority of people.

The idea that you read it in any other fashion (in an unspecified "trick" fashion, for instance) is thoroughly undermined by the fact that your later posts, as I've demonstrated, are unambiguously responding to this correct interpretation.

It does them seem as though you're using rhetorical sleight-of-hand to attempt to avoid having to admit that you were wrong - which comes off even worse when that wrongness was expressed through an unedifying pissy-fit. And I'm not even going to get started on your conspiracy theories about my "priorities".

Once again: let us know when you hit puberty.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Basilius »

Thank you for teaching me English common parlance.

you've forgotten to take your pills
an unedifying pissy-fit
let us know when you hit puberty

I'll remember. Bye.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Richard W »

Salmoneus wrote:There was no "dirty trick" played. The number two was what is known as hyperbole - Drydic was exaggerating for effect. When someone says "that view is only held by about 2 people anymore", what they mean to say is that the view is old-fashioned, out of date, and today only held by a small minority of people.
Actually, Drydic originally merely stated that the term Indo-Hittite is old-fashioned. I only use it myself when I want to assert a branching into Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE.

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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by Drydic »

Richard W wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:There was no "dirty trick" played. The number two was what is known as hyperbole - Drydic was exaggerating for effect. When someone says "that view is only held by about 2 people anymore", what they mean to say is that the view is old-fashioned, out of date, and today only held by a small minority of people.
Actually, Drydic originally merely stated that the term Indo-Hittite is old-fashioned. I only use it myself when I want to assert a branching into Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE.
What you interpreted my initial statement to mean was that the term Indo-Hittite is old fashioned, and while that was part of it, it was also intended to disparage the idea of Anatolian being a 'special' early branch-off from the rest of IE.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender

Post by merijn »

I have read Indo-European Linguistics an Introduction by James Clackson, and that book gave me the impression that there was a broad consensus that Anatolian broke off earlier than the other branches. Is he wrong in that? Or is what you are arguing against and what Wikipedia are arguing against a different kind of earlier than Clackson's earlier? (for example you are arguing against the idea that Anatolian broke off before there was any other variation within PIE that would later give rise to Germanic, Italic etc. whereas you do accept that Anatolian broke off earlier than the other branches but not that early.)

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