From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Feb 2 14:18:29 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 09:18:29 EST Subject: Monogenesis and polygenesis Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I once wrote something similar to Histling before, but the use of "polygenesis" reminded me of it. In pidgin/creole studies, "polygenesis" usually refers to the descent of a language from more than one natural language, contrary to the tree concept of language diversification. In the current discussion, "polygenesis" is being used in a somewhat different, but equally valid, way, to suggest that languages evolved "from scratch" in different places (at different times is beside the point here). I don't have anything much to add to that discussion. Except to say that it seems as plausible as monogenesis in the same context of discussion. The point may have been made without me recognizing it, but it seems to me that when whatever neural development evolved that allowed "humans" (for the sake of argument) to acquire language in the natural way that they now do, it does not automatically follow that that ability immediately transformed itself into language as we know it today, particularly with respect to a core lexicon in a unique homogeneous human community. That assumption is essential to our use of lexicon to reconstruct ancestral languages according to the monogenetic model, and it has no direct bearing on any "innate" language faculty, since no linguist is likely to claim (again?) that such a reconstructed lexicon in its sound-meaning relationships would be fundamentally non-arbitrary. (If it had a non-arbitrary lexicon, it seems to me it would be impossible to reconstruct on the basis of attested languages, and it would certainly not be like attested languages in that respect, nor can I imagine that its speakers could be like current humans, pace Herodotus) So, it seems to me as likely as not that humans developed much, if not all, of even their "basic" lexicon in various independent sites/groupings. I'm not saying that it's MORE likely than not, just that until we know more about early human social organizational dynamics, it's JUST AS likely. (Think about it. If, say, one or a group of current chimpanzees evolved by quantum leap the capacity for language, syntax or whatever, do you think they would develop a basic lexicon to exploit that language potential before the genes spread to other chimpanzee communities?) Now to the point that I really wanted to make. One might hope that the above problem can be resolved simply by developing better methods of lexical reconstruction, so that we can eventually say, aha! we have succeeded in reducing the lexicons of all languages to enough of a single reconstructed proto-lexicon to suggest a proto-lexicon which would have been adequate for a society of language users as we have reason to imagine it at that time depth. And it is improbable that we could have done that if language had a polygenetic origin, such that all other independent stocks just happened to die out leaving no trace (and no accompanying problem for monogenetic reconstruction). (That probability argument could be debated.) But our ignorance of the social dynamics of early language users encounters a SECOND stumbling block. That is polygenesis in the pidgin/creole sense. While the single ancestry/tree diversification assumption works quite well for many, even most, languages UP TO A CERTAIN TIME DEPTH, there is still the possibility that if we work back far enough with improved reconstructive tools, we will still find that particular sets of languages for which that assumption works eventually hit a point at which the assumption of more than one ancestral language is necessary, still quite short of the point at which "original" polygenesis or monogenesis can be decided. In other words, all attempts at reconstructing the ultimate proto-language by reconstructing further into groups of families and lumoping them together may eventually hit at one point or another, "creole"-like languages (in origin) which frustrate further attempts to continue the same method to reconstruct an original language. Maybe that presupposes that in some, or many, instances early independent groups of humans merged with each other into new cultural formations, including lexicon, instead of annihilating one or the other. What's wrong with that presupposition on the basis of what we know? I think we at least know enough to discuss it, if not to resolve it. It might at least be therapeutic to anticipate what to do if such a problem arises, instead of trying to squeeze more ink out of the dried up ballpoint pen of the monogenetic/tree theory of language diversification (which has its limits even in subgrouping within well established "monogenetic" families). That was something like what I first thought a message containing "polygenesis" in the title might suggest -- but since it wasn't, I thought I'd throw that consideration into the brew. From MPeter4165 at aol.com Tue Feb 3 21:25:58 1998 From: MPeter4165 at aol.com (Melanie Peterson) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 16:25:58 EST Subject: Information needed on Latin periphrasis, please Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm a graduate student a New York University, and, in connection with a research paper I'm working on, I need information on a periphrasis said to have existed in late Latin. The periphrasis consisted of the verb <> + the infinitive, and was equivalent to the Latin perfectum of the verb in the infinitive. Does anyone know of any articles, books, etc. that touch on this topic? I'm most interested in its geographic range and what types of texts it occurred in, but *any* information would be welcome. If you prefer to respond to me as opposed to the list, please post to: mpeter4165 at aol.com Thanks! Melanie Peterson From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Tue Feb 3 18:24:42 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 13:24:42 EST Subject: Monogenesis and polygenesis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Following a couple of similar points, bwald wrote: > The point may have been made without me recognizing it, but it seems to me > that when whatever neural development evolved that allowed "humans" (for > the sake of argument) to acquire language in the natural way that they now > do, it does not automatically follow that that ability immediately > transformed itself into language as we know it today, particularly with > respect to a core lexicon in a unique homogeneous human community. That > assumption is essential to our use of lexicon to reconstruct ancestral > languages according to the monogenetic model, and it has no direct bearing [and then] > could be like current humans, pace Herodotus) So, it seems to me as likely > as not that humans developed much, if not all, of even their "basic" > lexicon in various independent sites/groupings. I'm not saying that it's > MORE likely than not, just that until we know more about early human social > organizational dynamics, it's JUST AS likely. But all of the comments along this line miss my point. (Which, to be sure, I didn't make very thoroughly, this being HISTLING and not EVOLANG). The basic point is that a functioning language--NOT the appropriate neural structures, a fully-formed set of parameters, or whatever mumbo-jumbo you might want to think of as the necessary biological prerequisites for language, but functioning language--would give the first population to develop it a significant selectional advantage over all others. We can see this with lots of other cultural developments; agriculture is an example that's gotten a lot of attention recently. Cf. Bellwood's and Renfrew's arguments about the expansion of agricultural populations at the expense of others. (This is quite distinct, BTW, from Renfrew's ill-thought-out notions about Indo-European). Thus, in our imagined pre-linguistic situation, once one group has developed language, other groups will not have the chance--they will either adopt what the first folks off the block have created, or they will lose out. > (Think about it. If, say, one or a group of current chimpanzees evolved by > quantum leap the capacity for language, syntax or whatever, do you think > they would develop a basic lexicon to exploit that language potential > before the genes spread to other chimpanzee communities?) It doesn't matter. Once they've developed what they need to exploit their language potential, everyone else will join them or be left behind. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From manaster at umich.edu Tue Feb 3 14:37:30 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:37:30 EST Subject: Alexis on classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Johanna Nichols responded to my posting by claiming that (a) she has not attacked Altaic, (b) that I accept her assessment of the controversy surrdouning Greenberg, and (c) that she did not misrepresent the state of the Altaic controversy. Let me make some thing perfectly clear: (a) Nichols's book contains a completely unprovoked and inaccurate attack on Altaic, which she there claims is a discredited theory which no one accepts, (b) I continue to maintain that virtually all critiques of Greenberg except mine have been beside the point inasmuch as they have focused on details which do not affect the big picture and/or refuse to discuss the central issues raised by G, namely, those of how to classify the languages of the Americas and/or make all manner of incompetent claims about the history and methods of comparative linguistics, the mathematical modeling of lg classification and lg change, the current state of classificatory lg, etc. I may of course have missed some major exception to this sad generalization. As I said eafrlier, it would more appropriate for others to judge my work, but if Nichols wants to derive from that any concession on my part, she is mistaken. (c) Nichols' statements about Altaic are wrong, and so are her statments about what Altaic scholars believe. There are those who reject Altaic, but not for the reasons she has adduced. What she claimed in her book bears no relation to any published scholarship on Altaic and the only explanation seems to be that she misunderstood a third-hand report (or as it now appears perhaps a second-hand one) on the state of the field, produced (in either case) by someone not particularly known for their expertise on this particular subject. AMR From manaster at umich.edu Tue Feb 3 14:35:35 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:35:35 EST Subject: Monogenesis and "simple Darwinian grounds" In-Reply-To: <1998Jan30.163507.68912@vnet.ibm.com> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I must say that I am saddened by the fact that on a list devoted to historical linguistics it is so much easier to get a discussion going of the issue of mono- vs. polygenesis than of current substantive questions involving linguistic classification AND by the fact (surely not unrelated) that the contributions so far offered on the mono- vs. polygenesis issue have been, as it appears, entirely aprioristic. For example, when reading Michael Morrison's statement: (Quote) Personally, I don't believe we will be able to reconcile the many language families of today to a degree that will answer the genesis question. Based on the data with which we have to work, I doubt any overarching superfamily will be accepted by the field as a whole, and so the debate will continue. Sigh (End of Quote) am I the only one (or indeed am I crazy) to wonder what possible basis one could have for this extraordinary assessement, especially in the light of what has emerged recently (as noted by Larry Trask, for example), namely, that there HAS been no real debate for teh simple reason that there is a dearth of competent debaters? I myself would prefer to debate the mono- vs. polygenesis of particular proposed linguistic groupings (e.g., of Yiddish, Altaic, Pakawan, etc.), but as for the mono- vs. polygenesis of lg, I would only point out that clearly monogenesis is for many linguists the null hypothesis, and indeed it would be polygenesis which would, if demosntrated, constitute a revolutionary discovery. A proof of monogenesis would be an anticlimax, I think. But while I do not think that we will NEVER know, it is clear that we are in no position to decide anything today, and that we will indeed never know anything in this area if we continue to refuse to get our hands dirty and work on the problem of classifying the world's language and reconstructing the protohistories of the resulting groupings. AMR From A.Bruyn at let.uva.nl Tue Feb 3 14:33:34 1998 From: A.Bruyn at let.uva.nl (Adrienne Bruyn) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:33:34 EST Subject: Monogenesis and polygenesis in creole studies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Just a remark in reaction to Benji Wald: On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I once wrote something similar to Histling before, but the use of > "polygenesis" reminded me of it. In pidgin/creole studies, "polygenesis" > usually refers to the descent of a language from more than one natural > language, contrary to the tree concept of language diversification. In the > current discussion, "polygenesis" is being used in a somewhat different, > but equally valid, way, to suggest that languages evolved "from scratch" in > different places (at different times is beside the point here). Working in pidgin/creole studies myself, I don't think "polygenesis" with regard to pidgins/creoles (PCs) usually refers to their "mixed descent", even though it can be used in this sense when the problem of classification is at issue. This, at least on the level of e.g. "Is Sranan a Germanic language?" is something creolists seem to be less concerned with than historical linguists taking PCs into account (e.g. Posner) (I'm generalizing). However, classification of PCs among themselves is an issue in PCstudies, and here the terms "monogenesis" and (less frequently occurring) "polygenesis" appear to have a sense that is rather similar to the one in the ongoing discussion on language origins: In the 1960s, early '70s, people adhered to the "Monogenesis theory" (Taylor, Thompson, Voorhoeve -- see e.g. Holm 1988): all PCs were assumed to derive from one Portuguese-lexicon pidgin; in different parts of the world this Portuguese pidgin was relexified with English, French, Dutch, ... words. Nobody believes this to be the correct scenario nowadays. There is a "relativized" variant, however, referred to as "restricted monogenesis": people have proposed common ancestors for sub-groups of PCs, e.g. English-lexicon creoles at both sides of the Atlantic (West Africa & Caribbean) are argued to derive from a West African PC (Hancock 1986, McWhorter 1997; in these instances it goes hand in hand with Afro-genesis but that is not necessarily the case). The opposite view (the one defended by Bickerton 1981, 1988 etc) is that each C originated separately, i.e. "polygenetic". In this sense then "polygenesis" appears similar to the way it is used in the discussion on the origins of language -- and also raises questions and debate. Adrienne = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Adrienne Bruyn Teleph. (+31) (0)20 525 3862 General Linguistics Fax (+31) (0)20 525 3021 University of Amsterdam NEW E-MAIL a.bruyn at hum.uva.nl Spuistraat 210 NL - 1012 VT AMSTERDAM = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = From slpargma at midway.uchicago.edu Tue Feb 3 14:31:59 1998 From: slpargma at midway.uchicago.edu (sheri lyn pargman) Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:31:59 EST Subject: Monogenesis and polygenesis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Of course, in pidgin/creole studies, "polygenesis" also refers to the view that modern pidgins and creoles developed independently of each other, in different places throughout the world. This is in contrast to the so-called "monogenesis hypothesis," which claims that most modern pidgins and creoles are descended from one early trade language. Sheri Pargman University of Chicago On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, bwald wrote: > I once wrote something similar to Histling before, but the use of > "polygenesis" reminded me of it. In pidgin/creole studies, "polygenesis" > usually refers to the descent of a language from more than one natural > language, contrary to the tree concept of language diversification. In the > current discussion, "polygenesis" is being used in a somewhat different, > but equally valid, way, to suggest that languages evolved "from scratch" in > different places (at different times is beside the point here). From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Feb 5 14:27:40 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 09:27:40 EST Subject: Monogenesis and polygenesis Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Some replies to responses on my suggestions about polygenesis. In considering my point about what we don't know, Scott DeLancey writes: >...The basic point is that a functioning language--NOT the appropriate >neural structures, a fully-formed set of parameters, or whatever >mumbo-jumbo you might want to think of as the necessary biological >prerequisites for language, but functioning language--would give the >first population to develop it a significant selectional advantage >over all others. I don't disagree with the argument that a population having a (functioning) language has an advantage over a population that doesn't. The point remains: how many separate populations developed a functioning arbitrary lexicon independently of each other? Once the ability is there, the adequate arbitrary lexicon might have developed relatively quickly, but not as quickly as the prerequisite gene spread. If gene spread was earlier, it follows that the arbitrary lexicon may have developed more or less at the same time in independent communities which did not have knowledge of (or non-sexual interest in?) each other. If further facts are adduced to the effect that such a possibility is unlikely, then we are left with monogenesis as more likely. However, Scott's suggestion does not offer such facts. It only offers a reasonable argument about what happens when a population with a functioning language actually meets a population, regardless of ability to acquire language, which has not yet developed a functioning language. He ends by reiterating: >Thus, in our imagined pre-linguistic situation, once one group has >developed language, other groups will not have the chance--they will >either adopt what the first folks off the block have created, or >they will lose out. and, then he rereiterates, >Once they've developed what they need to exploit their >language potential, everyone else will join them or be left behind. So I reiterate: OK for "one" group. But what's to insure that they meet "other" groups before one or some of them have ALSO developed language. This is what polygenesis implies. This really depends on how likely it is for different populations with capacity for developing an adequate arbitrary vocabulary, to develop it separately. (In fact, to some extent a somewhat arbitrary or "displaced" set of symbols may be a more widespread and older property of complex mammals than the "language faculty", such that such symbols become immediate material toward developing an arbitrary lexicon once the "language faculty" exists.) The best clues to an answer are probably available in the independent in-group development of various sign languages in historic deaf communities isolated from each other, e.g., Kenyan sign language, Antiguan sign language, etc. From what I understand, some deaf groups did develop such languages without (much?) input from the hearing. It's a very imperfect clue because fully functioning languages already existed around them, and it is difficult to exclude the influence of their speakers on stimulating isolated deaf speakers or groups to get the idea of using gestures to develop LEXICON. BTW many such gestures indicate somewhat NON-arbitrary sign-meaning correspondences -- but there is still arbitrariness once the signs become conventionalized, so that other non-arbitrary possibilities for the same lexical item become excluded, e.g., the sign miming bonnet ribbons which originally indicated "woman" in the 19th c French sign language from which AMESLAN developed (if I remember correctly). Next, Adrienne Bruyn writes: "Working in pidgin/creole studies myself, I don't think "polygenesis" with regard to pidgins/creoles (PCs) usually refers to their "mixed descent", even though it can be used in this sense when the problem of classification is at issue. This, at least on the level of e.g. "Is Sranan a Germanic language?" is something creolists seem to be less concerned with than historical linguists taking PCs into account (e.g. Posner) (I'm generalizing)." Adrienne is right. Originally in P/C studies polygenesis opposed the "monogenetic" theory that ALL P/Cs descended from a single historical pidgin, which some adherents identified with "Lingua Franca", the first millenium (AD) Mediterranean trade language between the Muslim bloc and the Christian bloc -- with the possibility that Lingua Franca itself might have its origins in an older pidgin. The implication was that all pidgins owe their origin to a one-shot invention, cf. the monogenetic theory of the origin of the set of ALL known languages. The polygeneticists opposed this idea with the notion that pidgin genesis involves a more general contact phenomenon which could and no doubt has applied independently at various times in certain kinds of contact situations. It was actually that notion that I was appealing to in raising the issue of P/C polygenesis. As for her last observation, this is what early P/Cists, e.g., Hugo Schuchardt, were appealing to in criticizing the tree notion of language diversification as the ONLY possibility for language diversification and hence "genetic" classification. At this point it is irrelevant that Schuchardt's citicism was premature. Most historical linguists were not about to acknowledge Schuchardt's insight, while the tree method had still not been exhausted. And we're still arguing about how far the method can be pushed -- but we have pushed it beyond current consensus, cf. Altaic -- why is this such a problem after all this time? I don't see how it can simply be "bad" scholarship somehow bungling "tried and true" methods. I recognize that there are more languages than there are competent historical linguists competent in all these languages, but, still, what the heck is the problem? Adrienne goes on to discuss how the P/C monogenesis and polygenesis theories got sorted out. Monogenesis is about reconstructable historical facts, both language and social. Polygenesis is about more general principles of language contact, mixture and the like. She concludes: "In this sense then "polygenesis" appears similar to the way it is used in the discussion on the origins of language -- and also raises questions and debate. " Again she is right. The principle stands that NOT ALL current languages can be traced back to a single ancestor in any sense that has relevance to the present discussion. This is already generally accepted. Historical linguists do not contest this principle; instead they ignore it in their quest for the proto-language -- as if it were irrelevant to the resources they have for succeeding in their quest. And so it gets lost in the debate about monogenesis or polygenesis of an "original" language. My suggestion was simply to extend the polygenetic argument to more distant ancestors of current groups of languages, esp with an eye to groupings for which more polemic than progress is encountered. (Indeed, in their zeal there was a brief period when some P/Cists were speculating about ALL problematic groupings and various other languages, e.g., English, being ultimately P/C in origin, as noted say in the Kaufman & Thomason book -- but that's another matter, stemming from a time when P/Cists were still getting a grip on what their own primary subject matter and principles were.) With regard to Sranan, if knowledge of all "other" Germanic languages were to disappear, historical linguists would have little trouble recognizing most of the lexical material of Sranan as Indo-European, and would even be able to discover Grimm's law in the Sranan data. They might be puzzled by the lesser irregular correspondences which represent the difference between the English vocabulary (major) and the Dutch vocabulary (minor), but they would surely classify the language as Indo-European, of the Srananic (= Germanic) branch. Now, if all knowledge of Germanic and Romance were to disappear, the creoles Saramaccan and Djuka would present much greater problems to reconstruction, because their vocabulary is almost equally English (< Germanic) and Portuguese (< Romance). The brighter reconstructionists would eventually propose that two distinct Indo-European languages were responsible for this situation, but for some words they would not be able to decide which of the languages was responsible for which words -- or indeed if either of the languages was responsible for the words without wider Indo-European cognates. And in a few instances they'd be right, because the words are not Indo-European, but probably in even more instances they would be wrong, assigning a non-Indo-European origin to a Germanic or Romance word that doesn't have (surviving) cognates elsewhere in Indo-European. So, by the way linguists use arbitrary lexicon to classify linguistic origin, Sranan is statistically Germanic -- it is even English (or "Angloid", if you care), but Saramaccan and Djuka are not; they are Germanic-Romance -- but there is no node in the Indo-European tree which separates Germanic-Romance from other branches. That would surely confound historical linguists, who BTW are not even sure whether Saramaccan "liwa", or something like that, comes from English "river" (ironically from Latin ripa etc.) or Port/Spanish "rio" -- or both. From manaster at umich.edu Fri Feb 6 18:26:54 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 13:26:54 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I would still like to see whether there are really no historical linguists on this list who would be interested in discussing substantively either particular proposed linguistic classifications (e.g., Pakawa, Nostratic, Nadene, Altaic, Eskichatkan, Austro-Asiatic- Ainu, Penutian, etc.) or at least the real problems inherent in this kind of work. I have in published work repeatedly cautioned against the entirely false dichotomies which the current discourse in the field assumes, such as that between lumpers and splitters, Greenbergians and anti-Greenbergians, and so on--false because many a scholar with accomplishments in the area of classification is a counterexample to the dichotomies (Sapir's Uto-Aztecan for example is a polar opposite methodologically to his work on Coahuiltecan/Pakawan). But there IS one dichotomy which it is difficult to get around: between actual work on linguistic classification (of whatever variety) and public posturing by people who as Larry Trask points out apparently are not competent to either do or judge such work and yet insist on trying to do so in loud tones (in which group I include equally people who never heard of a proposed language family they did not immediately like and those who never heard of one they did not immediately reject). AMR From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Sun Feb 8 16:02:21 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 11:02:21 EST Subject: Second sum: term Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Several weeks ago I asked for a term to denote the observation that a linguistic change often results in simplification in one part of the system but in a simultaneous complication in another part. I summarized the responses I received, and listed the proposed terms (there is clearly no single term in regular use). This query, recall, was on behalf of the dictionary of historical linguistics I was writing. First, I inadvertently omitted Richard Janda from the list of those who had responded; my apologies. I received a couple more responses to my original posting after I'd sent in my summary, and I've received a number of further responses to my summary. Here is the state of play. Most respondents seemed to favor the creation of a term for this phenomenon, but not all: two people declared that they regarded the observation as trivial and inconsequential and not worth naming. One, however, took exactly the opposite view, seeing the lack of a suitable term here as a serious gap in our terminology. Many people expressed their opinions on the proposals included in my first summary, but there was absolutely no consensus: a term that was greatly preferred by one person was dismissed