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orion RE: ORION Variations



On 1997-10-08 Philip Davies said:
   >So if scribes cannot be responsible for orthographic variation, how
   >does it happen? Presumably some non-scribes are involved. This
   >seems a little unlikely.

I thought that I had made it clear that the scribes *were* responsible.
Nor does the point that:

   >>The texts record speech, pronunciation. Scribes copying texts
   >>write what they see; scribes taking dictation write what they
   >>hear. There are differences in pronunciation from person to
   >>person and from dialect to dialect, so they correctly wrote
   >>what they heard.

mean an orthographic free-for-all.

>We have evidence that a lot of texts were dictated. This does not mean we
>have evidence that all texts were dictated.
>We just do not know, so such assertions are not really factual.

"We have no evidence that authors wrote their own texts" is a simple
statement of fact.  As of now, we have no evidence to the contrary.
This does not mean that somebody someday may not find such evidence...
but nobody has yet done so. Therefore, this statement is factual to
the best of current knowledge.

Rochelle
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