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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Letter to the linguistic community</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear colleagues in the field of linguistics, I'd
be thankful to you very much for sending me to my e-mail address <A
href="mailto:yutamb@hotmail.com">yutamb@hotmail.com</A> your ideas on
classification of languages, language subgroups, groups, families, unities, or
other language taxons. What is your opinion on the book by<B><FONT
size=5> </FONT>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=5>Angela M a r c a n t o n io
</FONT></B><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=5>, </FONT><B><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=5>The Uralic Language Family.</FONT><FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=5>Facts, Myths and Statistics, Oxford —Boston 2002
(Publications of the Philological Society 35). 335 p.</P></FONT></B>Dr.
Marcantonio is against the idea of the Uralic languages as a genealogical
language family. I should think the proof that Uralic family in the form of the
genetic family really exists should rest with Johanna Laakso, Ante
Aikio, Merlijn de Smit and the others who belive that this language taxon
consists of the genetically related language which originated from one parent
language. I guess in a free society everybody can express his or her doubts
about anything without any fear. I read 3 negative reviews on Marcantonio's
book, may be there are many more pro or contra reviews. I have no access to
Western journals since Russian libraries do not buy any Western journals on
linguistics. I have no access to any websites either. What Dr. Angela
Marcantonio did was: she read again what the scholars who put forward the idea
of the Uralic language family really wrote. What was their proof and what is the
proof now. Otherwise this discussion looks like the discussion between those who
believe in something without any proof and those who want it proven. I've
studied Mansi (Vogul) and Hungarian and I am not convinced that these languages
are really genetically related like Ukrainian and Russian or Polish and Czech. I
also dealt with some Turkic languages, which do seem to be one solid linguistic
family. The same is true for Tungus-Manchurian family. It is less evident for
the Ugric languages, like Mansi (Vogul) and Hungarian. May be, there
used to be a lot of dead languages between Mansi and Hungarian, and they
are the ends of the long language chain, like Russian and English (if there
was such a language chain between Russian and English at all?). Or may be, they
acquired similar features by close contacts.The reality of every language family
should be proven exactly and with a fixed threshold of the reliability. The
reliability of the proof should be 99% or at least 95%. I can state almost
anything with the reliability of 1%. In the case of the Uralic family, the
reliability is much lower than 99% or even 95%. I guess linguists should speak
about language families with the remarks about its reliability. Otherwise, the
discussions about language families have no sense. I should suggest that more
strict proofs should be introduced into linguistics by mathematical methods. I
am sure it is very interesting to hear the opinions of other linguists about
solid fundamental proofs in linguistics. I wonder what linguists think about the
Indo-European, Paleo-Asiatic, and other language families. Looking forward
to hearing from you soon to <A
href="mailto:yutamb@hotmail.com">yutamb@hotmail.com</A> Yours sincerely Yuri
Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia <FONT size=5><B>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Angela M a r c a n t o n io </FONT></B><FONT
face="Times New Roman">, </FONT><B><FONT face="Times New Roman">The Uralic
Language Family.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Times New Roman">Facts, Myths and Statistics, Oxford —Boston 2002
(Publications of the Philological Society 35). 335
p.</FONT></P></B></FONT></FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>