as unacceptable by another. A number of further proposals were put forward; here they are. LOCAL OPTIMIZATION ORGANIC COMPENSATION SYSTEMIC COMPENSATION LEVEL-BLINDNESS ANTITELEOLOGY SEE-SAW PRINCIPLE SIDE-EFFECTS PRINCIPLE One respondent particularly liked the idea of trying to borrow an analogous term from evolutionary biology; I have been looking, but so far I haven't uncovered such a term in biology (which is not to say that none exists). Another pointed out that the phenomenon in question is very familiar in the field of systems engineering, though it appears to have no recognized name there. A third advised me to consult the writings of the Prague School linguists, who were, of course, very much interested in phenomena of this type, and especially Jakobson's celebrated paper on the history of Russian vowels. I dutifully did so, and found that Jakobson's terminology, while certainly colorful, was decidedly warlike: he speaks of "conflicts" and "struggles", and almost seems to see a language as a battleground involving competing subsystems, each struggling to get the upper hand. But I could find no term for what I was looking for. There was also a suggestion that I consult the terminology of chess. As it happens, I'm acquainted with that terminology, and I couldn't find anything suitable. I did note, somewhat wistfully, that the wonderful chess term `Zugzwang' finds no linguistic use, but then I can't imagine a language in Zugzwang: "OK; Kashubian is in great shape today, but one phonological change and the whole language will fall apart." There were some comments on matters of policy. A couple of respondents thought it was entirely in order for my dictionary to promulgate neologisms if these appeared to be useful, and even for me to coin a neologism in the dictionary, if I thought that necessary. Another respondent, however, urged caution here. That respondent considered it potentially dangerous and misleading to readers to include neologisms, and urged me to include only terms with a substantial history of published use, and to cite examples of use from the literature. I guess I'd better comment on this. There are two classes of terms for which I am, in general, providing no citations. The first group consists of those terms which have been in regular use for generations, such as `cognate' and `creole'. These are the terms which everybody uses freely and encounters regularly. The second group consists of terms which are used in the older literature but are now rare or obsolete. Examples are things like `proethnic' and `media aspirata', the first of which is obsolete and the second of which is now generally confined to specialist handbooks. Students reading the older literature will find these things used without explanation, and will need to be able to look them up; I am entering them, but marking them with a label like `rare' or `obsolete' or `confined to older literature'. Otherwise, my policy is to identify the first published source of a term, whenever I can track that down, if the term is recent enough that it cannot be safely regarded as established. So, terms like `exaptation', `metatypy' and `abrupt creolization' get explicit citations. Now: how far should I go in entering neologisms? There is no simple answer to this, because I can't predict the future of a recently proposed term: maybe it will be taken up and flourish, or maybe it will die on the pages of the article where it was proposed. So I'm proceeding as follows. At this stage, I am trying to include every term which looks even potentially useful. After writing my definitions, I will certainly find that my typescript is too long -- I have a strict length limit. So then I'll prune the dictionary by removing the terms that appear to me to be the most marginal. This is the only reasonable way of going about things: if I am ruthless to begin with, and then find myself with unused space, my life will be very difficult. This length limit is a further good reason for omitting citations of familiar terms. Citations mean a corresponding absence of entries, and, providing my definitions are good enough, I think we're better off with more entries. But *some* neologisms I am making a point of including. For example, `exaptation' has already gained some currency in the field, and `metatypy' strikes me as an elegant and unambiguous term for a concept which has been much discussed but which has previously been given only a series of ad hoc and often cumbersome labels, such as `extreme structural borrowing'. Here I am using my judgement: in my view, we need an established term for this, and `metatypy' is the best I have seen, so I am going to promote it. These policies doubtless won't please everybody, but they're the best I can come up with. Anyway, if you don't like them, I guess you're free to write your own dictionary. ;-) So, what's my decision on the missing term? I am, as the objects of major scandals are wont to say, considering my position. My thanks to Richard Janda (again), Max Wheeler, Stefan Georg, Johanna Nichols, Harold Koch, Rich Alderson, Eric Schiller, Richard Coates, Mark Hale, Roger Wright, E. Bashir, Benji Wald, Phil Baldi, Paul Lloyd, Donka Minkova, Stephen Schaufele, Robert Whiting, and Suzanne Fleischmann. I hope I haven't omitted anybody this time. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Tue Feb 10 02:54:23 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 21:54:23 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Fri, 6 Feb 1998 manaster at umich.edu wrote: > I would still like to see whether there are really no historical > linguists on this list who would be interested in discussing > substantively either particular proposed linguistic classifications > (e.g., Pakawa, Nostratic, Nadene, Altaic, Eskichatkan, Austro-Asiatic- > Ainu, Penutian, etc.) or at least the real > problems inherent in this kind of work. I fun idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is. "Discussing substantively" means discussing data, and for any given proposal that you list (or most others), how many of us are there likely to be on the list who can do that? After all, one reason why some of these are so far from being "established" is that hardly anyone works on them. (And vice versa, of course). Thinking about your suggestion, I start thinking about how to get a discussion going on Penutian, and I don't really see how to do it. Here, I'll throw out a provocative statement -- It's time to drop the notion of Takelman as a genetic unit; Takelma clearly belongs with the Coast languages, and Kalapuya, if we really knew much about it, is probably most closely related to the Plateau languages. Now what? How can we really talk about something like that on a general list like this? Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From manaster at umich.edu Tue Feb 10 02:55:27 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 21:55:27 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Here is what I would suggest. First, this list could be a place where people who have heard all kinds of stuff second-, 3d-, 4th-, or even 5th-hand about any of these things (e.g., people whose only "information" about Altaic comes from friend Nichols's book or about Nostratic from the extended coverage that theory had in Language, or the like) to find out what the real issues are by talking to some of those of us who can help in that regard. Second, this could be a place where some debates could take place between people with honest and well-informed disagreements (e.g., I bet my friend and collaborator Stefan Georg would be willing to debate some of the Altaic issues with me, since he still does not accept Altaic even though we have joined forces to debunk many of the prevalent myths about Altaic). Third, this could be a great place to discuss existing literature. What Scott says re Takelman cannot be discussed in this way without references to literature which the rest of us would know or would be willing to go and read. But presumably he could supply us with the required info, much as I would be happy to provide such info on for example the Nadene or the Pakawan/Coahuiltecan issues. Moreover, in many of these cases the literature is so scant that it would not be too much to expect at least a few people to read it. For Pakawan/Coahuiltecan, I think that the papers by Campbell and me in Anthro Ling would in fact suffice (and I could provide by email copies of Paul Sidwell's and my draft reply to Campbell). In short, I think that there are issues we COULD discuss profitably, either based on what people already have read or based on one or two or a few basic recent references. This would be much like the discussions of recently published books that occasionally occur on the LINGUIST list in essence. The crucial question is thus not of means but of the will: are there people of good will and intellectual integrity out there who are sufficiently appalled by the current state of the field to try to do better? AMR On Mon, 9 Feb 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote: > I fun idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is. "Discussing > substantively" means discussing data, and for any given proposal > that you list (or most others), how many of us are there likely > to be on the list who can do that? After all, one reason why some > of these are so far from being "established" is that hardly anyone > works on them. (And vice versa, of course). > > Thinking about your suggestion, I start thinking about how to get > a discussion going on Penutian, and I don't really see how to do > it. Here, I'll throw out a provocative statement -- It's time to drop > the notion of Takelman as a genetic unit; Takelma clearly belongs > with the Coast languages, and Kalapuya, if we really knew much about > it, is probably most closely related to the Plateau languages. > > Now what? How can we really talk about something like that on a > general list like this? > From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Wed Feb 11 13:16:33 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 08:16:33 EST Subject: Linguistic classification Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I think it would be interesting to try out Scott and Alexis's suggestions on problematic areas of lanuage classification. The prerequisites are that whoever has a suggestion or criticism to make can relatively CONCISELY explain what the issue is, and why there's disagreement. Is the disagreement over some CRUCIAL piece/s of data, or is it about the AMOUNT of data, or what? Furthermore, while literature can be suggested for those who are more interested, it cannot be necessary, because most people won't read it. They just don't have the time. And if understanding somebody's argument depends on reading literature, most people will just delete the message without reading it (or store it for "future" reference, if they can ever find it again.) NO EXTRA READING! I would be interested in seeing how a number of shared issues would drop out of the various problematic areas, so that we might all get more interesteg in the details of whatever areas are discussed -- as "case studies" in a larger set of problems which will confront historical linguists in virtually any area of classification they would choose to work in (if they push it far enough). For example, Scott suggests: > It's time to drop > the notion of Takelman as a genetic unit; Takelma clearly belongs > with the Coast languages, and Kalapuya, if we really knew much about > it, is probably most closely related to the Plateau languages. On what basis has Takelman been considered a genetic unit? Why is this any more problematic than Romance or Germanic as a genetic unit? What is the status of the Coast languages as a genetic unit? What is the relation of Takelman to Kalapuya? What is the relation of Coast to Plateau? What is the point? Is it equivalent to deciding whether Latin is "closer" to Celtic or Germanic, or is it about whether Haitian Creole is a Romance language, or whether English is a Bantu language, or what? I am not interested in the classification of Takelman and Kalapuya per se. But I am interested in why problems of the type implied (if not satirized) by Scott happen. We have a common set of references in IE at least. Are there classificatory issues in other language families which are not the same as in IE? Why (not)? I already asked obliquely with regard to Alexis. What's with Altaic? Why is it such a problem? Do we need thousands of pages to explain why IE or Germanic works as a unit? I think we can boil such accounts down to something quite succinct (if I'm wrong we have another lively discussion). Why isn't it the same with Altaic? After all, it doesn't seem to me that IE was a particularly "easy" language family to reconstruct? What makes Altaic so much harder? Is the problem in the phonological reconstruction, in the grammar -- what in particular, how? Are there any generalizations about where the attempts to unite groups of languages tend to become problematic? What are the arguments we can dismiss (typological ones? areal ones?) Which ones are generally bothersome because we don't know quite how to deal with them? Can we get further than: NOT ENOUGH DATA (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?) CAN'T TELL BORROWINGS FROM INHERITANCES BASIC VOCABULARY CHANCE RESEMBLANCES MULTIPLE SOURCES What else? From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Fri Feb 13 21:57:20 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 16:57:20 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, bwald wrote: > Can we get further than: > > NOT ENOUGH DATA (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?) > CAN'T TELL BORROWINGS FROM INHERITANCES > BASIC VOCABULARY > CHANCE RESEMBLANCES > MULTIPLE SOURCES Try one more--not enough research. Meaning, not enough researchers. Take my Takelman (= Takelma-Kalapuya) example. A special link between these was suggested by Swadesh, 40-odd years ago, based essentially on lexicostatistics. A chancy basis in itself, not helped by the fact that the work seems as though it involved a kind of, uh, personal slant on what to consider a match. It was pursued 20 years later by Shipley, who basically worked over Swadesh's stuff and showed that some of it is good. So, that gives some basis for supposing a genetic relationship between the two. But in the context of the hypothesis of Sapirean Penutian as a genetic unit, it doesn't do anything to support a case for special relationship. Indeed, I think that one reason (actually the only plausible reason I can think of) why various otherwise conservative Americanists (Lyle Campbell, for example) have bought Takelman is that they reject the likelihood of Penutian a priori, so the only possible inference from Shipley's results is Takelman. Now, if you look at the structures of the languages, even pretty superficially, you don't see anything that looks like a particularly close relationship, so I've always been a bit skeptical about this. Now, at the SSILA meeting in January, Daythal Kendall and Marie-Lucie Tarpent have pretty effectively demolished the case for Takelman, showing that virtually all of Swadesh's and Shipley's evidence falls into one of three baskets: apparently spurious, forms that are more widely attested in Penutian, and forms that seem to be loans from Takelma into Southern Kalapuya, and aren't found in the other Kalapuyan languages. OK so far. But the languages still look Penutian (at least, Takelma certainly does), so, is there a better subgrouping? With Kalapuyan out of the way, there's no impediment to grouping Takelma with the Coast languages (Coosan, Siuslaw, Alsea), which has always been its inspectionally most plausible affiliation. But that's not going to be more than a plausible suggestion until a fair amount of serious comparative work gets done. A lot of work there for somebody, and the linguists aren't exactly lining up for the opportunity. And what about Kalapuya? The problem with Kalapuya--well, there are serious documentation problems (reliably-recorded texts, but no grammar or dictionary to start with). But, most crucially, there's no Kalapuya expert anywhere. If I want to start comparing Kalapuyan grammar with Sahaptian or Klamath, which would be the likely suspects, I can be reasonably confident about the Sahaptian/Klamath side--but I'd be much happier if there were someone somewhere that I could run my understanding of Kalapuya by. We all know what can happen to the unwary in this kind of situation. The real problem with Penutian is that it's a huge and difficult comparative task, and there just aren't many people working on it. And the totality of the problems that have to be solved is far beyond any one or few linguists' capacity to handle. And this is the problem with a lot of deep--and not so deep--proposals. I'm sure Alexis could list for us, off the top of his head, everybody in the world who is seriously interested in the Altaic problem, and I doubt that the list would fill your screen. No wonder we can't decide what we've got. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From manaster at umich.edu Mon Feb 16 13:24:12 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 08:24:12 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Here is an example of a methodological point we could discuss. I argue, as did Gatschet, Swanton, and Sapir, that the Pakawan languages (Coahuilteco, Cotoname, Comecrudo, Garza, and Mamulique, all extinct and poorly documented) are (closely) related. Many authors have denied this, with Goddard arguing that only the last three are related. Now, Troike and Campbell (and perhaps Goddard, whose statement is however not clearly formulated) argue inter alia that Cotoname and Comecrudo (with its alllies) are not related because most of the known words in each are nothing at all like their translations in the other. Although there are infact a number of cognates they have missed, that is not the issue I am after. Rather, I accept Eric Hamp's well-known (at least I HOPE it is well-known) position that NO list of differences between two languages can be an argument against their relatedness. The only thing that has any meaning to a comparative linguist is points of agreement (correspondence) sufficient to demonstrate a relationship. So long as these exist, we cannot take any points of disagreement no matter how numerous as contradicting the hypothesis of a relationship. Again, I am not going to go into whether the points of agreemnt I have identified are sufficient (that is ANOTHER topic); I only would like to know what people think about the question of whether diffrences or disagreements can ever in principle be used to argue against a relationship. Note I: The same issue arises in ALtaic studies, where in fact Hamp criticized Doerfer on this very point. Note II: Hamp's and my position assumes that the burden of proof is always on the advocates of a relationship, and that therefore its opponents can do no better than to cast doubt on the evidence cited by the proponents--but cannot go further to provide evidence against the relationship. Note III: It seems to me that it follows from this that the only way to argue against a relationship at all would be to demonstrate a DIFFERENT relationship. E.g., contrary to what many Hungarian scholars have often asserted, Hungarian is not (closely) related to Turkic because it is more closely related to Finnish and the rest of Uralic. But of course this only allows us to argue about relative degrees of relatedness. We cannot in principle argue against the relatedness of Hungarian to Turkic, becuse Uralic as a whole might be related to Turkic. From Georg at home.ivm.de Mon Feb 16 20:26:25 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 15:26:25 EST Subject: Alexis' methodological points (was: Linguistic classification) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At the moment I hope I'll be forgiven not to address the Pakawan question (I do have Alexis' papers on it, but at present I haven't seen Campbell's intervening reply, and I'd like to see the whole picture before). The methodological claims/questions/proposals Alexis tabulates for discussion are of course not new, nevertheless I think most of us interested in such questions share with Alexis and others (e.g. me) that something like a solid set of principles for linguistic relatedness, known to everyone in the field and accepted to a degree which would allow us to call it "established" may still be in want. A different question is of course, whether such a thing can really exist, but along the lines of Alexis' posting I'd venture some remarks: " NO list of differences between two languages can be an argument against their relatedness." I think there can be no serious fight over that; that argumenta e silentio have no serious value in any scientific discussion should be clear. That some anti-Altaicists, e.g. Gerhard Doerfer and at times A. Shcherbak have placed too much emphasis about things which simply were'nt there (numerals and other "basic vocabulary" stuff) instead of looking at what is there, are palpably positions of by-gone days now (they can, however, be traced back to Nemeth, Bang and other early researchers from the childhood-days of comparative Altaic). " I only would like to know what people think about the question of whether diffrences or disagreements can ever in principle be used to argue against a relationship." And again, I cannot imagine how any meaningful answer on this question could be in favor of counting "differences". But one tiny little thing: If diachrony comes into play, i.e. if we are in the blessed situation to be able to observe languages change over a considerable period of time, and if the languages in question occupy a large-enough territory, so that (vaguely speaking) notions of periphery vs. centre (with all the well known diachronic implications) could be meaningful, the notion of "difference" acquires a somewhat different and potentially interesting meaning: *If* the languages observed show a greater deal of "difference" (and I'm fully aware of the fact that this term should be properly defined before thrown into the debate) in earlier stages of their attestation and greater uniformity on different levels of their systems later (the geographical analogon would be an observation where languages at the periphery of a given area are "more different" than those nearer to the centre), a potentially good hypothesis would be something along the lines of "convergence", rather than "divergence", logically entailed by the assumption of geneticity. NOW: before Alexis slaughters me: of course, a scenario is thinkable, where original relationship (i.e. *identity*) first led to dissolution of an original parent language (*increasing* "differences"), and *later* convergent processes might have happened, which have led to the observable processes (after all, the Balkans area is made up of languages, which are related). But these are *two* assumptions instead of one and the principle of Occkham's razor (which has seen so many lip-services paid to it) would at least give the following advice: *first* investigate the *convergent* processes and every data potentially pertinent to it, and *then* see what is left to make a point for the relationship. My personal acquaintance with Altaic linguistics, for a randomly chosen example ;-), is that rarely the same people are honestly investigating both sides of the coin and rather say, like Doerfer or Clauson, (wrongly) "the non-relationship has been shown", or, like R.A. Miller (also wrongly) "the relationship is clear beyond the shadow of a doubt". Maybe to hope for a change in that situation would simply be too pious a wish to be realistic. However, it would be a step forward if people would accept antagonistic views at least as potentially interesting *working hypotheses*. Whoever has read a little bit of the Altaic civil war, will know that the field is far from that. What is the *working hypothesis* of, say, the Anti-Altaicists ? That those convergence processes, which I alluded to above, are the whole story, and that "Altaic" is a fata morgana, quite simply so. (I may add in parentheses here that I cannot help thinking exactly that). However, this does *not* mean that I claim to "know" that those languages "aren't related", or, for that matter, that I'm able to "show" this here and now (or ever) to everybody's satisfaction. I only plead for some degree of acceptance of a congergence-model for these languages as a *working hypothesis* for the time being. Next thing to do is to go as far as it will be possible on this path and to see what may be explainable in terms of areal convergence in these languages (I herewith promise that I'll do it ;-), and *then* the discussion may find itself on a new footing: for, surprising as it might seem, an "anti-Altaic" theory simply is not on the market. The only thing which *is* there, are occasional, sometimes emphatic, remarks (which are all too often off the linguistic-methodological mark) about this and that weakness in the proposals of the Altaicists, never offering a systematically worked-out alternative scenario about what might have happened in history . Only when such a thing will have materialized something which might be called an Altaic *debate* can *begin* (after all those centuries of talking in circles). I apologize for dwelling so long on Altaic, but I take the opportunity to draw attention to the less-than-satisfactory climate in Altaic studies, especially since I'm personally committed to work out (fragments of) such an alternative theory - often promised by Doerfer et al. in an often unpleasant voice of authority, but still lacking - and fear that at least some people in the field might be determined to lambaster it before a single word of it has leaked to the public. So, as a *working hypothesis* the assumption of "non-relationship" clearly has to be allowed. Which brings me to Alexis' "Note II: Hamp's and my position assumes that the burden of proof is always on the advocates of a relationship, and that therefore its opponents can do no better than to cast doubt on the evidence cited by the proponents--but cannot go further to provide evidence against the relationship." Yes, full agreement on the first part, but the second part deserves some musings, I think. Casting doubt on the evidence, OK, not providing evidence against the relationship, also OK (with the emphasis on *evidence*, which recalls the argumenta e silentio-issue, alluded to above). I think the problem possibly leading to misunderstandings here is of an epistemological nature. It would be too easy to draw a caricature of this position like "say lgs. A and B have *nothing whatsoever in common* (a purely theoretical scenario, of course); I could say they are related after all, but the great time-depth involved eroded even the tiniest shred evidence". Certainly, this is not Alexis' position, nor could I imagine it being defended seriously. But a situation where the *hypothesis* that two (or more) given languages are quite simply unrelated is viewed as a position which violates the rule of our trade is, I feel, somewhat less than satisfactory. A science where only saying "yes" is regarded as meaningful, and accordingly saying "no" is held to be an unscientific position (thus saying "non liquet" being the only alternative to express any doubt) gives me a mild headache at least. Every assumption of relationship, including the craziest ones, would thus be entitled to claim the status of a "not-yet-proven hypothesis" and by consequence make its way into the Encyclopedia Britannica. Possibly, a way out of this dilemma should envolve the proper definition of the terms we are operating with. For a start, to say "A and B are related" is no hypothesis at all, let alone a theory. A simple (and simplistic) statement like this can only be the *bottomline* of a larger construct (a "set of interdependent assumptions"). A hypothesis worthy of any consideration consists of a set of assumptions, principles, correspondences, "sound-laws" for that matter, etymologies and so on, the bottomline is only a *part* of. So, a set of assumptions like - the words A /paluka/ and B / firch/ are historically identical ("sprung from some common source") - so are a lot of other words in A and B - the segmental phonemes displayed by them show recurrent and largely predictable ("regular") correspondences - the assumption of a proto-system on the phonological level allows to explain and understand some opaque forms of A and B as due to productive morphological processes on the proto-level, obscured by later sound-changes - therefore A and B are genetically related *is* such a hypothesis, whereas the bottomline alone is *not*. (Please note, that I don't mean this to be a set of "relatedness criteria", let alone a full one, I'm just talking as generally as possible; different sets of different assumptions are of course possible). If, now, it can be shown that one or all of the "pre-bottomline" claims is, well, wrong, what are we to call A and B ? Languages not-yet-proven-to-be related ? I tabulate that we should call them at least *heuristically unrelated*, i.e. no sufficient point for the relatedness has been made, therefore the working hypothesis that they aren't is the best one (or at least one which is *not forbidden*). *For the time being* of course, but who can claim that his/her theories/hypotheses are here to stay for ever ? The common misunderstanding involved here - one which lurks between the lines of Alexis' posting as well, I'm afraid - is that to say "unrelated" entails a statement of "truth", i.e. A and B "are" not related, originated completely independently in totally different (pre-) hominid groups without the slightest possibility of mono- or oligogenesis, and that this is an incontrovertible "result" of my/our "scientific research" which has "proven" this. Any statement of such radicality could of course safely be called unscientific, or even nonsense (if we are in that mood), but, othoh, it is rarely formulated as such. But, *given* all those methodological/epistemological precautions - and I feel they are pretty trivial - should we not be allowed to call A and B "unrelated" (i.e. of course *heuristically* unrelated *for the time being*) as long as we are not convinced of the merits of any claim to the contrary which happens to be on the market ? When some non-linguist asks me what Basque might be related to, I invariably answer "to nothing else", since that is the state of the art as of now. I'm not claiming at the same time that this is *impossible* to change some day. Should I really enumerate all the hypotheses re: Basque, labelling them as "yet unproven", if asked such a question ? To conclude: when I - as a facon de parler - talk about A and B being "unrelated" I don't state that it is *impossible* that they are after all. I'm only using "unrelated" as shorthand for the state of the art as of now. The *possibility* remains that this statement will sometimes turn out to be wrong. But, in the absence of conclusive evidence, it is only that, a possibility. Furthermore, there are two kinds of possibilites: "full" possibilities, i.e. relationships which have been claimed on the basis of well-formulated and falsifyable sets of observations and assumptions, which however might be still controversial for different reasons, and "empty" possibilities, where no such claim has been made, or, for that matter, all claims to that effect have been successfully demolished. Given a *full possibility*, e.g. Altaic, I usually answer such questions as the abovementioned with "possibly related, but personally I think along different lines", given an *empty possibility*, say, Basque and Kartvelian, I say "unrelated". Maybe we can agree on that ? Of course, your "full possibility" can be my "empty" one and vice versa, but that clearly is another (or the next step of this) discussion. Which brings me to the final statement that, given the redefinition of "unrelated" as "heuristically unrelated", Alexis' "Note III: It seems to me that it follows from this that the only way to argue against a relationship at all would be to demonstrate a DIFFERENT relationship." is not acceptable for me in this sharp formulation (although it would be the *best* via falsificationis, of course). Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Feb 16 14:25:30 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 09:25:30 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: from "manaster@umich.edu" at Feb 16, 98 08:24:12 am Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alexis Manaster Ramer writes: [snip] > Rather, I accept Eric Hamp's well-known (at least I HOPE it is > well-known) position that NO list of differences between two > languages can be an argument against their relatedness. I would say that nothing whatever could be an argument against a relationship, and that proving the absence of a relationship is a logical impossibility. It is always possible that certain languages are ultimately descended from a common ancestor, but that all traces of that common origin have long since been obliterated. > The only thing that has any meaning to a comparative linguist is > points of agreement (correspondence) sufficient to demonstrate a > relationship. So long as these exist, we cannot take any points of > disagreement no matter how numerous as contradicting the hypothesis > of a relationship. Agreed. > Again, I am not going to go into whether the points of agreemnt I > have identified are sufficient (that is ANOTHER topic); I only would > like to know what people think about the question of whether > diffrences or disagreements can ever in principle be used to argue > against a relationship. Again, nothing can argue against a relationship -- but the evidence offered in support of a proposed relationship can certainly be shot down in flames. [snip] > Note II: Hamp's and my position assumes that the burden of proof is > always on the advocates of a relationship, and that therefore its > opponents can do no better than to cast doubt on the evidence cited > by the proponents--but cannot go further to provide evidence against > the relationship. Agreed, but why is this interesting? If you offer genealogical evidence that you are closely related to me, I might be able to shoot down that evidence. But I cannot prove that you and I are unrelated at any level later than the First Family. So what? Does that fact *alone* make our possible relatedness an interesting question, one worth pursuing? > Note III: It seems to me that it follows from this that the only way > to argue against a relationship at all would be to demonstrate a > DIFFERENT relationship. Absolutely not. This is Merritt Ruhlen's position, and it is indefensible. Such a conclusion follows *only* if we assume at the outset that *all* languages are related -- and who in his right mind wants to do that? It is perfectly possible that a language might have no discoverable relatives at all. It is even possible that a language might have no *actual* relatives at all -- that is, we cannot rule out polygenesis *a priori*. I must say that I consider Note III to be a fallacy, and a dangerous one at that. If I cannot prove that I am related to anyone else on the planet, it does not follow that I must be related to you. > E.g., contrary to what many Hungarian scholars have often asserted, > Hungarian is not (closely) related to Turkic because it is more > closely related to Finnish and the rest of Uralic. But of course > this only allows us to argue about relative degrees of relatedness. > We cannot in principle argue against the relatedness of Hungarian to > Turkic, becuse Uralic as a whole might be related to Turkic. Agreed, but not the same point. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tue Feb 17 17:31:21 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 12:31:21 EST Subject: Alexis' methodological points (was: Linguistic classification) In-Reply-To: from "Ralf-Stefan Georg" at Feb 16, 98 03:26:25 pm Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Stefan Georg writes: > NOW: before Alexis slaughters me: of course, a scenario is > thinkable, where original relationship (i.e. *identity*) first led > to dissolution of an original parent language (*increasing* > "differences"), and *later* convergent processes might have > happened, which have led to the observable processes (after all, the > Balkans area is made up of languages, which are related). Indeed, and this scenario is not rare at all. Iceland was chiefly settled by Norwegians, and so we might expect that a family tree should show Norwegian as closest to Icelandic. But most family trees don't: instead, they show Norwegian as most closely related to Danish and Swedish. That's because, since the settlement, Norwegian has both diverged from Icelandic and converged strongly with its continental neighbors. Hence a typical family trees displays the result of convergence, and not the historical relationships. Likewise, the Valencian variety of Catalan has been converging strongly upon Castilian Spanish for generations, and in many respects is now more similar to Castilian than to its historically closer relative, the Catalan of Barcelona. A few more generations of this, and we might start revising our family trees to reflect the new reality. [snip] > But, *given* all those methodological/epistemological precautions - > and I feel they are pretty trivial - should we not be allowed to > call A and B "unrelated" (i.e. of course *heuristically* unrelated > *for the time being*) as long as we are not convinced of the merits > of any claim to the contrary which happens to be on the market ? I for one say "yes". Hock and Joseph prefer "unrelatable" to "unrelated", and I myself often write "not discoverably related". But why shouldn't we just say "unrelated" and be aware of what we mean? > When some non-linguist asks me what Basque might be related to, I > invariably answer "to nothing else", since that is the state of the > art as of now. I'm not claiming at the same time that this is > *impossible* to change some day. Should I really enumerate all the > hypotheses re: Basque, labelling them as "yet unproven", if asked > such a question ? Amen. [snip] Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From manaster at umich.edu Tue Feb 17 17:30:17 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 12:30:17 EST Subject: Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am pleased that Larry agrees with most of what I said, and so I hasten to correct sthg I said where he justly takes me to task. I do not assume that all lgs are related and I accept that one can criticize successfully a given proposal for a linguistic relationship (as Larry has done for most Basque-X ones), BUT what I mean is that we stil do NOT know that Basque is not related to Turkish or Hebrew or whatever, merely that it is not so related IN THE PARTICULAR WAY proposed by some particular authors. It might still be distantly related to ALL or SOME of them in some totally unsuspected way, as Larry himself points out I think. All I mean then is that if we know that X and Y are relatively closely related, then we know that X is not related any more clsoely to W, as in my Hungarian-Turkish-Finnish example, so that the only way X could be related to W would be if W is also related to Y. That is all. The crucial point, of course, is that there is a diffrence between refuting a particular proposal for a given relationship (which is often easy) and refuting the relationship itself (which is generally impossible, excpet in the relative sense noted). In fact, maybe if we used the terms 'asbolute' and 'relative' we could get things straight. There is generally no accepted way of refuting absolute relatedness but there IS an accepted way of refuring claims of relative relatedness. That is my basic point. AMR On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > > [snip] > > > Note III: It seems to me that it follows from this that the only way > > to argue against a relationship at all would be to demonstrate a > > DIFFERENT relationship. > > Absolutely not. This is Merritt Ruhlen's position, and it is > indefensible. Such a conclusion follows *only* if we assume at the > outset that *all* languages are related -- and who in his right mind > wants to do that? > > > I must say that I consider Note III to be a fallacy, and a dangerous > one at that. If I cannot prove that I am related to anyone else on > the planet, it does not follow that I must be related to you. > > > E.g., contrary to what many Hungarian scholars have often asserted, > > Hungarian is not (closely) related to Turkic because it is more > > closely related to Finnish and the rest of Uralic. But of course > > this only allows us to argue about relative degrees of relatedness. > > We cannot in principle argue against the relatedness of Hungarian to > > Turkic, becuse Uralic as a whole might be related to Turkic. > > Agreed, but not the same point. From cravens at macc.wisc.edu Wed Feb 18 14:23:53 1998 From: cravens at macc.wisc.edu (Thomas D. Cravens) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:23:53 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Stefan Georg writes: >[snip] > >> But, *given* all those methodological/epistemological precautions - >> and I feel they are pretty trivial - should we not be allowed to >> call A and B "unrelated" (i.e. of course *heuristically* unrelated >> *for the time being*) as long as we are not convinced of the merits >> of any claim to the contrary which happens to be on the market ? And Larry Trask responds: >I for one say "yes". Hock and Joseph prefer "unrelatable" to >"unrelated", and I myself often write "not discoverably related". But >why shouldn't we just say "unrelated" and be aware of what we mean? Because 1) it's less transparently precise than "not presently relatable" or "not discoverably related", thus 2) not everyone will be aware of what we mean, students especially. Students, even fairly sophisticated ones at higher levels, misinterpret things even when (senior people think) they're stated clearly. And senior people mistinterpret things from time to time when the writing isn't crystal clear. I try to convince students that they should say what they mean and mean what they say, and that they should expect that the work they read is constructed with the same care. I think their academic elders owe it to them, as well as to peers, to live up to the bargain. Sorry; obvious and off the point, but I couldn't resist--I think I've read too many dissertations in the last few months, and had too many fits of "is that *really* what so-and-so said?!" Tom Cravens University of Wisconsin-Madison cravens at macc.wisc.edu From manaster at umich.edu Fri Feb 20 21:34:11 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 16:34:11 EST Subject: Wald on Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Friend Wald writes (i.a.): Are there any generalizations about where the attempts to unite groups of languages tend to become problematic? What are the arguments we can dismiss (typological ones? areal ones?) Which ones are generally bothersome because we don't know quite how to deal with them? Can we get further than: NOT ENOUGH DATA (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?) CAN'T TELL BORROWINGS FROM INHERITANCES BASIC VOCABULARY CHANCE RESEMBLANCES MULTIPLE SOURCES (end of quote) I could not disagree more. The "biggie" involves one of the biggest myths in linguistics. Although I hope that a paper with my name among several others on it will some day appear detailing this whole sordid mess, for now I will ask those of you who trust my competence in the relevant areas (i.e., baby mathematics and history of linguistics) that (a) the vast majority of publications claiming some such limit on time depth contain not even a shred of the required documentation that such limit exists or that it is what they claim it is, (b) that the works that tried to do the math required to demonstrate such a limit (the earliest of which that I know of was believe it or not by Swadesh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are mathematically invalid, and (c) that the only competent work on the subject that I have been able to find is, I am afraid, the unpublished work by my coauthors and me, so that if there is a limit, you will have to either find it or ask us (:-). As to the other points, I will just say briefly that the real issue is not whether we can tell borrowings from cognates etc. but whether IN EACH INDIVDUAL CASE you accept the proposals of X, Y, or Z linguist. And since the same person may use different methods at different times or in different cases, you cannot even generalize that you will or will not accept anything proposed by, say, Sapir or Greenberg or Kroeber or Swadesh or Hamp. F.e., everybody accepts Kroeber and Sapir's Uto-Aztecan and large parts (though not all!) of Greenberg's African classification, but hardly anyone (maybe no one at all) accepts Sapir's Hokan-Siouan or his tentative assignment of Zuni to Azteco-Tanoan. Likewise, a lot of people agree with Hamp that Altaic is right, but does anyone accept his compariosn of Hattic with IE? Even in the case of Swadesh, most of whose proposals almost no one accepts or even accepted, it is undeniable thathe caouthored the proof of Eskimo-Aleut, and his proposals for linking EA with Chukchi-Kamchatkan has at least been accepted by Hamp. Of course, there are some people who do not accept anything that I myself have proposed or endorsed, apparently as a matter of policy, but even they I hope will reconsider when I announce my whole-hearted support for the Indo-European hypothesis (incl. in particular Armenian). AMR From manaster at umich.edu Fri Feb 20 21:33:41 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 16:33:41 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision In-Reply-To: <28021720194502@vms2.macc.wisc.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I obviously agree with Tom Cravens. Indeed why would anyone WANT to say that Basque is "unrelated" to any other language rather than "not known to be related"? In no other science or branch of mathematics that I am familiar with do people go out of their way to make this kind of a jump. The proposition that P equals NP is not known to be true or false, and no computer scientist feels compelled to say that P does NOT equal NP (though I think most of us (a clarification for those who do not know: for the last decade I have been teaching theoretical etc. computer science)) suspect that they are unequal). It is one thing to note that once upon a time most linguists said things like this. It is quite another for anyone TODAY, when we know better, to say it. As for the substantive questions Stefan Georg raises, esp. as they relate to Altaic, lete me say first of all for the sake of everybody else here, that Stefan and I (and two other people) are the coauthors of a long forthcoming (and long!) paper on the history and present state of Altaic studies, in which we do a lot of things, but mainly point out that all existing arguments against Altaic are incompetent or worse, that all statements (by friend Nichols and others) claiming that Altaic is no longer widely accepted are incorrect, and that the current state of Altaic reconstructioon offered by the proponents of Altaic is unsatisfactory on a number of points. We do not go further because Stefan is apparently as strongly interested in purusing the possibility that Altaic is spurious after all and offering a real account of how Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese could have borrowed instead of inheriting the things which the proponents of Altaic take as evidence of kindiship as I am convinced that he would do better to work on improving the Altaic reconstruction and testing the theory that Altaic in turn is related to Uralic, IE, Yukagir, etc. In the meantime, of course, we serve as a reminded that it IS possible for people to disagree civilly and constructuvely about whether a given group of languages are related and at the same time to agree about lots of other things, incl. methodology. Now, as to the specific points Stefan is raising, I think the reasonable thing for me to say is that in order to refute the case for Altaic, one could logically do as Larry Trask has done for Basque, i.e., show thatthe arguments FOR Altaic have been incompetent. I dont think this canbe done, and I dont think Stefan thinks it can be done either (since I dont think this wouldbe consistent withwhat we say in our joint paper). If I am right, then the situation with Altaic is radically different from that with regard to Basque-Hebrew or Turkish-Hungarian theories. And if so, then indeed Stefan or anyone else who wnats to refute Altaic would have to come up with much more, indeed it would be logically like trying to refute Afro-Asiatic or Uto-Aztecan, that is, a theory which is reasonably well argued and reasonably widely accepted. So, I still say that when a relationship is proposed, the burden of proof is on the proponents, the opponents need do no more than show that teh burden has not been met (most obviously by showing that the work is incompetent). One however a case is presented which stands up well to whatever criticisms have been offered, then it obviously becomes much more difficult, though not impossible, to reject the putative relationship--and the more strongly that it is argued and the more widely that is accepted by competent scholars, the more work will be required to refute it. Hence, in the case of Basque-anything I would say the burden is entirely on the proponents of such relationships, in the case of Uto-Aztecan or Afroasiatic, just as obviously it is on the opponents (there are none in the case of UA that I know of but believe it or not there seem to be some in teh case of AA). In the case of Altaic (like Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Penutian), it seems that the situation is a little less clear, but the burden is mostly on the opponents. AND it is crucial to note that since 1956 or so teh opponents of ALtaic have accepted this disadvantageous position and done so very loudly and emphatically. AMR From johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu Sat Feb 21 17:19:39 1998 From: johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:19:39 EST Subject: Alexis on Wald on Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alexis Manaster Ramer writes: >I could not disagree more. The "biggie" involves one of the >biggest myths in linguistics. Although I hope that a paper >with my name among several others on it will some day appear >detailing this whole sordid mess, for now I will ask those of >you who trust my competence in the relevant areas (i.e., >baby mathematics and history of linguistics) that (a) the >vast majority of publications claiming some such limit on >time depth contain not even a shred of the required documentation >that such limit exists or that it is what they claim it is, >(b) that the works that tried to do the math required to >demonstrate such a limit (the earliest of which that I know of >was believe it or not by Swadesh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are mathematically >invalid [...] (a) Documentation is not required. Here's the argument: Of the language families that are both demonstrated and reconstructed (or reconstructable, i.e. having regular correspondences and cognates), none are older than about 6000 years. In a very few cases the fortunate combination of a distinctive and durable grammatical signature enables us to demonstrate relatedness farther back than we can reconstruct; the clearest case is Afroasiatic. This is why I usually use language like "the diagnostic evidence usually fades out after about 6000 years" and "we can reach back some 6000 years and occasionally somewhat farther, perhaps to 10,000 years". (b) The idea of trying to prove this mathematically strikes me as misguided; it's just an empirical observation. If proven and reconstructed (or reconstructable) families distinctly older than 6000 years start showing up I'll change my estimate accordingly, and I assume others will too. I know that works exist in which correspondences and/or reconstructions are proposed for families supposedly much older than 6000 years, but I haven't seen any demonstration that the resemblances fall outside the expected chance range. Demonstrating relatedness means showing that the resemblances are highly unlikely to be due to chance (or to borrowing or universals, though all linguists know how to avoid these) and highly likely to be due to common descent. This view (which I believe is widespread) does not carry the burden of proof. The burden of proof is on Alexis: if you maintain there are genetic groupings that are much older than 6000 years, proven, and reconstructable, please identify some and show what proves their relatedness. Johanna Nichols From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Sat Feb 21 17:24:32 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:24:32 EST Subject: Wald on Linguistic classification Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I read Alexis's respose to me with interest (naturally). I have to admit that I found his response to Tom Cravens at about the same time even more interesting, but I'd like to clarify the difference between my position and the one which AMR uses my message to attack. Quoting from my message, he writes: >Friend Wald writes (i.a.): (uh oh, I thought. I'm not a Quaker. How come he's not calling me Benji, like everybody else does? As a linguist I am interested in such rhetorical ploys. My heart sank when in his message re: Cravens he referred to "friend Nichols", since her relayed information about the status of Altaic antagonized him. So what did *I* do? AMR quoting me continues...) >Are there any generalizations about where the attempts to unite groups of >languages tend to become problematic? What are the arguments we can >dismiss (typological ones? areal ones?) Which ones are generally >bothersome because we don't know quite how to deal with them? > >Can we get further than: > >NOT ENOUGH DATA (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?) >CAN'T TELL BORROWINGS FROM INHERITANCES >BASIC VOCABULARY >CHANCE RESEMBLANCES >MULTIPLE SOURCES >(end of quote) To which Scott DeLancey added: "not enough specialists to deal with all the relevant data". So now to get to AMR's point: >I could not disagree more. The "biggie" involves one of the >biggest myths in linguistics. ....this whole sordid mess, for now I will >ask those of >you who trust my competence in the relevant areas (i.e., >baby mathematics and history of linguistics) that (a) the >vast majority of publications claiming some such limit on >time depth contain not even a shred of the required documentation >that such limit exists or that it is what they claim it is, >(b) that the works that tried to do the math required to >demonstrate such a limit (the earliest of which that I know of >was believe it or not by Swadesh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are mathematically >invalid, and (c) that the only competent work on the subject that >I have been able to find is, I am afraid, the unpublished work >by my coauthors and me, so that if there is a limit, you will >have to either find it or ask us (:-). I don't mind Alexis using my >NOT ENOUGH DATA (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?) to criticize speculative theories which try to "prove" that relationships beyond a certain time-depth will remain undemonstrable. I don't think such theories are any more interesting or sound than glottochronological theories. So, for one thing, I want to make it clear that I am not endorsing such theories, and did not even have them in mind (so, maybe I can be "Benji" again, instead of "Friend"). Instead I had in mind the use of "time-depth" and "not-enough data (left)" as excuses for doing inconclusive work in reconstruction and demonstrating relationship. It's not about some abstract theory. It's about: how come everybody accepts Indo-European but not Altaic? Is it the nature of the data or what? Is there enough data to do an "Indo-European" on Altaic? Does anyone say no, and try to explain why on the basis of time-depth? Should there be any problem in doing this, or is it "reasonable" to consider such an argument for establishing a relationship on evidence which does not attain the standards set for Indo-European (and met for some other language families)? Now this question is addressed to AMR as well as anybody else. My position is -- and this goes for Indo-European too -- that we want to *raise* the standards for demonstrating "genetic relationship", NOT *lower* them, so that we can better understand the real implications of "genetic relationship" and the principles of linguistic change (of which "genetic relationship" and its implied "internal linguistic change" is but a part). Alexis continues: As to the other points, >I will just say briefly that the real issue is not whether we >can tell borrowings from cognates etc. but whether IN EACH >INDIVDUAL CASE you accept the proposals of X, Y, or Z linguist. No. I don't agree. This does not go far enough, and it dismisses the legitimate, even inevitable, issue of borrowings vs. cognates. There is no disagreement that both such things exist. On what basis should I accept the proposals of linguist X, Y or Z. Is the implication that that's why we universally accept Indo-European but not Altaic? Because we're victims of some authority-complex? I wouldn't agree that this is why there's a difference in acceptance of the two theories. (Though I would agree that it's why most of us accept that the earth goes around the sun, and not vice-versa, among other irrelevancies.) AMR goes on: >And since the same person may use different methods at different >times or in different cases, you cannot even generalize that you >will or will not accept anything proposed by, say, Sapir or Greenberg >or Kroeber or Swadesh or Hamp. Right. So what I want to know is what are these METHODS that one *will* accept, and what or where do they have limitations? Enough with the innuenedos about personalities and politics. We are fortunate to have a pretty democratic list here, where AMR's views are certainly no less privileged in getting through to the readership than anybody else's. Let's stick with that and make some progress. AMR goes on at length to give numerous examples where the same linguist has made some claim that is generally accepted and some other claim that is generally rejected, relevant to classification. But there was nothing in that list of examples about METHODS, or what the problems are. AMR's message only touches on what the (methodological) problems are NOT. I asked" "what ARE the problems?" I still want to know. I repeat MY question, quoted by AMR above: >Are there any generalizations about where the attempts to unite groups of >languages tend to become problematic? (By the way, What's the issue AMR alluded to with Armenian? Or was that a joke I didn't get?) As long as I'm at it, I'd like to ask some questions about AMR's message in response to Tom Cravens. AMR writes: >So, I still say that when a relationship is proposed, the burden of proof is on the proponents, the opponents need do no more than show that teh burden has not been >met (most obviously by showing that the work is incompetent). I'm not sure where the line is between "obviously" incompetent work and unsound (or "speculative") scholarship. For example, since I know Bantu I can recognize when somebody incompetently make a wrong morpheme cut to offer a cognate with some other language group, but I don't even have to know anything about Basque and Caucasian to stop reading a book that starts off trying to relate the two by arguing that since "man" has free-will, any consonant in Basque can unconditionally correspond to any consonant in "Caucasian" (I'm thinking of an actual case, though I'm not sure the languages were Basque and "Caucasian" -- nor does it matter.) Obviously, what AMR says here becomes more interesting where things are NOT "most obvious(ly)". AMR continues: On[c]e however a case is presented which stands up well to whatever criticisms have been offered, then it obviously becomes much more difficult, though not impossible, to reject the putative relationship What does "stands up well" mean? Like Indo-European? Not THAT well? HOW well? What are the standards for "stands up well". --and the more strongly that it is argued and the more widely that is accepted by competent scholars, the more work will be required to refute it. I guess "strongly argued" and "accepted by *competent* scholars" inevitably coincide. Nevetheless, I remain more interested in the crtieria for "strongly argued". Finally, AMR gets to his main point, which is to shift the burden of proof from one side to the other: Hence, in the case of Basque-anything I would say the burden is entirely on the proponents of such relationships, in the case of Uto-Aztecan or Afroasiatic, [Benji, HERE IT COMES] just as obviously it is on the opponents (there are none in the case of UA that I know of but believe it or not there seem to be some in teh case of AA). Why not use Indo-European as the example of a non-controversial family? Is any reader unfamiliar with the basis for it? The same is not true of any other language family, regardless of the fact that historical accident of the development of the discipline is involved in this state of affairs. In the case of Altaic (like Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Penutian), it seems that the situation is a little less clear, but the burden is mostly on the opponents. I don't understand the implications of "mostly". The argument is unsatisfactory with respect to clarity. What about "leastly"? What responsibility remains to the proponents of Altaic (cf. below)? AND it is crucial to note that since 1956 or so teh opponents of ALtaic have accepted this disadvantageous position and done so very loudly and emphatically. No. I don't agree that that's crucial. That does not concern me AT ALL in trying to understanding the issues involved in what the problems ARE with Altaic. NB, even Indo-European has problems, how many "laryngeals" -- in which words -- etc etc. