I wil be gone most of Sat and Sunday, but I hope to make something of a [final?] reply on Sun pm or Mon.
Iwll hazard a quick reply to an early part of Aiwendil's last post.
Quote:
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We should not simply take Christopher's word for everything.
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Of course not, we never have. However as one tends ronote after reading the thousands of commnetary and footnotes of CJRT, he speaks cautiously. He will always tend towards the less absolute statement. And he is faced with a multitude of opportunities for such statements due to the complexity and at times chaos of his fathers writings.
I can think of no other case where CJRT says "it is absolutely certain" of anything. I am sure it happened in HoME but it is extremely rare. Now what is most unusual about his pronouncement is that he offers no linguistic analysis to accompany it. None in BoLT2, none in HOME4. THe only 2 volumes to mention Rog. He offers not one shred of etymoligical evidence [ that I could find] that Rog had or had not ceased to be valid Sindarin [or any Elvish].
This also is unusual for as he points out in Vol 5 I think, he has gone out of his way to reace the etymology and relevant histories of vitrtually every word occuring within the tales of the legendarium.
For Rog we get nothing. except a little note regarding the absence pr presenceof the circumflex, with an identical spelling.
So this leads me to the conclusion that he applied the very principle I put forth [ actually he states it with absolute certainity, I ask for very high probability].
As for the Mechanical Monsters, while I by no means want to re-open the issue at any time in the near or middle future, I think we erred in our assessment of the evidence from Q3o [as I posted above, it seems to offer evidence for the dragons, as it uses the words Melkor 'devised' new creatures. [ I am not sure about the surrounding text but devised is certainly the word in question, and CJRT is suprised at the phrasing]. I do not necessarily think this would have mattered in the long run for us, because like MT even if he had included it, it would have been rather impossible to know what form it would have taken, and I would be very inclined to apply my suggested 7.
As for Laegolas, I think that is even more solid ground for applying my suggested 7 instead of all the dancing around w/ sindarin and such. Plain and simple, I think exceedingly unlikely Legolas [ or any name similar] would have appeared in the FOG.
That is the simple truth [ or hypothesis] of it and to try and twist the other 6 principles into somehow applying where a much simpler principle is available makes little sense to me. If we were a collection of gung -ho rewriters like PJ and his lady friend, then I would say,Yes make the bar for such decisions very high indeed. But we are not.
Anyway I have to dash off to SF this am and while I read over your post Aiwendil, I did not have enough time to really digest your latest compromise proposal. I do appreciate the direction of your efforts and look forward to the day when we have resolved this hopwefully to both of our [and the project members] satisfactions.
I did want to respond to the 3 points that are frequently mentioned although in truth the Mechanical dragons issue has a couple more layers of complexity that I did not delve into.
I agree however that you are correct Aiwendil, in stating that I felt that CJRT's opinions on something like Rog where not likely to be of much account in our current system of principles. So an addressing of that specific concern may well go along way towards crafting a #7 that works for everybody.
[ January 04, 2003: Message edited by: lindil ]