User talk:Jshmarid

--Vahag (talk) 16:55, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

երբուծ
I have removed NHB's theory, because it is an obvious folk etymology. --Vahag (talk) 16:56, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

The flat assertion that it is "an obvious folk etymology" is completely unsupported.

With this kind of explanation, one may as well dismiss the derivation of "երկրագունդ" from "երկիր" and "գունդ" as a folk etymology. Without support, your assertion is as valid as the "folk etymology” that is being dismissed on the basis of an arbitrary categorization. This is question-begging and seems, in this instance, tantamount to intellectual name-calling.  Furthermore, even if it made sense to refer to this as a “folk etymology”, that does not mean that it is, by necessity, incorrect.  This kind of a priori assumption is something like a genetic fallacy par excellence.

The prima facie case for երբուծ as a word with directly Armenian derivation is valid and cannot be dismissed by name-calling. To say that երբուծ is closer to φᾰ́ρῠγξ (or, to posit a "Mediterranean-Pontic substrate word" (Տէ՜ր՝ ողորմեսցի մեզ)) than to some formation of երի + *բուծ should require evidence and demonstration against the prima facie case, not just dismissive language. The burden of proof is on the opponent of the "folk etymology" on this one.

At the very least, out of respect for the monumental work of the NBHL (Նոր բառգիրք հայկազեան լեզուի), the etymology therein provided should be deferentially listed in the entry, as I aimed to do previously.

As a note, to look -first- for Armenian ‘roots’ outside of the content of the Armenian idiom is to make a tremendous methodological assumption, which is, in my observation, unsubstantiated on philosophical grounds. Our forefathers may have been, at times, provincial in their linguistic outlook, but that doesn't mean that their conclusions were wrong by necessity. Furthermore, to replace linguistic provincialism ("folk etymologies", etc.) with a contrived theory of everything (PIE, etc.) - which is then forcibly retrojected back onto the data - is to evince a misunderstanding of the statistical significance of experienced language relatedness and, moreover, the nature of statistical analysis, per se.

To wit, traditional PIE theory amounts to

1) a tremendous spreadsheet of language data, further organized by descending hierarchical levels into groupings of phonetic and semantic similarities + 2) a theory of common descent based on common properties + 3) the tacit assumption that all languages under consideration must be wholly explicable by the theory, which is driven by the flat assertion that PIE actually existed and that it is actually parent to all languages in the group which seem to be phonetically and semantically similar.

Point 1 above is a mere (re)statement of the similarity between a selected grouping of languages + loads of cataloguing, and as such is, by nature, non-controversial on the face of it. 2 and 3, are hypothetical. As hypotheses, they find little support in the archaeological/historical record. In current experience, we do seem to find modern language groups that appear to show a developmental relationship to an older antitype (Slavic>Russian, Ukrainian, etc.; Latin>Italian, Portuguese, etc.). On the other hand, we do not have sufficient, direct evidence of this pertaining to the great languages recorded in the ancient world. One should expect that the body of evidence that is commensurate with the grand conclusions propounded by PIE enthusiasts is actually extant. However, there simply is not direct evidence of (in reverse) an ascent up the linguistic hierarchy back to one and only one language, even within a particular language grouping. Even were we to assume ascent back to one language, on what grounds might we establish a system of determining the “weight” of each datum in such a way as to determine what conclusively counts as “older” and “closer” to the posited PIE language. The answer is that these weights and measures used to date mostly comprise arbitrary extrapolations, which are based upon concise restatements of already observable phenomenon (Grimm’s law, etc.).

As far as the actual historical record is concerned, we are left with what amounts to very old Greek, very old Coptic/Egyptian, very old Persian, and wild cards like Sumerian, Linear A, etc. The trail ends there. To proceed further on the uniformitarian assumption that all members in a[n arbitrarily] selected language grouping have descended from a single, older, statistically reconstructable language in the same way that Spanish descends from Latin is an untestable hypothesis, that is, until someone digs up a PIE inscription from the ever-mysterious PIE people. For now, there is no evidence whatsoever for *PIE as an actual language or as a language spoken by an actual language group. Rather, PIE as a “language” represents an arbitrary structure for making predictions; a "useful fiction" in the current Kuhnian “paradigm,” until factually demonstrated otherwise.

Many languages may have come and gone over the ages. Today, nevertheless, we still have Coptic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and yes, Armenian surviving as distinctive idioms with a mostly contiguous history extending to prehistorical times. It is uncertain why, given the overall steadiness of the major idioms extending back into pre-history, we would busy ourselves with imagining an illusive "proto-language,” the hypothesized characteristics of which should become the dominant force in understanding the etymologies of languages that actually do exist with written histories and surviving, living language groups. For these reasons, it seems eminently prudent to at least consider the validity of a derivation so obvious as this one (i.e. երբուծ), especially without direct evidence to the contrary.  At the very least, it stands as a plausible alternative.

Therefore, if you cannot provide direct evidence to the contrary of the NHBL explanation, please put the NBHL back into the entry. Jshmarid (talk) 03:50, 22 August 2021 (UTC)Jshmarid


 * I have now mentioned NHB's etymology in the Further reading section of . That is the most I can do for you. I will not address the rest of your opus. --Vahag (talk) 09:13, 22 August 2021 (UTC)