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Sat Feb 21 17:25:18 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:25:18 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision In-Reply-To: from "manaster@umich.edu" at Feb 20, 98 04:33:41 pm Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alexis writes: > I obviously agree with Tom Cravens. Indeed why would > anyone WANT to say that Basque is "unrelated" to any > other language rather than "not known to be related"? > In no other science or branch of mathematics that I > am familiar with do people go out of their way to > make this kind of a jump. The proposition that P equals > NP is not known to be true or false, and no computer > scientist feels compelled to say that P does NOT equal > NP (though I think most of us (a clarification for those > who do not know: for the last decade I have been > teaching theoretical etc. computer science)) suspect > that they are unequal). It is one thing to note that > once upon a time most linguists said things like this. > It is quite another for anyone TODAY, when we know > better, to say it. To be honest, I do not see this as a problem. When I say that two languages are "unrelated", I expect everybody in the business to understand that I am asserting that there exists no evidence of a relationship, and not that I am asserting that the languages go back to independent inventions of human speech in our dim prehistory. Life is just easier if we use one word instead of five words. Such usages are in no way a foible of linguists. When I say that I am unrelated to you, I expect everyone to understand only that I know of no link between you and me, and not that I am claiming we belong to separate species. When we are writing textbooks for beginners, we must be careful to explain that "unrelated" means "not discoverably related" or "not known to be related", sure. But, among ourselves, why can't we just use the shorter form? Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From Georg at home.ivm.de Sat Feb 21 17:27:28 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:27:28 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I obviously agree with Tom Cravens. Indeed why would >anyone WANT to say that Basque is "unrelated" to any >other language rather than "not known to be related"? This, for sure, is an acceptable compromise wording in every case. My point with the "heuristically related" thing - quite the same - was mainly that every science which has developed means/strategies/procedures to say "yes" should be able to find some way of saying "no" in a well-defined and meaningful way as well. >As for the substantive questions Stefan Georg raises, >esp. as they relate to Altaic, lete me say first of >all for the sake of everybody else here, that Stefan >and I (and two other people) are the coauthors of a >long forthcoming (and long!) paper on the history and >present state of Altaic studies, in which we do >a lot of things, but mainly point out that all >existing arguments against Altaic are incompetent >or worse, This is correct, and I have no reason to deny or conceal this. Most attacks on Altaic, when they tried to bring principled arguments on "what related languages really should look like and why Altaic doesn't exactly look like that" into the discussion were seriously misguided for the most part and actually didn't help the Anti-Altaic cause. . We >do not go further because Stefan is apparently as strongly >interested in purusing the possibility that Altaic is >spurious after all and offering a real account of how >Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese could >have borrowed instead of inheriting the things which >the proponents of Altaic take as evidence of kindiship You'll not be able to describe the histories of these languages without paying attention to massive borrowing processes, every single responsible Altaicist said and says so. Yet they are rarely investigated, despite some lip-service. First the chaff has to be sorted out, which is hard and sometimes boring work. What will be left will be the real nuggets. I don't deny that they exist, but I reserve the right for pessimism for the time being. And, there is not only the issue of borrowing, but also the pseudo-existence of comparanda, as e.g. Tibetan loan-words in Gansu-Mongolian, artificial neologisms in literary Manchu, hapaxlegomena in hardly readable Yenissey-Turkic inscriptions, wrong segmentations of polysyllabic words with sometimes clear, sometimes not-so-clear, morphological elements, rearranged and re-segmented for better comparative performance, sound-laws with some seemingly bearable examples (defended like the crown-jewels) and more perfect counter-examples (sneered at), pseudo-morphemes quoted by author after author throughout the decades, but, when checked, turning out to be based on nothing more than a reading-error by the original "detector" who admittedly is unable to read Old Turkic in Uighur script, yet goes by the name of "Altaicist" and has the nerve to call others "Anti-Altaicists" (i.e. those who *can* read the documents), the declaration of the most difficult problems in, say, Turkic historical phonology as simply "solved", without supporting discussion, and sometimes not displaying a basic familiarity with the history of the question, waving away all possible problems as "cooked up", "invented" or "psychologically motivated" (all real quotes !). All this (and much more) *does* play a role in proposed Altaic etymologies, and what is more, this stuff is to found (my personal opinion: in abundance) in contributions directed at the more general public, where, in sometimes unbearable tones of haughtiness and assumed authority, every possible remaining sceptic is described as someone barely short of being fit for the straightjacket. This is the most accurate and impartial (;-) description of the field as of now, which I can possibly offer. As I said, stuff like this plays a role, how big and important that role is, has to be seen, I admit that I may be too much determined to see the dark stains on the Altaic shirt, rather than the white linen beneath. But I'm sure that any honest and responsable believer should greet every effort to clean that shirt. Someone has to do it, or Altaic linguistics will be a forgotten curiosity in a few decades. >as I am convinced that he would do better to work on >improving the Altaic reconstruction I've tried. But how come that every time I look at one etymological proposal for longer than twenty minutes, it falls to pieces under my sore eye ? Take the "every" cum grano salis, I don't doubt that there are goodies, but which ones may some day qualify for that epithet is still totally unclear to me. Altaic linguistics is difficult. In the meantime, of course, we serve >as a reminded that it IS possible for people to >disagree civilly and constructuvely about whether >a given group of languages are related and at the >same time to agree about lots of other things, incl. >methodology. Only this can bring the Altaic "civil-war" (Ruhlen's quote) eventually to an end and turn it into a "debate". We have gone far on this way, let's continue. >Now, as to the specific points Stefan is raising, >I think the reasonable thing for me to say is that >in order to refute the case for Altaic, one could >logically do as Larry Trask has done for Basque, i.e., >show thatthe arguments FOR Altaic have been incompetent. >I dont think this canbe done, and I dont think Stefan >thinks it can be done either (since I dont think this >wouldbe consistent withwhat we say in our joint paper). It will of course be impossible for me to maintain the methodologically unsound positions of most prominent Anti-Altaicists which we, I think, were able to successfully deconstruct, and I won't. They stood in the way of a reasoned approach to the issue *from both sides*, and I'm glad that we removed these obstacles for a new yet-to-invent "Altaic linguistics". It's data-handling I'm interested in now, that's where the problems remain, much to my regret. >If I am right, then the situation with Altaic is >radically different from that with regard to >Basque-Hebrew or Turkish-Hungarian theories. And >if so, then indeed Stefan or anyone else who wnats >to refute Altaic would have to come up with much >more, True, it won't be easy and I'm fully aware that I may fail in the end. But what does "fail" mean ? Maybe not all the etymologies proposed so far can be demasked as spurious for some of the reasons mentioned above, and the rest boiled down to borrowings. Then, everything which remains can be said to have stood up against really determined scrutiny. It will be the *real* Altaic stuff. Nothing to be afraid of, at least for me. (At this time I should insert a disclaimer that I don't regard my own competence and qualification for this as unquestionably high enough for doing this singlehandedly, especially since I have not written up anything on it so far; I'm only trying to speak for all those who might share my experience with Altaic with all its ups and downs). Maybe it is not altogether unimportant here to state that I (as I would hope for others, as well) *don't care* (in terms of personal interest) whether there is an Altaic family or not. That is, the ultimate question, whether on our linguistic maps a big blue area has to be painted from Anatolia to Japan, labelled Altaic, or whether three or five (or four ...) colors will have to be used for this, is not of primary importance for me; what I'm interested in is *what happened in history* to those languages, what made them look like they do (similar at times, seemingly irreconcilably different at others), how can phenomena of the most diverse kind found in them be *explained* ? Part of the answers to this array of heterogenous, yet interrelated questions, may be "Altaic" in nature, other parts clearly not. The question of Altaic thus is an ancillary question for me only. Does the assumption help to understand why Tungus is like it is ? Welcome, Altaic. If not, what do we lose if we quite simply throw it away ? I'll certainly lose nothing, as well as I don't think I'll jump out of the window if I finally will have to swallow Altaic. In the meantime, I simply ask the Altaicists: tell me something interesting and potentially useful about Mongolian! It is not unimportant to note that the Indo-European story was a story of success, *because* it had interesting and definitely useful things to tell the Hellenicists about Greek, helping them to understand Greek better. >So, I still say that when a relationship is proposed, >the burden of proof is on the proponents, the opponents >need do no more than show that teh burden has not been >met (most obviously by showing that the work is incompetent). >One however a case is presented which stands up well to >whatever criticisms have been offered, then it obviously >becomes much more difficult, though not impossible, to >reject the putative relationship--and the more strongly >that it is argued and the more widely that is accepted >by competent scholars, the more work will be required to >refute it. I can agree wholeheartedly. Georg's conjecture: "Altaic is difficult, Anti-Altaic doubly so". > Hence, in the case of Basque-anything I would >say the burden is entirely on the proponents of such >relationships, in the case of Uto-Aztecan or Afroasiatic, >just as obviously it is on the opponents (there are none >in the case of UA that I know of but believe it or not >there seem to be some in teh case of AA). In the case of >Altaic (like Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Penutian), it seems >that the situation is a little less clear, but the burden >is mostly on the opponents. AND it is crucial to note that >since 1956 or so teh opponents of ALtaic have accepted this >disadvantageous position and done so very loudly and emphatically. The boat is getting empty, Janhunen has advocated Mong.-Tung. recently ("Khinganic"), so has Johanna Nichols on this list (whether based on Janhunen's observations or on own ones, remains unclear, though, but I'm looking forward to any publication on this issue), the remaining Anti-Altaicists of this planet can possibly comfortly convene in the room I'm currently sitting in (18 square meters) to conspire on the next major nihilist plot ... OK, I'll shut up here, next thing to do will be to put up. Alexis has once diagnosed that "deep inside I love the Altaic theory"; there's certainly a lot of truth in that, but so far I failed to make the Altaic theory to love me too (and showing this by doing to me things I like !). Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From manaster at umich.edu Sat Feb 21 17:32:05 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:32:05 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask writes (i.a.): "Such usages are in no way a foible of linguists. When I say that I am unrelated to you, I expect everyone to understand only that I know of no link between you and me, and not that I am claiming we belong to separate species." Hah! Find me a biologist who will say that we are not related. Larry is confusing here a man-in-the-street usage with scientific usage. As I say, would he be happy if a mathematician or computer scientist were to say to say that the classes P and NP are not equal merely because we do not know that they are? From manaster at umich.edu Sat Feb 21 17:32:38 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 12:32:38 EST Subject: minor quibble: the value of precision In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I have little to add to Stefan Georg's posting on the Altaic problem. We will for a time at least disagree about how likely he is to find anything to indicate that the Altaic connections are really spurious or borrowing-based, but once he is done with his digging, I am pretty sure one of us will concede. Again, since we seem to agree on methods, I dont think we can possibly say much more w/o LOOKING AT ACTUAL DATA, something we both of course love to do (though Stefan knows the Altaic data far better than I do, of course) but which for some reasons, unlike in every other science, the vast majority of historical linguistics who claim the right to pass judgement on such theories seem not to want to do. AMR From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Sun Feb 22 02:20:55 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 21:20:55 EST Subject: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > refute it. Hence, in the case of Basque-anything I would > say the burden is entirely on the proponents of such > relationships, in the case of Uto-Aztecan or Afroasiatic, > just as obviously it is on the opponents (there are none > in the case of UA that I know of but believe it or not > there seem to be some in teh case of AA). In the case of > Altaic (like Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Penutian), it seems > that the situation is a little less clear, but the burden > is mostly on the opponents. AND it is crucial to note that >From my sense of the Altaic situation neither analogy is precise (are they ever?), but Penutian is closer. As far as I know, the only contemporary challenge to Sino-Tibetan (i.e. the hypothesis of a genetic relationship between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman) is a recent suggestion, due to Laurent Sagart, that Chinese is "really" related to Austronesian and (therefor) not to T-B. (A number of Chinese scholars maintain the otherwise unfashionable hypothesis that Kadai (= Kam-Tai) is related to S-T, but this is in addition to Chinese-TB, not an alternate hypothesis). As far as I know, hardly anyone besides Sagart takes this very seriously (there's been serious work done for a generation now documenting Austronesian and Austroasiatic *loan* vocabulary in Chinese; there's not much reason to think that Sagart has anything new beyond this). That is to say, at present Sino-Tibetan has no serious public opponents; if any such should want to come forward, the burden of proof would be entirely on them to justify their opposition. Penutian, of course, is an entirely different kettle of correspondences. Some subparts of it are well-established--no one disputes Utian (= Miwok-Costanoan), an excellent and, to my mind, indisputable case has now been made (by Catherine Callaghan and Geoff Gamble and, inadvertently, Marvin Kramer) that Utian and Yokuts are related, and lately even Ives Goddard has publicly accepted Plateau Penutian (= Klamath-Sahaptian- Molala). Beyond this the evidence is much more fragmentary. I have a nice (though not very long) list of impressive (IMO) correlations between Klamath and Yokuts, which by the logic of transitivity gives us Yok-Utian :: Plateau; there are detailed correspondences between the pronominal systems of Klamath and Wintu, and Stefan Liedtke has an interesting list of Klamath-Wintu lexical sets, so, again by the logic of transitivity, another language is tied in. Some interesting structural parallels suggest that Takelma links to Yokuts; other lexical and grammatical evidence ties Takelma to the Coast languages (Coosan, Siuslaw, Alsea), though this evidence is not of the same order as that linking Yokuts and Utian; Tarpent now presents nice evidence that Tsimshianic is related to the Coast languages (with intriguing bits and pieces corresponding nicely to other Penutian languages). But obviously this sort of piecemeal argument is going to meet resistance from more conservative scholars, and sure there's something to be said for holding off final endorsement of a family until some family- wide correspondences are established. Not that there's no such evidence at all--Dell Hymes has presented a number of lexical sets which span the family, and there are a few other items which show up in many of the languages, crossing the possible boundaries suggested in my previous paragraph. But to be perfectly honest--though I myself am an enthusiastic proponent of Penutian--I'm not sure one could say at present that the burden of proof in this matter lies predominantly with either proponents or detractors. There's been enough evidence produced that detractors would need to have a story to tell about it, but not enough yet that honest detractors would necessarily have to feel they are facing an uphill battle. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From manaster at umich.edu Sun Feb 22 02:22:04 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 21:22:04 EST Subject: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Scott Delancey writes: But to be perfectly honest--though I myself am an enthusiastic proponent of Penutian--I'm not sure one could say at present that the burden of proof in this matter lies predominantly with either proponents or detractors. There's been enough evidence produced that detractors would need to have a story to tell about it, but not enough yet that honest detractors would necessarily have to feel they are facing an uphill battle. (end of quote) I have nothing against this. In fact, I should have but did not realize that if indeed there is a continuum between cases like Basque-Turkish (where clearly the burden of proof would be on the pros) and ones like Uto-aztecan (where it would have to be on the cons), then there must be cases in between where the burden is not clearly on one side or the other. The case of Altaic incidentally is quite clear because here historically its modern opponents (Clauson, Doerfer, etc.) have ENTHUSIASTICALLY accepted the burden of proof (specifically, of proving that it is all a matter of loanwords from Turkic into Mongolic and from Mongolic into Tungusic). Note 1: Mongolic is a term that was used in the 19th cent by Max Muller and which I have revived. Note 2: The opponents of Altaic have never to my knowledge addressed the question of Korean. As for Japanese, Doerfer and Janhunen seem to argue that its Altaic core is not due to borrowings but rather to coincidence. Note 3: Pace Benji Friend Wald, the cases of Altaic and IE are very similar, historically. The opposition to both arose in the same period of history (the 1930's) and involved similar arguments (compare Trubetzkoy on IER to Kotwicz on Altaic). Note 4: IE is not a very good standard by which to judge language families; nor has it been unchallenged in modern times (see Trubetzkoy and his followers again). Uto-aztecan is a far better standard and the one I always use. From vovin at hawaii.edu Sun Feb 22 14:35:58 1998 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (Alexander Vovin) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 09:35:58 EST Subject: Alexis on Wald on Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, Johanna Nichols wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Alexis Manaster Ramer writes: [on the lack of the documentation for the time limit] > > > (a) Documentation is not required. Here's the argument: Of the language > families that are both demonstrated and reconstructed (or reconstructable, > i.e. having regular correspondences and cognates), none are older than > about 6000 years. Hmmm... How do you arrive to an estimate of 6,000 years? You obviously do not base you calculations on glottochronology (in order to avoid unnecessary discussion I should say I don't believe in it either), but then what is your *objective* method of calculating time depth for established or reconstructed families? I am pretty much afraid that it is based on a guess-work, isn't it? In a very few cases the fortunate combination of a > distinctive and durable grammatical signature enables us to demonstrate > relatedness farther back than we can reconstruct; the clearest case is > Afroasiatic. This is why I usually use language like "the diagnostic > evidence usually fades out after about 6000 years" and "we can reach back > some 6000 years and occasionally somewhat farther, perhaps to 10,000 > years". > > (b) The idea of trying to prove this mathematically strikes me as > misguided; it's just an empirical observation. If proven and reconstructed > (or reconstructable) families distinctly older than 6000 years but you still haven't told us how you arrived at this time estimate... start > showing up I'll change my estimate accordingly, and I assume others will > too. > Therefore, we *must* first find this *objective* method of establishing time depths for given families. Otherwise it is a perfect case of circular logic: you come up with a hypothesis that all established families are no older than 6,000 years (why not 6,600 or 7,000?), and on the basis of this *first hypothesis* you build the *next hypothesis* that there is such a limit. > I know that works exist in which correspondences and/or reconstructions are > proposed for families supposedly much older than 6000 years, but I haven't > seen any demonstration that the resemblances fall outside the expected > chance range. I believe that most people would *guess* that Sino-Tibetan is much older than 6,000, probably 8,000, and Austroasiatic would get quite the similar *guess-work* estimate. That gives us two more families besides Afroasiatic that you mentioned yourself. Not so bad for Eurasia, at least. But all these "estimates" are meaningless unless they are done on a solid methodological basis. Until this is done, it is pointless to argue about the existence of time limit. In this sense Alexis is absolutely right: how one can argue for a time limit while we cannot even to estimate age of the families on a scientific basis, on not on the basis "I-want-it-be-so". Demonstrating relatedness means showing that the > resemblances are highly unlikely to be due to chance (or to borrowing or > universals, though all linguists know how to avoid these) and highly likely > to be due to common descent. > This is quite a revolutionary definition of relatedness. I used to believe that relatedness is demonstrated by recurrent phonetic correspondences established on the basis of basic vocabulary and/or basic morphology, and I trust that all major families were done in this way without any appeal to "chance", as the very existence of this correspondences would rule out the "chance". > This view (which I believe is widespread) does not carry the burden of > proof. The burden of proof is on Alexis: if you maintain there are > genetic groupings that are much older than 6000 years, proven, and > reconstructable, please identify some and show what proves their > relatedness. > > Johanna Nichols > No, I believe that the burden is on you, because you have to demonstrate in the first place how you arrived to the estimate of 6,000 years. Sincerely, Alexander Vovin Associate Professor of Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures 382 Moore Hall 1890 East-West Road University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 vovin at hawaii.edu fax (808)956-9515 (o.) t.(808)956-6881 (o.) From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Sun Feb 22 23:14:18 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 18:14:18 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Alexander Vovin wrote: > Hmmm... How do you arrive to an estimate of 6,000 years? You obviously do > not base you calculations on glottochronology (in order to avoid > unnecessary discussion I should say I don't believe in it either), but > then what is your *objective* method of calculating time depth for > established or reconstructed families? I am pretty much afraid that it is > based on a guess-work, isn't it? Bravo! This cannot be said often or loudly enough. It is downright scandalous, this propensity linguists have for casually attaching dates to language families. We have no objective, operationalizable method for estimating time depths, and no excuse for claiming (or even imagining) that our eyeball estimates have any validity. > Therefore, we *must* first find this *objective* method of establishing > time depths for given families. This seems to be a long way off. (Does anyone have any idea where we could start?) And, after all that, let's argue about such a suggestion: > I believe that most people would *guess* that Sino-Tibetan is much older > than 6,000, probably 8,000, and Austroasiatic would get quite the similar > *guess-work* estimate. You're no doubt right about the preponderance of opinion, and some would certainly assert these guesses quite vehemently. In the case of Sino-Tibetan, however, there's lots of room for disagreement. (A-A indeed looks very old, but I don't know the family well enough to say much beyond that). Tibeto-Burman is a pretty diversified family, in the sense that it includes a large number of quite distinct languages, but not so distinct that it isn't fairly easy to recognize a T-B language when you see it. You don't get a lot of cognate grammar across T-B, which implies significant time depth; on the other hand, there's reason to think (from looking at languages with substantial history, like Tibetan, and relatively shallow sub- branches, like Lolo-Burmese) that grammatical machinery tends to develop and be replaced pretty quickly in these languages. Chinese and T-B, of course, are radically divergent, in structure as well as lexicon, and this is the primary argument for attributing great time depth to S-T. But there's good reason to think that the reason for this divergence is an extended period of intimate contact between pre-Chinese and indigenous languages in south China (Kadai was definitely a major factor, and A-A and Austronesian probably also involved). Massive areal influence of this kind can result in substantial changes in a language in a relatively short time. I have no basis on which to commit myself to one guess or another, but in my opinion it is not at all outside the realm of possibility that the time depth for S-T could be as little as 4-5,000 years. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From mcv at wxs.nl Mon Feb 23 13:25:01 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:25:01 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Scott DeLancey wrote: > Chinese and T-B, of course, are radically divergent, in structure >as well as lexicon, and this is the primary argument for attributing >great time depth to S-T. But there's good reason to think that >the reason for this divergence is an extended period of intimate >contact between pre-Chinese and indigenous languages in south China >(Kadai was definitely a major factor, and A-A and Austronesian >probably also involved). Massive areal influence of this kind can >result in substantial changes in a language in a relatively short >time. Yes, for Min, Cantonese, Hakka, etc. But how does that affect Mandarin? >I have no basis on which to commit myself to one guess or >another, but in my opinion it is not at all outside the realm of >possibility that the time depth for S-T could be as little as 4-5,000 >years. On the other hand, there is no reason to ignore recorded history, which would put the origins of the Shang dynasty c. 2,000 BC, or archaeology, which traces the Northern Chinese Neolithic (Yangshao) to c. 4,000 BC. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think of the start of the Yangshao culture as a terminus ante quem for the breakup of S-T, a minimum time-depth of 6,000 years. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Mon Feb 23 13:26:48 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:26:48 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: <34f1b8e1.8022436@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > Scott DeLancey wrote: > >great time depth to S-T. But there's good reason to think that > >the reason for this divergence is an extended period of intimate > >contact between pre-Chinese and indigenous languages in south China > >(Kadai was definitely a major factor, and A-A and Austronesian > >probably also involved). Massive areal influence of this kind can > >result in substantial changes in a language in a relatively short > >time. > > Yes, for Min, Cantonese, Hakka, etc. But how does that affect > Mandarin? Mandarin, except for a few creeping agglutinative tendencies (which Mantaro Hashimoto always attributed to Altaic influence) is a pretty typical Southeast Asian language, very similar in structure to Thai or Vietnamese. > >I have no basis on which to commit myself to one guess or > >another, but in my opinion it is not at all outside the realm of > >possibility that the time depth for S-T could be as little as 4-5,000 > >years. > > On the other hand, there is no reason to ignore recorded history, > which would put the origins of the Shang dynasty c. 2,000 BC, or > archaeology, which traces the Northern Chinese Neolithic (Yangshao) to > c. 4,000 BC. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think of the start of > the Yangshao culture as a terminus ante quem for the breakup of S-T, a > minimum time-depth of 6,000 years. Good point. Recorded history is of course inescapable, and that's why I set the minimum time depth at 4,000 BP. Archeology is always trickier, but it does give us something objective to hold on to. I agree that linking the formation of Chinese to Yangshao is not "unreasonable", and indeed is probably the best available hypothesis. I would still argue, though, that there's no compelling *linguistic* argument for insisting that PST must necessarily be that old. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From rscook at world.std.com Mon Feb 23 13:27:10 1998 From: rscook at world.std.com (Richard Cook) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:27:10 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again ... Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Sun, 22 Feb 1998 18:14:18 EST Scott DeLancey wrote: > On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Alexander Vovin wrote: > > Therefore, we *must* first find this *objective* method of establishing > > time depths for given families. > > This seems to be a long way off. (Does anyone have any idea where we > could start?) > Has anyone any thoughts on the work of geneticists such as Dr Luigi Luca CAVALLI-SFORZA at Stanford? Here are some links: http://lotka.stanford.edu/ http://www-leland.stanford.edu/group/morrinst/HGDP.html -- _____________________________ Richard S. COOK, Jr. Somerville, Massachusetts USA voice/fax: (617) 776-7271 mailto:rscook at world.std.com http://world.std.com/~rscook/ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>*<<<<<<<<<<<<<< From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Mon Feb 23 13:28:46 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:28:46 EST Subject: Alexis on Wald on Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: from "Alexander Vovin" at Feb 22, 98 09:35:58 am Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sasha Vovin writes: [replying to Johanna Nichols on relatedness] > This is quite a revolutionary definition of relatedness. I used to > believe that relatedness is demonstrated by recurrent phonetic > correspondences established on the basis of basic vocabulary and/or > basic morphology, and I trust that all major families were done in > this way without any appeal to "chance", as the very existence of > this correspondences would rule out the "chance". Well, I too would certainly like to believe that all recognized language families have been arrived at in this way. And some of them certainly have been: IE, Algonquian, Austronesian, to name a few. But others have not. Two that spring to mind are Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo. To the best of my information, recurrent correspondences in phonology and/or morphology have never been demonstrated for these families, and no significant reconstruction is available for Proto-AA or Proto-NC -- or, rather, none which has won any degree of general acceptance. Indeed, Bob Dixon has recently been complaining that the evidence available to support the African families generally, and Niger-Congo in particular, simply does not resemble the state of affairs that Sasha describes. Instead, it appears, the families are set up on the basis of a few recurring grammatical characteristics, characteristics which involve actual morphological material in the AA case but only typological features in the NC case. Dixon's main point is that, so far as he can discover, the evidence for NC, and possibly for other African families, is not distinguishable from the effects of millennia of diffusion across language boundaries. Are there any Africanists out there who can put Dixon's mind at rest? Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From manaster at umich.edu Mon Feb 23 19:56:48 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:56:48 EST Subject: Why IE is no paragon (WAS: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, bwald wrote (inter alia): > Why? What is wrong with the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which IE is based? > > What is DIFFERENT about the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which Uto-Aztecan is > based? > > In conjunction with the last question, why do you use a standard that is > much less widely known (conceding that your answer to the first and second > questions may be sufficient to answer the third question). Brilliant! But the first point is that IE is not really all that widely known: I am above all trying to combat the tendency of too many people to cite little undigested bits of IE they picked up from textbooks of Hist Lx w/o actually anything about IE and IE lx. If someone is really speaking with knowledge about IE, that's fine, of course,except that-- (a) IE journals historically have been very lax in what they publish, so that stuff that would never be published in other fields becomes public and makes the record both vast and essnetially meaningless, since EVERY craziness does get published. (b) This in turn means of course that the supposed methodological standards of IE only exist in some virtual sense, that is, in the sense that every IEnist learns to ignore most of the published stuff and somehow decides for him/herself what to pay attention to. But this is very tricky, because it is not a matter of public record. As far as what does get published, and even sometimes acceptedby at least some readers, it is plain that IEnist literature abounds in proposals far more fantastic than anything Greenberg or Ruhlen have ever suggested in their work. For in point of fact much IEnist work completely ignores the demands of regularity of sound change, semantic responsibility, etc. If anybody does not believe me, I can furnish some examples. (c) IE is atypical of the problems we face in comparrative and esp. classificatory lx because Proto-IE is reckoned by those who like to play with numbers (e.g., Watkins) to be less than 2000 years, maybe only 1000 years, older than the oldest attested languages (OLd Latin, Mycenean Greek, Hittite, Vedic, etc.), so it is a very YOUNG family. Almost every other nontrivial linguistic grouping involves much greater time depth. This in turn has all kinds of otehr implications. (d) IE is atypical also in the sense that it is one of the few lg families which was originally established largely if not wholly on the basis of MORHOLOGICAL parallels, rather than LEXICAL ones. Uto-Aztecan, Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, are all examples of the reverse (although Afro-Asiatic is like IE in this regard, I think). (e) Most of what passes for the lore of IE (this goes back to my first point) reflects only a part of IE (esp. the classical languages so-called and ignoring Anatolian, Albanian, etc.). For example, the familiar numerals 2-10 and kinship terms like pater, mater, etc., are indeed found in immediately recognizable form in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and in some recent languages (e.g., English and Persian), but the situation is more complicated if we really look at the fullr ange of IE data, e.g., in Albanian the cognate of mater means 'sister', in Anatolian the word for '4' is completely unrelated to quattuor, four, etc., and several of the numerals remain unknown, and so on. Indeed, very many traditionally posited IE etyma are certainly innovations of ceertain subrgoups only and not PIE at all, and on the other hand, a lot of what is classically felt tobe IE has been lost in certain languages. There is very little if any IE morphology in colloquial Sinhalese, for example. All of this is ignored by those who get their idea of IE from old-fashioned textbooks, which were written on thebasis of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrti with little bits of Lithuanian, early Germanic, and Slavic, basically, and which assumed that whatver is missing in Anatolian was lost there rather thanbeing an innvoation of the other languages (a debatable assumption) and ignored Albanian and even Armenian and largely Celtic. And even within the professional IE community, this problem is not really solved. Cowgill somewhere says explicitly that he did not know enough about some IE brnaches to make use ofthem, andthis is quite typical. At the same time, the problem of winnowing out things which are innocvations of some part of IE only is very far from being solved, in large measure because no one agress on the subclassification of IE. EX: many though not all IEnists would posit *mes as one of the 1st pers. nonsg. nom. pronouns of PIE, yet this is only attested in Baltic, Slavic, and Armenian, and if these three form a subgroup of IE (as I think) or even part of one (i.e., if they share an ancestror younger than PIE, which seems obvious, then *mes would not be PIE at all). And so on and so forth. In short, IE lx is not a model for comparative lx necessarily, and the IE family is much too shallow (because its oldest representatives are so anciently attested) to be a good model for other work in the field anyway. Of course, the BEST work on IE is awe-inspiring, but then so is the best work in any other language family--and work on much deeper families is I think more awe-inspiring still. > > (P.S. "Pace Benji Friend Wald..." AMR is being truculent or insensitive. > He should have realized from my last message that the "Friend" thing struck > me as condescending -- like a pat on the head. > You wanna explain the point of your rhetoric, AMR? ... I didn't think so.) > > NB. My point of view is that we're not "proving" or "disproving" > something. We're "testing" it. This is a very important point, which is lost on the extremists of both kinds in our field. AMR From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Mon Feb 23 17:04:57 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:04:57 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: <34f285f3.8458071@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > Scott DeLancey wrote: > >Mandarin, except for a few creeping agglutinative tendencies > >(which Mantaro Hashimoto always attributed to Altaic influence) > >is a pretty typical Southeast Asian language, very similar in > >structure to Thai or Vietnamese. > > What I meant was that if this is so, that would imply intimate contact > with indigenous languages already in *north* China [something which is > of course entirely plausible, despite the fact that none of these > indigenous languages have survived]. Unless Mandarin can somehow be > shown to have S. Chinese roots and not to be the direct continuation > in the North of "Shang Ur-Chinese". True, the geography, and what we know of the early history, get a little awkward here. But there's no way around the fact that all the Chinese languages, including Mandarin, are perfectly typical examples of the mainland Southeast Asian Sprachbund, with phonological, lexical and syntactic structures almost isomorphic with those of Tai and Vietnamese. The only plausible interpretation of this is that it is a result of contact. It may be relevant that Classical Chinese looks slightly less thoroughly SEAsian--it doesn't take its classifier system so seriously, and some people have detected what seem to be little traces of SOV patterning in it. And between then and now we have the Sui and Tang eras, in which there was certainly substantial southern influence on the national standard language. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca Mon Feb 23 16:54:49 1998 From: hale1 at alcor.concordia.ca (MARK ROBERT HALE) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:54:49 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Can I just ditto this -- as someone who simply took for granted for many years that the estimates thrown around for Indo-European and Austronesian (the two families I know best) actually had some basis, I realized, upon investigation, that there is simply NO empirical foundation to any of these 'time-depth' guesses. Why experts continue to off-handedly cite these numbers (particularly given their utter irrelevance to the linguistic issues involved) is a total mystery to me. I do believe that the normal 'loss of information' (coupled with the difficulty of discerning borrowing and other influences in the very distant past) means there probably is a time-depth beyond which relatedness cannot be demonstrated. But to believe that we have any idea what that time depth is is fantasy. And to believe that, even if we -- through divine inspiration, e.g. (which seems to be the only possible source for such knowledge at this point) -- knew what that depth was, we could reliably use it to *preclude* demonstrable relatedness for any sets of languages (which would require knowing what the time depth of the *putative* family was -- and since it might not be a family at all, figuring out that number is going to involve some pretty mysterious methods) seems likewise to be a folly. That said, since "related" in my book means, when used of languages, "having been shown to have greater than chance systematic correspondences for which borrowing is an unlikely explanation", "unrelated" means the opposite (i.e., 'not having been shown to have greater than chance systematic correspondences for which borrowing is an unlikely explanation'). I therefore see no problems with asserting that language X and language Y are 'unrelated.' The term seems to mean *exactly* the right thing, in fact. "Related" in some other sense (e.g., having a common origin as a factual matter) is never accessible to us as scientists and I would never be willing to assert that, e.g., it is a matter of *fact* that the Indo-European languages are related in that sense (since it is not knowable). It is a hypothesis and the form of the hypothesis is as I stated it above: the languages have been shown to have greater than chance systematic correspondences which cannot be plausibly attributed to chance (broadly construed) or borrowing. We can be very wrong about our standards for "plausibility" & such like (which are the subject of methodological debate), but there's no point in pretending that we're talking about whether the languages have a common origin *in fact.* The responsibility for amassing the evidence which would indicate that two languages (or families) show such greater than chance systematic non-loan cognancy is *always* on those who propose the idea, like the evidence for ALL scientific hypotheses. That different scholars are going to have differing standards of proof, different assessments of the liklihood of borrowing or chance, etc. seems inevitable and pretty much uninteresting -- this is true in every scientific enterprise I've ever examined. That these matters turn into religious warfare tells us a lot more about the pathetic state of the human cognitive system than it does about any language families. On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote: > > Hmmm... How do you arrive to an estimate of 6,000 years? You obviously do > > not base you calculations on glottochronology (in order to avoid > > unnecessary discussion I should say I don't believe in it either), but > > then what is your *objective* method of calculating time depth for > > established or reconstructed families? I am pretty much afraid that it is > > based on a guess-work, isn't it? > > Bravo! This cannot be said often or loudly enough. It is downright > scandalous, this propensity linguists have for casually attaching > dates to language families. We have no objective, operationalizable > method for estimating time depths, and no excuse for claiming (or > even imagining) that our eyeball estimates have any validity. From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Feb 23 16:40:52 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:40:52 EST Subject: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- AMR writes: >Note 4: IE is not a very good standard by which to judge >language families; nor has it been unchallenged in modern >times (see Trubetzkoy and his followers again). Uto-aztecan >is a far better standard and the one I always use. inviting the following questions: Why? What is wrong with the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which IE is based? What is DIFFERENT about the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which Uto-Aztecan is based? In conjunction with the last question, why do you use a standard that is much less widely known (conceding that your answer to the first and second questions may be sufficient to answer the third question). A general point on Afro-Asiatic. First, a disclaimer, which is, I don't really know much about it. But... from what I have seen and know about individual languages in various branches (Hausa in Chadic, Somali and Galla in Cushitic, Arabic, etc. in Semitic, Egyptian and Coptic in Egyptian ...nothing I really know well in Berber just the general outline) AA seems like a reasonable guess, and a promising HYPOTHESIS that needs a whole lot more work (and it's getting it). Just as I read (most of ) Miller's old book on Altaic and Japanese (without judgment), I felt that a lot could be learned about these languages and their histories even if the hypothesis turns out to be wrong, and that that was sufficient reason to ATTEMPT to TEST the *hypothesis* that they're related, i.e., that the relationship is DEMONSTRABLE (not necessarily ALREADY demonstrated). Such larger considerations as more distant affinities really magnifies the attention that clearly demonstrable groups get, with respect to their details and earliest reconstructable characteristics. NB. My point of view is that we're not "proving" or "disproving" something. We're "testing" it. This emphasizes that we have "tools" for testing, and they need to be inspected, improved, made as explicit as possible, and, esp, their weaknesses have to be recognized. "proving" (< "probing") may not really be different, but it is vaguer, suggesting that slight of hand, slight of mind, mental gymnastics, debating skills, etc can also be involved, and distracts from what really needs to be taken into account. So with respect to "tests", Basque-anything doesn't work (yet), so the conclusion is either "the tools are no good", which is absurd in view of what else they have accomplished, or forget about Basque-anything until you have some *tested* tools that do work for it. Returning to AA, I have been to conferences where Chris Ehret has tried to reconstruct the phoneme inventory of AA. The typical criticism -- without necessarily denying the validity or USEFULNESS of the hypothesis -- is that there are TOO MANY consonants reconstructed (cf. Brugmann's IE), which weakens the credibility of valid correspondences (i.e., proposed cognates). The natural problem here would be to try to determine whether certain conditioning factors have been obscured. That will naturally take a lot of work, and if successful, strengthen the hypothesis of cognate-dom. Meanwhile, stemming from Greenberg's original hypothesis about AA was the later recognition that OMOTIC, which he assigned to a sub-branch of Cushitic, may not be Cushitic at all -- and maybe not even AA (I haven't followed that lately). Similarly, the earlier notion that one of the Kordofanian groups might indicate a genetic link between Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan later gave way to general consensus that the key group was Nilo-Saharan, and that its similarity with a nearby Niger-Congo Kordofanian group was due to convergence. Such things did not lead to violent emotional outbursts, as far as I know, but only to appreciation of the original AA scheme and how it has been helpful to subsequent research in recognizing what is more likely and what is less likely on the basis of current evidence -- and to Omotic as a special problem of *special* interest in its own right as well as with respect to AA. All this is productive, amd seems to me quite different from hysteria about whether certain families are or are not related or relatable to other families. Hypotheses are hypotheses, not divinities to be adored, worshipped and celebrated. Our business is to test them, and in so doing keep building better tools to perform those tests. Maybe physics has reached a point where philosophical considerations have become more important than more experimental data and methods of eliciting them (many think so), but I have yet to hear such an argument in linguistics, and am not inviting it. (Incidentally, this business about a "floor" -- or is it "ceiling" -- to time-depth might implicate such a claim, i.e., we can't go any further, but the qualification could be "with our present agreed-upon methods". Enough on that, since it is not clear to me that there is even a demonstration that makes such a qualification advisable.) From mcv at wxs.nl Mon Feb 23 16:36:56 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:36:56 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Scott DeLancey wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > >> Scott DeLancey wrote: >> >great time depth to S-T. But there's good reason to think that >> >the reason for this divergence is an extended period of intimate >> >contact between pre-Chinese and indigenous languages in south China >> >(Kadai was definitely a major factor, and A-A and Austronesian >> >probably also involved). Massive areal influence of this kind can >> >result in substantial changes in a language in a relatively short >> >time. >> >> Yes, for Min, Cantonese, Hakka, etc. But how does that affect >> Mandarin? > >Mandarin, except for a few creeping agglutinative tendencies >(which Mantaro Hashimoto always attributed to Altaic influence) >is a pretty typical Southeast Asian language, very similar in >structure to Thai or Vietnamese. What I meant was that if this is so, that would imply intimate contact with indigenous languages already in *north* China [something which is of course entirely plausible, despite the fact that none of these indigenous languages have survived]. Unless Mandarin can somehow be shown to have S. Chinese roots and not to be the direct continuation in the North of "Shang Ur-Chinese". ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu Tue Feb 24 19:54:49 1998 From: johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 14:54:49 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In recent postings Alexander Vovin has asked me to justify the age of roughly 6000 years for IE and other old families, and Alexis Manaster Ramer says IE is no paragon and is a young family. The dispersal of PIE is one of the best-dated ancient linguistic events on earth. Evidence comes from several sources: (1) Glottochronology. This is actually reasonably reliable, provided you have (a) enough daughter languages to do several different pairings (glottochronology uses a binary comparison), (b) an idea of the deepest branching structure, and (c) an idea of which daughter languages or branches are most divergent and which are most conservative. (a) is an accident of fate and means that glottochronological dates are most reliable for larger families. (b) and (c) come from standard comparative method. The median glottochronological age for the comparisons described in Tischler's 1973 monograph is around 5500 bp as I recall off the top of my head. (2) Linguistic paleontology, etc. PIE has a set of native terms for wheeled transport -- 'wheel', 'axle', 'convey', etc. Wheeled transport first appears in the archeological record c. 5300 bp, and the realia probably preceded the first archeological evidence by a few centuries. David Anthony has made the archeology-linguistics connection in detail (e.g. in *Antiquity* in 1995). (3) Closeness of earliest attested forms. Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenaean Greek, and oldest Hittite give us a picture of the IE family something like 3000 years ago. There is an obvious close family resemblance but no mutual intelligibility to speak of (I mean knowing one of these doesn't enable even a linguist to read another of them), so the IE family at ca. 3000 bp must have been a bit deeper than modern Romance or Slavic. (4) Absolute and relative chronology of branches. Proto-Iranian (or pre-Proto-Iranian but probably not Proto-Indo-Iranian) contributes loans to Proto-Finno-Ugric, and a good archeological candidate in eastern Kazakhstan dates to about 2000 bp. This is the incipient breakup of a major initial branch (Indo-Iranian) of PIE. All this is off the top of my head (these and other references can be found in my paper 'Modeling ancient population structures and movement in linguistics', Annual Rev. of Anthropology 26 (1997)), but the point is that several very different lines of inquiry converge on very similar dates: the PIE breakup took place around 5500 bp. Johanna Nichols From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Tue Feb 24 19:43:57 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 14:43:57 EST Subject: Dating PIE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I certainly agree with Larry's points here, especially: > The linguistic evidence alone is not sufficient to give us a > *terminus post quem*, but recall that there exists a standard > argument for estimating this. Many specialists are satisfed that we > can reconstruct PIE words pertaining to technology, and most > particularly to wheeled vehicles, including `wheel', `axle' and > `nave'. Now, if this is true, then it follows that the PIE-speakers > must have known wheeled vehicles. But the archeologists can find no > evidence for wheeled vehicles before about 6000 BP. Therefore, the > arguments runs, 6000 BP is a *terminus post quem* for PIE. Obviously, as Larry notes, there are ways that this argument could be wrong, but it is a legitimate argument. Archeological finds are datable, by objective, replicable methods. When it's possible to link a proto-language with some archeological facts, we have a respectable basis for dating. The kind of argument that I get really upset about is the one that goes: "Well, family X seems to have about the same degree of diversification as Germanic, and everybody says Proto-Germanic is about 2,500 BP, so the time depth of X is 2,500 years". Leaving aside the theoretical issue of whether all language families, under all conditions, will diversify at the same rate, the really outrageous part of this argument is the notion that we have some objective, quantifiable measure of diversification that would let us equate, say, Miwokan with Germanic. An argument of this kind cannot be anything but purely impressionistic, and frankly, I don't see any reason to trust *anybody's* impressions in such comparisons. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From manaster at umich.edu Tue Feb 24 19:43:02 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 14:43:02 EST Subject: Trask on Dixon on African lgs--And extremism generally In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask says about the language families of Africa (posited by Greenberg and for the most part widely or even universally accepted by competent observers): "... it appears, the families are set up on the basis of a few recurring grammatical characteristics, characteristics which involve actual morphological material in the AA case but only typological features in the NC case." I am not an "Africanist" and I certainly cannot pretend to have a cure for whatever troubles Dixon, whose book I have not read, but I really think that Larry Trask would do well not to lend credibility to the statements he is repeating about African language classification by repeating them without any criticism. It is certainly true that some of Greenberg's proposed African language families have been questioned by competent scholars and in some cases are indeed poorly supported (and may well be wrong). Khoisan is the clearest example where Greenberg's arguments are inadequate to establish the family. However, what Larry says Dixon says about Niger-Kordofanian and Afro-African is just not right. The topic of the validity of the Niger-Kordofanian language family is one I know something about and which was discussed in Baxter and Manaster Ramer (1996), following on the article by Schadenberg in the very useful 1981 compendium Die Sprachen Afrikas (sorry, I am not up to giving a fuller reference). It is true that as of that time anyway there was very very little lexical evidence for this family, but it is completely erroneous to say that the evidence was typological. Rather, the nominal class system of the major subfamilies agree in detail as to the markers for the different classes. As a result, Baxter and MR use Niger-Kordofanian as an example of a well-established language family established purely on morphological grounds and hence contradicting the claims of Donald Ringe (and his many admirers in the linguistic community) that tests on Swadesh lists are sole way to determine linguistic kinship. As for Afro-Asiatic, it is also a very well-established language family, albeit there is some dispute about one small subgroup (Omotic), but there are no competent scholars who have disputed in modern times that Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic are all related (although some people without the competence in the field, such as Gerhard Doerfer and a few Semitic philologists, HAVE questioned AA). The relatedness of these languages is based on both morphological and lexical connections too numerous to list here, but it is certainly not true that only morphology is involved. Finally, I find it a nice irony that the extremist critics of progress in linguistic classification (and even some more sober minds, like at times Meillet) have historically often insisted precisely that it is ONLY morphology which can serve as the basis of linguistic classification. The reason for this is obviously that many language families which they did not like were set up on lexical evidence alone. Here we find the opposite situation, where the morphology is precisely the basis for classification, and now THIS is not good. All this seems to indicate that the self-appointed critics are united by no coherent intellectual position other than rejectionism. What we need in comparative linguistics is a recognition that some proposed language families are valid (e.g., Uto-Aztecan, Altaic, Afro-Asiatic, Niger- Kordofanian, Pakawan, etc.), others possible but still unproven (e.g., Nostratic, Khoisan, Coahuiltecan, all theories regarding Tonkawa, etc.), others still impossible (e.g., Hungarian-Turkic), and that even with respect to families that are valid it may be that some of the work proposing them is itself invalid (usually because it is premature, e.g., the pre-Ramstedt work on Altaic or the pre-Hubschmann work on Armenian as an Indo-European language or Sapir's work on Coahuiltecan). There is it seems to me increasingly clearly a dichotomy between (a) linguists who see this, whether they agree about particular proposals or not, and (b) linguists who do not see this and who, usually without understanding the particular factual issues, either reject/accept any language family that they can get away with rejecting/accepting. There is in my book no intellectual difference between these latter two kinds of extremists--and all the difference in the world between both kinds of extremism vs. real work in linguistic classification which has over the course of this century solved major problems esp. In African, East Asian, Australian, and North American linguistics (e.g., Uto-Aztecan, Algic, Sino-Tibetan, Anatolian as part of Indo-European, Vietnamese as part of Mon-Khmer, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Kordofanian, etc. etc.) and which is now producing new results (e.g., Vovin's Ainu-Austroasiatic, my Pakawan, all the work, e.g., Hayes's, on Austric, etc. etc.). Can we not stop all the madness? AMR William Baxter and AMR (1996) Review of Donald Ringe (1992). Diachronica 13:371-389. From semartin at pacifier.com Tue Feb 24 15:48:19 1998 From: semartin at pacifier.com (Sam Martin) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 10:48:19 EST Subject: Sino-Tibetan again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In considering the syntactic similarities between Chinese and SE Asian languages, don't overlook the probably important fact that all noun modifications in Chinese, such as relativized structures and other adnominal elements, *precede* the modified. But Thai (and I believe Vietnamese) are like French and English in postposing most noun modification. I think that fact, together with the hints of earlier SOV structure in Chinese and the thoroughly Altaic-type syntax of Burmese, is what has led some scholars (such as the late Hashimoto Mantaro) to hypothesize for earlier Chinese a neater syntax more like what we see in Japanese and Korean. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tue Feb 24 14:15:10 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:15:10 EST Subject: Dating PIE In-Reply-To: from "Scott DeLancey" at Feb 22, 98 06:14:18 pm Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- While I do not wish to deny that our estimated dates for proto-languages are often tenuous, I want to take issue with suggestions that the commonly accepted date of 6000 BP for PIE is no more than a wild guess. To begin with, the attested IE languages of the second and first millennia BC do give us a *terminus ante quem* for PIE, and the degree of divergence among the attested early languages is such that few people seem to be happy with putting PIE only a few centuries earlier than this. The linguistic evidence alone is not sufficient to give us a *terminus post quem*, but recall that there exists a standard argument for estimating this. Many specialists are satisfed that we can reconstruct PIE words pertaining to technology, and most particularly to wheeled vehicles, including `wheel', `axle' and `nave'. Now, if this is true, then it follows that the PIE-speakers must have known wheeled vehicles. But the archeologists can find no evidence for wheeled vehicles before about 6000 BP. Therefore, the arguments runs, 6000 BP is a *terminus post quem* for PIE. Now, of course, you are under no obligation to accept this argument. You are at liberty to question the reconstructions, or the meanings assigned to them, and you are even at liberty to query the conclusions of the archeologists. But you cannot dismiss the date of 6000 BC as a mere wild guess: that date is based upon evidence and argument. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Tue Feb 24 14:14:08 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:14:08 EST Subject: IE as a paradigm case In-Reply-To: from "bwald" at Feb 23, 98 11:40:52 am Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alexis writes: > Note 4: IE is not a very good standard by which to judge > language families; nor has it been unchallenged in modern > times (see Trubetzkoy and his followers again). Uto-aztecan > is a far better standard and the one I always use. I agree with the first statement, though not for all of the same reasons, and I hope to submit a posting on this when I get some time. However, I must comment on Trubetzkoy's so-called challenge. Trubetzkoy, Uhlenbeck and Tovar (at least) have all challenged the received view that PIE existed and that the IE languages are descended from it. All of them argued for a quite different view: the IE languages arose out of some kind of mixing process involving two or more quite distinct languages or families, hence PIE never existed, and hence our reconstruction of it is a phantasm. This is a version of what has more recently been dubbed the "rhizotic" model of linguistic descent. Now I have read some (not all) of this work, and I have to say it strikes me as totally crazy. It is not that rhizotic languages cannot exist: the recent work on mixed languages has demonstrated that they can and do exist. However, whatever one may think of the frequency or rarity of rhizotic languages, the ones we know about look nothing at all like any IE language. The very fact that we have been so successful in reconstructing PIE, both in phonology and in morphology, surely puts paid to any suggestion that it never existed. Even Bob Dixon, who has recently been querying the reality of proto-languages generally -- including that of Proto-Pama-Nyungan, to which he himself has contributed a good deal of reconstructive work -- has not gone so far as to deny the reality of PIE. I would suggest, therefore, that the efforts of Trubetzkoy and others to challenge the reality of IE and of PIE cannot be taken seriously. The rhizotic idea itself is not *a priori* crazy, but its application to IE surely is. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From vovin at hawaii.edu Tue Feb 24 14:11:28 1998 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (Alexander Vovin) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:11:28 EST Subject: Alexis on Wald on Linguistic classification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry, Some thoughts below, On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > Sasha Vovin writes: > > > > This is quite a revolutionary definition of relatedness. I used to > > believe that relatedness is demonstrated by recurrent phonetic > > correspondences established on the basis of basic vocabulary and/or > > basic morphology, and I trust that all major families were done in > > this way without any appeal to "chance", as the very existence of > > this correspondences would rule out the "chance". > Larry Trask: > Well, I too would certainly like to believe that all recognized > language families have been arrived at in this way. And some of them > certainly have been: IE, Algonquian, Austronesian, to name a few. > > But others have not. Two that spring to mind are Afro-Asiatic and > Niger-Congo. To the best of my information, recurrent correspondences > in phonology and/or morphology have never been demonstrated for these > families, and no significant reconstruction is available for Proto-AA > or Proto-NC -- or, rather, none which has won any degree of general > acceptance. I do not think it is necessary to present a comprehensive reconstruction of a proto-language to prove that languages A,B,C,D... are related. I do not know anything about Niger-Congo, and my knowledge of Afro-Asiatic is almost non-existent. However, while you are certainly right that there is no generally accepted AA reconstruction, there is a certain set of recurrent correspondences that is pretty much agreed upon (so I heard from Diakonov about ten years ago). It is, I believe, possible to demonstrate the regular nature of correspondences, and, therefore, to prove that given languages are related, whithout having come up with an interpretation of these correspondences, that would correspond to the reconstruction of a proto-language. Afro-Asiatic is not alone in this position, the same picture can be observed for Austroasiatic: the comprehensive reconstruction of protoaustroasiatic does not simply exist, but I do not know of a single person who doubts its existence exactly because the major correspondences have been established. Indeed, Bob Dixon has recently been complaining that the > evidence available to support the African families generally, and > Niger-Congo in particular, simply does not resemble the state of > affairs that Sasha describes. Instead, it appears, the families are > set up on the basis of a few recurring grammatical characteristics, > characteristics which involve actual morphological material in the AA > case but only typological features in the NC case. Well, if this is the case with Niger-Congo, then we can let rest it in peace. No regular correspondences, no relationship. Back to my definition? Sasha ======================================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor of Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures 382 Moore Hall 1890 East-West Road University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 vovin at hawaii.edu fax (808)956-9515 (o.) t.(808)956-6881 (o.) From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Wed Feb 25 22:11:48 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:11:48 EST Subject: Why IE is no paragon (WAS: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I found much of value in AMR's answer to my question: >> Why? What is wrong with the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which IE is based? I hope it is further useful to separate the points in AMR's answer that are most valuable, from those that I think are less valuable. >...the first point is that IE is not really all that widely >known: I am above all trying to combat the tendency of too many people >to cite little undigested bits of IE they picked up from textbooks of >Hist Lx w/o actually anything about IE and IE lx. If someone is really >speaking with knowledge about IE, that's fine, of course,except that-- .... the supposed methodological >standards of IE only exist in some virtual sense, that is, in the >sense that every IEnist learns to ignore most of the published stuff >and somehow decides for him/herself what to pay attention to. But >this is very tricky, because it is not a matter of public record. OK. I think that everyone would agree that there are a lot of controversial aspects to IE reconstruction, and that some familiar proposals are quite weak. Since I am more concerned with principles and methods in general, my point is that those principles and methods which are part of the consensus are more familiar to most readers in the case of IE than other language families. Therefore, that prior familiarity requires less to be said in preparation to exemplifying a principle (or problem), if appeal can be made to an example from IE rather than some less widely known language family of comparable complexity / variability. Of course, if some other language family, but not IE, instantiates a general principle, then that is extremely interesting, and it is worth going into more detail in preparation to discuss or defend it. That's what I'm looking for. So, let's continue with AMR's reply, since he does try to address my concerns. >(c) IE is atypical of the problems we face in comparrative and esp. >classificatory lx because Proto-IE is reckoned by those who like >to play with numbers (e.g., Watkins) to be less than 2000 years, maybe >only 1000 years, older than the oldest attested languages (OLd Latin, >Mycenean Greek, Hittite, Vedic, etc.), so it is a very YOUNG >family. Almost every other nontrivial linguistic grouping involves >much greater time depth. This goes back to my comments about the potential for "time-depth" to be used as an "excuse" to not even approach the (consensus) standards set by IE. The final passage is also contentious, since it implies that some linguistic groupings are "trivial", which seems to me an expression of taste, not something worth arguing about. It also assumes that the relative time-depth of different groupings can be estimated, an assumption that, first of all depends on the validity of these groupings to begin with. This could lead to circularity, if the implication is that we have to "lower" our consensus methological standards in order to accomodate such claims. I will stick to focussing on the issue of what those consensus standards might be, and how the problems of other groupings either alter or amplify them. >(d) IE is atypical also in the sense that it is one of the few >lg families which was originally established largely if not wholly on >the basis of MORHOLOGICAL parallels, rather than LEXICAL ones. >Uto-Aztecan, Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, >are all examples of the reverse (although Afro-Asiatic is like >IE in this regard, I think). I am not sure of what line of development of IE reconstruction AMR has in mind. The "originally established" suggests the typological approach of Bopp at the beginning of the 19th c. However, that is irrelevant to the current (and long-time) consensus. The unity (such as it is) of IE reached consensus on the basis of the reconstruction of a large amount of LEXICAL material. The reconstruction of IE morphology has always been more controversial because sound correspondences have not been sufficient for reconstructing most of its morphological forms. At the same time, the sound correspondences in grammatical morphemes were suggestive of other principles of linguistic change, paradigm rearrangements and whatever, to which some attention was focussed and remains in a state of development. There is still disagreement about whether certain cognate inflections in IE languages reflect regular sound changes or some other kind of change. I don't believe the situation is different for IE than for any of the other language families AMR mentioned above. Consensus and controversy in reconstruction reside in the same areas. Certainly, grammatical morphemes as well as lexical morphemes have been reconstructed for these groups, and the problems in reconstructing the grammatical inventory and grammar of one group are basically comparable to the problems in reconstructing any other group -- to a degree worthy of further discussion. (If I remember correctly almost every consonant that has been reconstructed for Finno-Ugric, or maybe it was Uralic, has also been reconstructed as a suffix of one sort or another.) AMR goes on in a longish passage to illustrate various other problems in the reconstruction of IE. One, which he exemplifies, but does not identify as a general problem is the problem of sub-grouping, such that many characteristics attributed to IE may turn out to be only characteristics of a sub-group of IE. Again, this is a common problem for reconstruction of all language families everywhere, as far as I can tell. It does not make IE "atypical". In short, this is a general problem in reconstruction, and points out a weakness in the assumptions underlying the application of the classical comparative method which remains a general problem (generally handled by reconstructing older areal groupings and applying diffusion / convergence theories to them). AMR concludes: > In short, IE lx is not a model for comparative >lx necessarily, and the IE family is much too shallow (because its >oldest representatives are so anciently attested) to be a good model >for other work in the field anyway. Of course, the BEST work on >IE is awe-inspiring, but then so is the best work in any other >language family--and work on much deeper families is I think >more awe-inspiring still. There are qualifications in this conclusion, but again IE's implied "trivial" time-depth is appealed to (to be measured against the problems of accurately sub-grouping its members and revising its earliest reconstructable state), once again raising my suspicions that an argument involving lowering standards is lurking beyond the surface arguments. In any case, it is indeed the BEST work in IE and in other families that I would like to see identified for the principles they are based on, and I would like to know which of those principles apply to the reconstruction /demonstration of relationship of one family but not another, and why. I appreciate AMR's effort to explain his earlier contention that IE is not a good reference point for illustrating general linguistic principles / methods. However, it remains unclear to me why it is worse as a reference point than any other family of its own or greater variety (whether that is due to time-depth or whatever). All I see so far is that Alexis thinks using examples from IE to illustrate general points *prejudices* judgments of what might be possible in reconstruction. However, I do not see why such prejudices cannot be overcome with sound arguments, if they exist, which demonstrate principles which do not apply to IE. It might be clearer if AMR responds more directly to my second question, which he quoted at the outset of the reply: > What is DIFFERENT about the PRINCIPLES / METHODS upon which Uto-Aztecan is > based? All I understand from his present message is that Uto-Aztecan is based on LEXICAL comparisons, not ("originally") morphological ones (prefixes and suffixes, I assume). However, I questioned the relevance of this claim to the consensus methods by which IE has been established, and how the methods used to reconstruct Altaic have failed to reach as general a consensus -- if that's the case. Contrary to what AMR's reply might imply, I am not aware that Altaic is disputed because its morphological reconstruction is disputed *and its lexical reconstruction is not*. And it is certainly not the case that IE is accepted as a family because it was *originally* recognized on the basis of a similar scheme of declensions and conjugations among its classical members. That turned out to be gravy, and lumpy gravy at that (though maybe not as lumpy gravy as reconstructing Altaic morphology, not to mention "Ural-Altaic", or should it be "Japanese-Korean-Altaic"?) Finally, if Uto-Aztecan indeed is a better model for the principles of reconstruction, does that mean that somehow it informs the reconstruction of Altaic in a way that IE cannot? P.S. It's not about ethnocentrically making IE a standard referent point for methodology, but the convenience of using examples from it to illustrate a point which the largest number of readers can understand from their training (esp. if not a matter of great detail). Then it is very interesting and COMPREHENSIBLE to criticise a supposed general principle based on IE as, in fact, not a general principle at all, but one which is specific to certain (types of) languages. Again, as far as I can tell, all controversial language families that have maintained the interest of what AMR calls "competent linguists" are basically controversial for the same reasons. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Feb 25 22:16:34 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:16:34 EST Subject: AMR on Trask on Dixon on... Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alexis writes: [By the way, Alexis -- something went wrong with the wrap in your posting, and it arrived scrambled. I had to edit it before I could read it.] > Larry Trask says about the language families of Africa (posited by > Greenberg and for the most part widely or even universally accepted > by competent observers): "... it appears, the families are set up > on the basis of a few recurring grammatical characteristics, > characteristics which involve actual morphological material in the > AA case but only typological features in the NC case." Actually, I was quoting Dixon. > I am not an "Africanist" and I certainly cannot pretend to have a > cure for whatever troubles Dixon, whose book I have not read, but I > really think that Larry Trask would do well not to lend credibility > to the statements he is repeating about African language > classification by repeating them without any criticism. Mea culpa, I suppose, but I have grown somewhat weary of hearing assertions that such and such a family is "universally accepted", only to find later that it has been severely called into question by someone with specialist knowledge of the languages involved. No doubt I should read more widely, but the British week sadly has only 168 hours in it, and that just isn't enough. > It is certainly true that some of Greenberg's proposed African > language families have been questioned by competent scholars and in > some cases are indeed poorly supported (and may well be > wrong). Khoisan is the clearest example where Greenberg's arguments > are inadequate to establish the family. However, what Larry says > Dixon says about Niger-Kordofanian and Afro-African is just not > right. > The topic of the validity of the Niger-Kordofanian language family > is one I know something about and which was discussed in Baxter and > Manaster Ramer (1996), following on the article by Schadenberg in > the very useful 1981 compendium Die Sprachen Afrikas (sorry, I am > not up to giving a fuller reference). It is true that as of that > time anyway there was very very little lexical evidence for this > family, but it is completely erroneous to say that the evidence was > typological. Rather, the nominal class system of the major > subfamilies agree in detail as to the markers for the different > classes. I am glad to hear this, but this is precisely the sort of evidence that Dixon was apparently hoping to hear about, but did not hear about from the specialists he consulted. > As a result, Baxter and MR use Niger-Kordofanian as an example of a > well-established language family established purely on morphological > grounds and hence contradicting the claims of Donald Ringe (and his > many admirers in the linguistic community) that tests on Swadesh > lists are sole way to determine linguistic kinship. I do not know if Ringe has ever made such a bald statement. In any case, I do not endorse such a view. *However*, if it is indeed the case that the Niger-Congo languages exhibit shared noun-class markers but few or no shared lexical cognates, then I at once become suspicious. Why should noun-class markers be so amazingly resistant to obliteration or replacement when nothing else is so resistant? Should we not at once be wondering whether noun-class markers might have diffused across language boundaries, thereby producing a spurious family? Don't think that's possible? Well, consider Basque. Basque historically has no trace of grammatical gender in any guise. But, in this century, Basque has started to acquire a bit of grammatical gender from Spanish. And not just gender, and not even just the Spanish masculine/feminine contrast. The Spanish gender-markers /-o/ and /-a/ have diffused into Basque, and not only in loan words: *even a couple of native Basque nouns have acquired masculine /-o/ and feminine /-a/.* Of course, this is on a trifling scale now, but what might happen if Basque endures another thousand years next to Spanish? Might it not acquire a Spanish-type gender system, complete with the markers? And might a linguist of the future not look at Basque and Spanish and conclude "Hmmm...shared gender-suffixes. Good evidence for a genetic relationship."? Don't get me wrong: shared morphological markers surely constitute good evidence for a relationship. But, in such a seemingly odd case as Niger-Congo, I am not eager to jump to the conclusion that no other explanation is possible. > As for Afro-Asiatic, it is also a very well-established language > family, albeit there is some dispute about one small subgroup > (Omotic), but there are no competent scholars who have disputed in > modern times that Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, and Cushitic > are all related (although some people without the competence in the > field, such as Gerhard Doerfer and a few Semitic philologists, HAVE > questioned AA). The relatedness of these languages is based on both > morphological and lexical connections too numerous to list here, but > it is certainly not true that only morphology is involved. OK; I stand corrected, but I wasn't questioning AA anyway. > Finally, I find it a nice irony that the extremist critics of > progress in linguistic classification (and even some more sober > minds, like at times Meillet) have historically often insisted > precisely that it is ONLY morphology which can serve as the basis of > linguistic classification. The reason for this is obviously that > many language families which they did not like were set up on > lexical evidence alone. Here we find the opposite situation, where > the morphology is precisely the basis for classification, and now > THIS is not good. All this seems to indicate that the > self-appointed critics are united by no coherent intellectual > position other than rejectionism. Unfair, I think. I certainly wouldn't want to claim that "only" *anything* can be accepted as evidence. Evidence is evidence, wherever we can find it -- though not necessarily good evidence, and not necessarily compelling evidence. Anyway, it is not my policy to reject anything just because I like rejecting things, and I don't know many other people who are different in this respect. We all have our soft spots and our prickly bits, and what bothers me will likely not bother the next person. We also all have our tastes and our priorities. You clearly have a passion for finding new families. I don't. I'm happy if somebody can find new families, but my interests lie elsewhere, and I don't lose any sleep if a couple of years goes by with no new families. Moreover, I am naturally cautious, and my caution has been accentuated over the years by experience. So I don't rush to embrace any proposed new families, and I try not to assume that a posited family is valid just because this has been repeatedly asserted. > What we need in comparative linguistics is a recognition that some > proposed language families are valid (e.g., Uto-Aztecan, Altaic, > Afro-Asiatic, Niger- Kordofanian, Pakawan, etc.), This is what we need? Alexis, I have talked to several specialists in Altaic languages, and they keep telling me they don't buy Altaic. I know this drives you up the wall, but I really think I have to attach some weight to their views. I simply am not prepared to believe that every specialist I run into is by nature a bloody-minded ferninster. > others possible but still unproven (e.g., Nostratic, Khoisan, > Coahuiltecan, all theories regarding Tonkawa, etc.), others still > impossible (e.g., Hungarian-Turkic), and that even with respect to > families that are valid it may be that some of the work proposing > them is itself invalid (usually because it is premature, e.g., the > pre-Ramstedt work on Altaic or the pre-Hubschmann work on Armenian > as an Indo-European language or Sapir's work on Coahuiltecan). > There is it seems to me increasingly clearly a dichotomy between (a) > linguists who see this, whether they agree about particular > proposals or not, and (b) linguists who do not see this and who, > usually without understanding the particular factual issues, either > reject/accept any language family that they can get away with > rejecting/accepting. Here I must agree with you, though I myself am more annoyed by enthusiastic acceptance than by curt dismissals. > There is in my book no intellectual difference > between these latter two kinds of extremists--and all the difference > in the world between both kinds of extremism vs. real work in > linguistic classification which has over the course of this century > solved major problems esp. In African, East Asian, Australian, and > North American linguistics (e.g., Uto-Aztecan, Algic, Sino-Tibetan, > Anatolian as part of Indo-European, Vietnamese as part of Mon-Khmer, > Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Kordofanian, etc. etc.) and which is now > producing new results (e.g., Vovin's Ainu-Austroasiatic, my Pakawan, > all the work, e.g., Hayes's, on Austric, etc. etc.). Can we not > stop all the madness? Doubt it. Every proposal is going to be criticized, and it must be inevitable that evidence that looks persuasive to one linguist will look anything but persuasive to another. Anyway, I reject the term "madness". One of the things I *am* interested in is models of linguistic descent, and I happen to believe that the recent work in this area is potentially of profound importance. I was brought up to believe that languages just turn into daughter languages, and that's the end of it. But the message coming through a good deal of recent work is "Look, folks -- things just ain't that simple." The study of diffusion and convergence phenomena, and also the increasing weight attached to social factors in language change, have begun to persuade me that we need to tread more carefully than we once thought in setting up genetic links. Accordingly, I am much exercised by the idea that we need to think long and hard about what exactly we can count as evidence, and I am being persuaded that we need a lot more empirical data from the study of language change. The whole enterprise of identifying genetic links rests upon an understanding of what constitutes evidence, and I am beginning to suspect that our understanding of evidence is more naive than I formerly thought. Ten years ago, I would have said "Shared noun-class markers? That settles it." But today I am not so sure. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From manaster at umich.edu Wed Feb 25 22:32:35 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:32:35 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- It is a pleasure to be able to agree with something Johanna Nichols says. OF COURSE, IE broke up between 5000 or 6000 (give or take, for what's a millennium between friends?) years before the present. EVERYBODY knows that, and anybody who like myself has worked on IE knows the reasons for these estimates. They are of course estimates, and the methodology is by no means well-worked-out, but they seem to be reasonable. Certainly 3000 would be too young (because attested IE lgs are older than that!) and 10000 would be too old. And of course I never questioned this. What I said was that what counts in figuring out how "old" a protolg is is not its absolute age but rather its relative age, relative to the age of the attested lgs on which it is based. Since PIE is very largely based on languages spoken around 4000 before the present (give or take), PIE is only 2000 years old in any meaningful sense, or less! Hence, the dgree of divergence we obseve between Hittite, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, etc. is much smaller than what one expects to find in dealing withgenuinely old language families like Austronesian or Austroasiatic or Sino-Tibetan or even Uto-Aztecan. Hence, IE is of no relevance to the debate about how far back the comparative methods reach in time. Surely, we all agree that it is possible to recover a protolanguage which broke up more than 2000 years before the attested languages descneded from it. Butthe bigger issue is that the methods for dating IE imprecise as they are may not work as well for much more ancient families, and so the date of Proto-Sino-Tibetan or Proto-Afro-Asiatic is certainly far less secure than that of PIE. Indeed, given how relatively little we still know of these two, any dates for these two seem to me to be pulled out of the hat. And the BIGGEST issue is that Johanna's claims about a limit on the time depth reachable by the comparative method have no intllectual basis at all if she bases them as she purports to merely on the fact that no has yet broken those limits. Justtry to apply this reasoning to any other science or indeed to any domain whatever. Shall we say that whatever the current land speed record is will never be broken? That mortality rates in the world will never decline below where they are now? That the Dow Jones index can never rise over today's value? Etc. etc? Obviously, the ONLY way to justify a claim of what is in principle IMPOSSIBLE has to be more than to say that it has not been DONE SO FAR> AMR From manaster at umich.edu Wed Feb 25 22:33:06 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:33:06 EST Subject: Dating PIE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask writes: While I do not wish to deny that our estimated dates for proto-languages are often tenuous, I want to take issue with suggestions that the commonly accepted date of 6000 BP for PIE is no more than a wild guess. (end of quote) I entirely agree, BUT the only reason we started talking about this is that Vovin, Delancey, and I pointed out that Johanna Nichols and her allies canNOT make an argument for 6000 years as the ceiling on the comparative method UNLESS they recognize SOME "objective" method of dating protolanguages, which is precisely what Johanna refused to do. In the context of the discussion, the age of PIE is of no moment at all. What is at issue is how Johanna Nichols justifies her belief that we can never in principle reconstruct any protolg older than PIE or recover any relationship older than Afro-Asiatic. AMR From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Wed Feb 25 22:34:18 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:34:18 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Johanna Nichols wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > In recent postings Alexander Vovin has asked me to justify the age of > roughly 6000 years for IE and other old families, and Alexis Manaster Ramer > says IE is no paragon and is a young family. > > The dispersal of PIE is one of the best-dated ancient linguistic events on > earth. Evidence comes from several sources: This is certainly true, as Larry Trask has also pointed out. (Although I have to ask on what basis you characterize glottochronology as "reasonably reliable"--given the principle which underlies it, it seems like it should be about as reliable as astrology). But that skirts the real issue which was brought up here, which is the reliability of dating for other families. I think, in fact, that our relatively justified confidence in the dating of PIE is maybe part of the problem, in that it may lead to the dangerous assumption that dating in general is reliable, and even easy. For how many other families can we assign a date with anything like this degree of confidence-- or with any justified confidence at all? (BTW, Alexis wasn't actually saying that IE "is a young family". His comment was not in the context of problems of dating, but of problems in establishing relationship. His point--which is quite correct--is that IE is an inappropriate standard of comparison in discussions of that kind, because the data from which it is reconstructed are so old. As we discuss this, IE has a time depth of 6,000 years, but since we have good attestation of languages from several different branches from 1.5-3 millenia ago, as a problem in establishing relatedness its time depth is substantially less than that). Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From mcv at wxs.nl Wed Feb 25 22:36:23 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:36:23 EST Subject: Dating PIE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Larry Trask wrote: >To begin with, the attested IE languages of the second and first >millennia BC do give us a *terminus ante quem* for PIE, and the >degree of divergence among the attested early languages is such that >few people seem to be happy with putting PIE only a few centuries >earlier than this. > >The linguistic evidence alone is not sufficient to give us a >*terminus post quem*, but recall that there exists a standard >argument for estimating this. Many specialists are satisfed that we >can reconstruct PIE words pertaining to technology, and most >particularly to wheeled vehicles, including `wheel', `axle' and >`nave'. Now, if this is true, then it follows that the PIE-speakers >must have known wheeled vehicles. But the archeologists can find no >evidence for wheeled vehicles before about 6000 BP. Therefore, the >arguments runs, 6000 BP is a *terminus post quem* for PIE. Only approximately. The oldest 4th millennium wheels are made of wood, which is of course a perishable material. Older wheels may yet turn up. It's also not clear whether the wheel was used first for transport or for pottery (generally both turn up in the archaeological record simultaneously). Gamq'relidze and Ivanov list the following IE words for "wheel": *kwel- (Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, [Latin]) *kwe-kwlo- (Tocharian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic) *Hwer-th- "to turn", but "wheel, wagon" in Iranian (Sogdian-Ossetic) *Hwer-g^h- (Hittite [*], Tocharian) *rotHo- (Indo-Iranian, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic) Most of these words can also mean "wagon". *rotHo- is derived from a root meaning "to run", the others (*kwel-, *Hwer-) "to turn". The reduplicated form *kwe-kwl- has curious parallels in Kartvelian (Georgian) gorgal, Hebrew galgal and Sumerian gi(r)gir. Some others: *H(o)i(e)s- "shaft" (Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, Balto-Slavic) *dhur(H)- "harness" (Hittite, Sanskrit) *Hak^s- "axle" (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic) *yugom "yoke" (general IE) We can add "nave", from the root for "navel" *Hnebh- (etc.). All of this makes a pretty reasonable case for not putting the break-up of Indo-European too long before or after the invention of the wheel (currently 4th millennium). My own favourite date for the split between Anatolian [in the Balkans] and non-Anatolian [Linear Ware and related cultures], 5500 BC, is some two millennia before the earliest known wheels. I would obvioulsy welcome a slightly earlier find, but I can't see any real objections against vocabulary associated with a new technology spreading uniformly across a group of still neighbouring and largely mutually intelligible languages (comparable to, say, Western Romance), especially if much of the vocabulary has transparent meaning ("turner", "spin-spin", "runner", "armpit", "navel", "joiner"). [*] Because the Hittite word for wheel is (which, according to G & I has a derivative "crime" [the wheel as a torturing device?]), I was slightly shocked to find "spinning wheel" while browsing through Azkue's Basque disctionary. A Basque-Hittite connection is ridiculous of course, but *wrg-/*wrgh-/*wrk- are good IE roots for "to turn", and a Celtic connection would not be all that far-fetched. But as far as I can tell, the Celtic words for "spinning wheel" are derived from the other variant *wer-t- (OIr. fertas, We. gwerthyd). Just to set my mind at ease, a question for Larry: what do Agud and Tovar say? ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Feb 25 22:37:33 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:37:33 EST Subject: Basque In-Reply-To: <34fe7cff.94884234@mail.wxs.nl> from "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" at Feb 25, 98 02:08:53 am Message-ID: Miguel C V writes: > [*] Because the Hittite word for wheel is (which, according > to G & I has a derivative "crime" [the wheel as a > torturing device?]), I was slightly shocked to find > "spinning wheel" while browsing through Azkue's Basque disctionary. > A Basque-Hittite connection is ridiculous of course, but > *wrg-/*wrgh-/*wrk- are good IE roots for "to turn", and a Celtic > connection would not be all that far-fetched. But as far as I can > tell, the Celtic words for "spinning wheel" are derived from the > other variant *wer-t- (OIr. fertas, We. gwerthyd). Just to set my > mind at ease, a question for Larry: what do Agud and Tovar say? The Basque word (and many variants) `spinning wheel' is entirely confined to the French Basque and Pyrenean dialects, a distribution which often points to an Occitan source. Agud and Tovar unhesitatingly follow Rohlfs and Corominas in deriving the word from Latin `little two-pronged fork', diminutive of `two-pronged fork', or from some Occitan development of this. The key point, established by Rohlfs, is that a Gascon spinning wheel always has a two-pronged fork on top of it. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Feb 25 10:51:15 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 05:51:15 EST Subject: Basque In-Reply-To: <34fe7cff.94884234@mail.wxs.nl> from "Miguel Carrasquer Vidal" at Feb 25, 98 02:08:53 am Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Miguel C V writes: > [*] Because the Hittite word for wheel is (which, according > to G & I has a derivative "crime" [the wheel as a > torturing device?]), I was slightly shocked to find > "spinning wheel" while browsing through Azkue's Basque disctionary. > A Basque-Hittite connection is ridiculous of course, but > *wrg-/*wrgh-/*wrk- are good IE roots for "to turn", and a Celtic > connection would not be all that far-fetched. But as far as I can > tell, the Celtic words for "spinning wheel" are derived from the > other variant *wer-t- (OIr. fertas, We. gwerthyd). Just to set my > mind at ease, a question for Larry: what do Agud and Tovar say? The Basque word (and many variants) `spinning wheel' is entirely confined to the French Basque and Pyrenean dialects, a distribution which often points to an Occitan source. Agud and Tovar unhesitatingly follow Rohlfs and Corominas in deriving the word from Latin `little two-pronged fork', diminutive of `two-pronged fork', or from some Occitan development of this. The key point, established by Rohlfs, is that a Gascon spinning wheel always has a two-pronged fork on top of it. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mcv at wxs.nl Wed Feb 25 10:35:38 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 05:35:38 EST Subject: Dating PIE In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask wrote: >To begin with, the attested IE languages of the second and first >millennia BC do give us a *terminus ante quem* for PIE, and the >degree of divergence among the attested early languages is such that >few people seem to be happy with putting PIE only a few centuries >earlier than this. > >The linguistic evidence alone is not sufficient to give us a >*terminus post quem*, but recall that there exists a standard >argument for estimating this. Many specialists are satisfed that we >can reconstruct PIE words pertaining to technology, and most >particularly to wheeled vehicles, including `wheel', `axle' and >`nave'. Now, if this is true, then it follows that the PIE-speakers >must have known wheeled vehicles. But the archeologists can find no >evidence for wheeled vehicles before about 6000 BP. Therefore, the >arguments runs, 6000 BP is a *terminus post quem* for PIE. Only approximately. The oldest 4th millennium wheels are made of wood, which is of course a perishable material. Older wheels may yet turn up. It's also not clear whether the wheel was used first for transport or for pottery (generally both turn up in the archaeological record simultaneously). Gamq'relidze and Ivanov list the following IE words for "wheel": *kwel- (Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, [Latin]) *kwe-kwlo- (Tocharian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic) *Hwer-th- "to turn", but "wheel, wagon" in Iranian (Sogdian-Ossetic) *Hwer-g^h- (Hittite [*], Tocharian) *rotHo- (Indo-Iranian, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic) Most of these words can also mean "wagon". *rotHo- is derived from a root meaning "to run", the others (*kwel-, *Hwer-) "to turn". The reduplicated form *kwe-kwl- has curious parallels in Kartvelian (Georgian) gorgal, Hebrew galgal and Sumerian gi(r)gir. Some others: *H(o)i(e)s- "shaft" (Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, Balto-Slavic) *dhur(H)- "harness" (Hittite, Sanskrit) *Hak^s- "axle" (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic) *yugom "yoke" (general IE) We can add "nave", from the root for "navel" *Hnebh- (etc.). All of this makes a pretty reasonable case for not putting the break-up of Indo-European too long before or after the invention of the wheel (currently 4th millennium). My own favourite date for the split between Anatolian [in the Balkans] and non-Anatolian [Linear Ware and related cultures], 5500 BC, is some two millennia before the earliest known wheels. I would obvioulsy welcome a slightly earlier find, but I can't see any real objections against vocabulary associated with a new technology spreading uniformly across a group of still neighbouring and largely mutually intelligible languages (comparable to, say, Western Romance), especially if much of the vocabulary has transparent meaning ("turner", "spin-spin", "runner", "armpit", "navel", "joiner"). [*] Because the Hittite word for wheel is (which, according to G & I has a derivative "crime" [the wheel as a torturing device?]), I was slightly shocked to find "spinning wheel" while browsing through Azkue's Basque disctionary. A Basque-Hittite connection is ridiculous of course, but *wrg-/*wrgh-/*wrk- are good IE roots for "to turn", and a Celtic connection would not be all that far-fetched. But as far as I can tell, the Celtic words for "spinning wheel" are derived from the other variant *wer-t- (OIr. fertas, We. gwerthyd). Just to set my mind at ease, a question for Larry: what do Agud and Tovar say? ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From manaster at umich.edu Thu Feb 26 02:34:45 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 21:34:45 EST Subject: Why IE is no paragon (WAS: Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I thank Bneji Wald for a very thoughtful discussion and good questions, and above all for his civil and constructive tone even while we do not (as yet) agree AND his pointing out flaws in my earlier statements--which I hope can be excused given my precarious state of health (which in turn is why I have not been able to discuss most of these things in print as quickly as I had hoped). I propose that he and I discuss some of this offlist before continuing here, so as to avoid controversy wherethere is no genuine disagreement, as I strongly suspect. So I will avoid discussing all the details here. All I want to say is that I do NOT deny that IE is a perfectly valid model of a language family or that there are universal methodological principles which all of us must use whether dealing with IE, Uto-Aztecan, Altaic, or Nostratic. I strongly agree with Benji in fact. My point is not, as he fears, that the criteria of IE lx are too stringent for the rest of us either. On the contrary, I have repeatedly argued that it is quite often IEnists (even good ones, and not just the "fringe") who are incredible lax in every possible way (my paper in JIES on Armenian -kh cites a litany of such examples from the IEnist literature on that subject), and so the standards of published IE work are simply not good ENOUGH. In addition, IE is of course quite young in terms of years B.A. (before attestation) rather than B.P. (before the present)--and only B.A. age matters. This may be a novel idea, but it is right and I have never had anyone disagree once they thought it through. But above all my concern is with the sociology and rhetoric of the field: as I see it, people who talk about IE in this context rarely actually know IE or IE lx at first hand, and even many practicing IEnists re very bad at the history of their own field (again, see my paper for startling examples of this; see also my paper with B. Nilsen in the next issue of HS, for even more startling examples), and so what we get in these discussions of methodology is utter misinformation. One way to deal with it would be of course to correct each mistake, but another is to simply insist that we use other languages families, whether Uto-Aztecan (which I know and love) or Austronesian (which I know very poorly if at all) or whatever, in other words to start the process of educating everybody about the history and methods of hist lx from scratch, on a more solid basis than the misapprehensions most textbooks conevy on the basis of undigested bits of incomplete and often plainly incorrect claims about what was perhaps believed by some not very good IEnists in 1885 or thereabouts. Does that make sense? If not, I am fully prepared (assuming I can hold out) to talk about IE and its confusions and complications. But it does seem more useful--IF our goal is to decide on methods of ling. classification--to skip that morass and use clearer, simpler, neater, less spoiled (if you will) examples. But it is up to y'all, of course. AMR PS. I dont think that most English-speaking linguists today know more Latin, Greek, Hittite, Vedic (not to mention Sinhala, Armenian, Albanian, Irish, etc.) than they do non-IE languages anyway, so I do not see that using IE has the practical advantage of starting with the familiar. Or am I wrong? From vovin at hawaii.edu Thu Feb 26 11:32:05 1998 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (Alexander Vovin) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 06:32:05 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Johanna Nichols wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > In recent postings Alexander Vovin has asked me to justify the age of > roughly 6000 years for IE and other old families, and Alexis Manaster Ramer > says IE is no paragon and is a young family. Well, I believe Alexis, who has an advantage of being 5 hours ahead of me has already answered this (:-), but let me reiterate. *Even if* you manage to demonstrate that IE is 6,000 years old, it still shows only one thing: that IE is 6,000 years old. You still cannot conclude on this basis alone that: (a) other language families are also no older than 6,000 years, and (b) since IE is 6,000 old, there is ceiling of 6,000 to the comparative method. I would probably agree with you that IE split between 5,000 and 6,000, but I still think that it is a mere *guess-work* supported by oblique evidence, but not by an evidence from IE itself. Please see below. > > The dispersal of PIE is one of the best-dated ancient linguistic events on > earth. Evidence comes from several sources: > > (1) Glottochronology. This is actually reasonably reliable, provided you > have (a) enough daughter languages to do several different pairings > (glottochronology uses a binary comparison), How many would be "enough"? And on what *linguistic* basis one would decide what is "enough" and "not enough"? (b) an idea of the deepest > branching structure, and (c) an idea of which daughter languages or > branches are most divergent and which are most conservative. (a) is an > accident of fate and means that glottochronological dates are most reliable > for larger families. (b) and (c) come from standard comparative method. > The median glottochronological age for the comparisons described in > Tischler's 1973 monograph is around 5500 bp as I recall off the top of my > head. > Glottochronology was busted so many times that it became almost tedious to go over it. But, well, let us do it again. The basic fallacy of glottochronology lies in the fact that it a priori assumes that *all* languages change *at the same rate all the time*. This is simply not true not only regarding *different* languages but even one and the same language. Examples are abundant in literature, but let me add few more from the languages of East Asia I know best. (1) No matter how many pairings you do with main islands Japanese dialects and Ryukyuan dialects (actually, they are languages) they all would point to the split between Japanese and Ryukyuan dated by approximately 5 century C. E. Even someone who is only superficially familiar with the history of these languages would tell that this is complete nonsense. (2) If we did not know that Middle Korean was actually the language of the 15th c., we had to assign much older date to it on the basis of glottochronology: the language went berserk in the last 500 years and replaced (including loans from Chinese) much more basic vocabulary than it was supposed to do according to glottochronology. (3) I do not remember exactly off the top of my head, but it seems to me that if you compare glottochronologically Old Chinese with Modern Mandarin, you would get much shallower time than 7th c. B. C. E. Etc., etc. Thus, Swadesh just got lucky with his trials of European languages. It does not necessarily work in the other parts of the world. Now, if it is true, it does not matter how many pairings you'd get: they all might have changed at different speeds. > (2) Linguistic paleontology, etc. PIE has a set of native terms for > wheeled transport -- 'wheel', 'axle', 'convey', etc. Wheeled transport > first appears in the archeological record c. 5300 bp, and the realia > probably preceded the first archeological evidence by a few centuries. > David Anthony has made the archeology-linguistics connection in detail > (e.g. in *Antiquity* in 1995). > This is the best piece of evidence you have, but still two points here. First, the lack of archeological record does not mean that wheeled transport *did not exist* before 5,300 bp. It might so happen that earlier samples have not been yet discovered or that they perished, as I believe, Miguel pointed out today. Second, what is your basis for conclusion that "the realia probably preceded the first archeological evidence by a few ceturies"? Guess-work? > (3) Closeness of earliest attested forms. Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenaean > Greek, and oldest Hittite give us a picture of the IE family something like > 3000 years ago. There is an obvious close family resemblance but no mutual > intelligibility to speak of (I mean knowing one of these doesn't enable > even a linguist to read another of them), so the IE family at ca. 3000 bp > must have been a bit deeper than modern Romance or Slavic. > This argument again stands on the same unproven hypothesis that underlies glottochronology: all languages change at the same speed, therefore, if old IE languages are as similar as modern Romance or Slavic, (let me inter alia, disagree with that: being a native speaker of Russian and a linguist I can read without any significant difficulty any Slavic language except Czech), therefore they must be by default as old as Romance or Slavic. I think that is as dangerous to estimate the age of families on the basis of similarity as to establish genetic links on the same basis. I believe that a couple of counterexamples will suffice. If I remember correctly, Arapaho is frequently cited as a language that *looks very unlike* the rest of Algoquian. And yet, this is not a basis for claiming it as a separate branch. There are also a number of languages in Melanesia that underwent some very drastic changes making them looking unlike their closest relatives, and yet, these changes appear to be quite recent and have nothing to do with the chronology. On the other hand, Evenki and Even, superficially look very similar, but there are good grounds to believe that they belong to different subbranches within Tungusic. Etc., etc. > (4) Absolute and relative chronology of branches. Proto-Iranian (or > pre-Proto-Iranian but probably not Proto-Indo-Iranian) contributes loans to > Proto-Finno-Ugric, and a good archeological candidate in eastern Kazakhstan > dates to about 2000 bp. This is the incipient breakup of a major initial > branch (Indo-Iranian) of PIE. > I find it very unlikely that PFU was ever spoken in Eastern Kazakhstan. PFU linguopalenthology obviously indicates a forest zone with trees not found in the Eastern Kazakhstan. The contact should have taken place more to the north. But, anyway, I fail to see what relevance it might have to dating IE. > All this is off the top of my head (these and other references can be found > in my paper 'Modeling ancient population structures and movement in > linguistics', Annual Rev. of Anthropology 26 (1997)), but the point is that > several very different lines of inquiry converge on very similar dates: the > PIE breakup took place around 5500 bp. > > Johanna Nichols > All this is no more than oblique evidence that *may* or *may not* have any relevance, and some of it obviously cannot work. There is no *objective* way to assign dates to protolanguages based on the direct language evidence alone. But, of course, the absence of it today, does not mean that we won't figure it out in the future (:-). Alexander Vovin Associate Professor of Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures 382 Moore Hall 1890 East-West Road University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 vovin at hawaii.edu fax (808)956-9515 (o.) t.(808)956-6881 (o.) From vovin at hawaii.edu Thu Feb 26 11:32:56 1998 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (Alexander Vovin) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 06:32:56 EST Subject: Larry on Altaic In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry, may we have the names of mysterious Altaicists whom you consulted and who all unanimously reject Altaic? I am getting curious, may be you conferred with the wrong guys? (:-) Sasha ======================================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor of Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures 382 Moore Hall 1890 East-West Road University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 vovin at hawaii.edu fax (808)956-9515 (o.) t.(808)956-6881 (o.) From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Feb 26 11:35:09 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 06:35:09 EST Subject: Trask on Dixon on African lgs--And extremism generally Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I read the exchange challenging the "Niger-Congo family" theory with some surprise. I can't find all the pieces of it now because they are under all kinds of different Re: headers, but I remember the gist of it. Here's a typical quote, purporting to report Dixon's views: >Larry Trask says about the language families of Africa (posited by >Greenberg and >for the most part widely or even universally accepted by competent >observers): "... >it appears, the families are set up on the basis of a few recurring >grammatical >characteristics, characteristics which involve actual morphological >material in the >AA case but only typological features in the NC case." To avoid possible terminiological confusion, first note that Niger-Congo and Niger-Kordofanian refer to the same proposed family, in the same way that Indo-European and Indo-Hittite do/have. When Kordofanian first came to the attention of scholars, like Hittite and IE, it was thought to be so remote that it had to be grouped apart from a grouping of all the other NC languages. NB: the SUBGROUPING problem. One reason could be the suspected link in Kordofanian between NC and Nilo-Saharan. As I mentioned previously, the "link" was later reclassified as Nilo-Saharan, and removed from "NC" Kordofanian languages. Since then, most scholars most immediately concerned have reverted to the NC label, with Kordofanian and Mande problematic for which "split away" first. With regard to the basis for NC, it is absolutely not true that it was based on "typological" characteristics. Indeed, when Greenberg first proposed NC, many Banutists resisted the idea that many languages which are now classified as "Bantoid" (along with "Bantu") but have lost the complex prefixal noun classification system and various other inflectional systems (these Cameroonian and Nigerian languages were previously called "semi-Bantu", see Greenberg on that being like calling Icelandic "semi-English" or something of that sort) were closely related to Bantu, indeed at all related, rather than "mixed" with Bantu (massive borrowing, I guess). Recognition of NC was and remains based on what looks like numerous cognates in all branches, so many that mistakes in sub-classification were made on the basis of shared cognates which seemed to be innovative. Many of them turned up later in excluded branches, changing people's minds about previous sub-classifications. Kay Williamson's overview article in the Bendor-Samuel book "The Niger-Congo Languages" Lanham: NY 1989 discusses some of that, and the book as a whole is still the most comprehensive general discussion of the family. Meanwhile, Mukarovsky in Vienna has done and published extensive lexical cognate hunting and gathering for the various branches of NC. It is true that reconstruction of the phonology of NC has not yet met the standards it MUST in order to satisfy the proper demands of establishing the family -- largely due to Scott's maxim "too much data, not enough scholars" -- but the results so far look promising. Also, despite what one might expect, even on the basis of individual branches and even the phonologicasl variability in Bantu, solving problems of cognate-dom do not look any more difficult than for IE or other such groups. It is worth noting that Mukarovsky is so impressed by the mass of promising cognates in most branches, that he is a severe critic of inclusion of Mande and Northern Atlantic (but not Southern Atlantic) in NC. That is, he was not able to recognize sufficient candidates for cognate-dom in those branches to justify their inclusion in NC. (He did not survey Kordofanian at that time.) And he has since published against the notion -- though I don't know what his latest views are. NC scholars, Mande scholars, Atlantic scholars are NOT disturbed. There is plenty of work to do in reconstructing those families, whether they are branches of NC or not. The general attitude is that eventually the truth will be discovered one way or the other, and much will be learned during that trip. Meanwhile, the work remains to be done and continues to be done. The typological similarities of various branches of NC is gravy, and I think someone else already said that it is NOT true that grammatical morphemes are only typologically similar in the various branches. They are similar in shape with similar meanings and promising for cognate-dom. The *ba- class prefix for human plurals is easily and regularly seen throughout the group, etc etc. Given my interest in historical syntax, I have found that consideration of other NC languages adds much to my understanding of Bantu syntax, its origin and evolution, EVEN IF NC does not hold up as a genetic group. After all, no one in their right mind (but who is?) would claim that the grammatical patterning of a language MUST have the same origin as its lexical material. Anyway, I'm not too worried about that because the detail is convincing of genetic relationship, including the forms, not just the uses of the forms in grammatical processes. It is revealing to me to see how the (in my view, expectable) shortcomings of the current status of NC are used by some scholars who seem not to be interested in NC but in somehow using the status of NC to argue with and damage each other. As for Greenberg, because it is obvious that some want to discredit NC in order to discredit what others considered his most successful classification, all NC-ists appreciate what he did for us. Where he was right he was right, and where he was wrong we found out he was wrong. But he was right enough to be a great help. (And it helped that what came before really sucked.) That does not mean I or any other NC-ist accept what he says just because he says it, without knowing anything else about it. Our own experience is sufficient to prevent us from doing that. As for Merritt, in my opinion, what's good in Greenberg is good in Merritt and what's bad in Greenberg is bad in Merritt. He was that good a student of Greenberg's. Enough said for the moment. From Georg at home.ivm.de Thu Feb 26 11:36:01 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 06:36:01 EST Subject: Dating PIE and wheeled transport Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Since the theories of D. Anthony and others re: the role of wheeled transport for the dating of PIE have been mentioned, I may be allowed to draw attention to a forthcoming publication directed precisely at these issues. I'm unable to summarize its contents at the moment (since I'm nothing less than an archaeologist) but this text, as I have been given to understand, questions the claims of Anthony (and others) in a profound way: Peter Raulwing: Horses, Chariots and Indo-Europeans. Foundations and Methods of Chariotry Research from the Viewpoint of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Budapest: Archaeolingua 1998, ca. 160 pp. with 34 illus. Archaeolingua's address: H-1250 Budapest, Uri utca 49 Maybe some people interested in the subject will wish not to miss this book. Stefan Georg Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Thu Feb 26 11:36:58 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 06:36:58 EST Subject: IE "break-up", dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 manaster at umich.edu wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >It is a pleasure to be able to agree with something Johanna >Nichols says. OF COURSE, IE broke up between 5000 or 6000 >(give or take, for what's a millennium between friends?) >years before the present. EVERYBODY knows that .... That's an interesting use of the word "everybody"! Even if we use it to mean "everybody who has ever studied Indo-European" we are left with the problem of what "broke up" means. It only makes much sense if we accept that as the period when several large groups of IE-speakers travelled in several different directions and thus lost physical contact with each other. If it does mean that, then the relevant and conclusive evidence won't be linguistic at all. If it doesn't mean that, then the dating will be circular, depending on what we think we mean by "breaking up". After all, even in cases where there is a great deal of incontrovertible historical data for us to consult, lack of physical separation between the speakers concerned makes the salient evidence that can be used in discussion hard to pin down in an empirical manner. Most noticeably in the case of the Romance languages, perhaps, for in this field modern datings for when they "broke up" range from the third century B.C. (Robert de Dardel's view) (no, I'm not making that up) to the sixteenth century or so (Rebecca Posner's). As Larry Trask said to us just now, modern appreciation of convergence and sociolinguistics, etc, means that physically contiguous groups can no longer seriously seen to be as "broken up" as the lines on a tree-diagram of mother and daughter languages imply. RW From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Thu Feb 26 21:54:49 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:54:49 EST Subject: No subject Message-ID: The History of Linguistics, to be published in five volumes, aims to provide the reader with an authoritative and comprehensive account of the attitudes to language prevailing in different civilizations and in different periods by examining the very varied development of linguistic thought in the specific social, cultural and religious contexts involved. 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The third volume of the History of Linguistics covers the Renaissance and the Early Modern Period. The chapter on the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) by Mirko Tavoni, examines the study of Latin in both the new Humanist and rationalist traditions, along with the foundations of vernacular grammar in the study of Romance, Germanic and Slavic (with sections by Maria Delfina Gandolfo and Silvia Toscano). The chapter on the Early Modern Period (17th and 18th centuries) by Raffaele Simone, presents the study of language in its philosophical context (Bacon, Port-Royal, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, the Enlightenment), as well as the accumulation of data which led to the foundation of Comparative Philology in the 19th century. Paperback 0 582 09493 3 Cased 0 582 09492 5 288 pages Published November 1997 History of Linguistics, Volume IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics Longman Linguistics Library Edited by Giulio Lepschy, Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Reading and a Fellow of the British Academy and Anna Morpurgo Davies, Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy In Volume IV: Nineteenth-Century Linguistics, Anna Morpurgo Davies shows how linguistics came into its own as an independent discipline separated from philosophical and literary studies and enjoyed a unique intellectual and institutional success tied to the research ethos of the new universities, until it became a model for other humanistic subjects which aimed at 'scientific status'. The linguistics of the nineteenth century abandons earlier theoretical discussions in favour of a more empirical and historical approach using new methods to compare languages and to investigate their history. The great achievement of this period is the demonstration that languages such as Sanskrit , Latin and English are related and derive from a parent language which is not attested but can be reconstructed. This book discusses in detail the theories developed and the individual findings obtained. In contrast with earlier historiographical trends it denies that the new approach originated entirely from German Romanticism, and highlights a form of continuity with the eighteenth century, while stressing that a deliberate break took place round the 1830s. By the end of the century the results of comparative and historical linguistics had been generally accepted, but it soon became clear that a historical approach could not by itself solve all questions that it raised. At this point the new interest in description and theory which characterizes the twentieth century began to gain prominence. Paperback 0 582 29478 9 Cased 0 582 29477 0 464 pages Published January 1998 For more information on these titles and other linguistics titles, please visit our web site: http://www.awl-he.com/linguistics From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Feb 26 21:11:42 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:11:42 EST Subject: IE "break-up", dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Wright wrote: >On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: > >>There's a difference between "started to break up" and "had become >>mutually unintelligible". The Roland is not written in the same >>language as the Cid. > >Yes, indeed, that's certainly part of the point. >That's the period where I've been putting the break at myself; the idea >that these texts and others were in different languages was catalysed by >the invention of different reformed spelling systems for Romance in >different places, which was the thing that led people to think they >represented different languages. This is a point more subtle than the previous one, but there is a difference between "people thinking they speak two different (the same) language(s)" and "people speaking two different (the same) language(s)". The subtlety lies in the fact that people's perceptions do have an effect on the language. > We're left wondering if the cognate languages of physically >contiguous peoples with cognate "languages" can really break up without >the aid of external political catalysts such as this - Let's take this one step at a time. (1) The invention, or even existence, of spelling systems has not been a factor during most of history and throughout most of the world. (2) Was the invention of the Romance spelling systems politically or practically motivated, or not motivated at all? I mean, was it: "We're French, so we'll write in French", or: "I'd like to write in Latin, but nobody would understand me", or: "What do you mean this is not Latin?", or: all of the above. (3) I've always felt that it's the other way around: political factors [in the widest possible sense] can keep a language united, but divergence requires no external factors. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Feb 26 21:09:48 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:09:48 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- It is a pleasure to watch a civil debate on the problems of dating (the breakup of) PIE, even if PIE only came up as an example in a broader discussion. Of the 4 arguments given by Johanna Nichols namely a/ terms for wheleed transportation b/ glottochronology c/ apparent depth of the family at -1500 d/ Iranian loans into FU only the first argument seems to have had any kind of general success: not many people seem to believe in glottochronology, the estimate of the 3rd one is considered to be of an impressionistic nature and the 4th one may say something about the breakup of Indo-Iranian but apparently nothing about the breakup of IE. There's two points I didn't see mentioned that I'd like to ask about: For argument a/ everybody saw as a possible problem with it only gaps in the archeological record. Nobody questioned the reconstructions and especially the meanings they might have had at the PIE level. Should I conclude that these are generally accepted? This is odd, since that'd seem to be the only serious way to allow for PIE the possibility of a substantially earlier date. Isn't an archeological gap of 2000 years a bit much to assume? For argument c/ those people who criticized it only saw its lack of rigor. Yet an implicit assumption in this argument is that the lowest common node above Hittite, Vedic Sk and Mycenian Gk was PIE. Given the lack of universal agreement re: the problem of subgrouping I was surprised even people who did not like the argument didn't find this particular problem with it. Or is it just that this argument seemed so weak it wasn't worth worrying about additional problems it might have? Finally I don't know if this is only my impression but there was a much broader range of cultural elements people felt needed to be posited for the speakers of PIE (based on the common lexicon) that nobody seems to mention any more. Have those gone out the window one by one until only `wheeled transportation' remained? It would be interesting to watch a discussion of the history of this, if only to see if that could not occur some day to `wheel' too. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Thu Feb 26 18:53:42 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:53:42 EST Subject: Larry on Altaic In-Reply-To: from "Alexander Vovin" at Feb 26, 98 06:32:56 am Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sasha Vovin writes: > Larry, may we have the names of mysterious Altaicists whom you > consulted and who all unanimously reject Altaic? I am getting > curious, may be you conferred with the wrong guys? (:-) Yes, I thought somebody would ask this. If you don't mind, I'll decline, since the people I've talked to gave me the clear impression that they were expressing a purely private opinion which they preferred not to make public, and one of them said so explicitly. This is reasonable. I know of other cases of linguists who hold private views about proposed genetic groupings which they prefer not to go public with, merely because they want to maintain good relations with colleagues whose public views are very different. If it's any consolation, the very first relevant specialist I approached turned out to be an enthusiastic proponent of Altaic, including Korean (at least) as an Altaic language. But all the others have so far taken a negative view. Bear in mind, though, that I was asking a direct question in every case: "Do you believe in the genetic validity of Altaic?" Perhaps a more indirect line of questioning might have elicited different responses. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Thu Feb 26 18:52:57 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:52:57 EST Subject: IE "break-up", dates, etc. In-Reply-To: <34f7685f.46084799@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote: >Roger Wright wrote: > >> Most noticeably in the case of the Romance languages, >>perhaps, for in this field modern datings for when they "broke up" range >>from the third century B.C. (Robert de Dardel's view) (no, I'm not >>making that up) to the sixteenth century or so (Rebecca Posner's). > >You're making that up :-) No. Well, not quite .... > >There's a difference between "started to break up" and "had become >mutually unintelligible". The Roland is not written in the same >language as the Cid. > Yes, indeed, that's certainly part of the point. That's the period where I've been putting the break at myself; the idea that these texts and others were in different languages was catalysed by the invention of different reformed spelling systems for Romance in different places, which was the thing that led people to think they represented different languages. The conceptual distinctions between Latin and Romance, and soon thereafter between different types of Romance language, needn't have happened at all, though, if they'd been happy to keep using Latin spellings but without the old morphology. We're left wondering if the cognate languages of physically contiguous peoples with cognate "languages" can really break up without the aid of external political catalysts such as this - RW >======================= >Miguel Carrasquer Vidal >mcv at wxs.nl >Amsterdam > From manaster at umich.edu Thu Feb 26 18:52:09 1998 From: manaster at umich.edu (manaster at umich.edu) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:52:09 EST Subject: Pleasing everybody In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- As a voice of one crying in what I will continue to perceive as a wilderness until people start talking about the substantive issues, I am not surprised that I cannot please everyone, but I think it is comical that Larry Trask attacks me for not dismissing as utter madness the Trubetzkoy theory of IE as a result of convergence while Roger Wright attacks me for saying that "everybody" knows roughly (roughly!!!) when IE broke up, and quotes Trask as one of his authorities. OK, obviously who do not think there ever was a Proto-IE dont think that there was break-up and hence cannot date it. But just as obviously, I would havethought, anybody who does not accept the validity of PIE and its break-up cannot do classificatory or comparative lx in the way that is under discussion here. In particular, such a person will a fortiori have to reject Altaic, Nostratic, and all the other proposed families whose status we have been discussing. Hence, such a person will have no interest or stake in, and nothing to contribute to, this particular debate. So, what I mean is that everybody who believes in Proto-languages and who knows anything much about the literature on IE and (I should add) does not dogmatically reject all attempts at placing protolanguage in time and place (for there are such people, as I recently discovered from a debate on another list)--that everybody in this circumscribed universe probably accpets that PIE was spoken surely more than 4000 BP and no more than say 10000 BP and that this same everybody (myself being one humble member of this set) knows the more detailed proposals made in the literature and does not really need Johanna to remind him/her, but that such a person can at the same time maintain that dating other protolanguages, ones surely older by far than PIE in terms of years B.A. and/or B.P., is far less secure AND that in any case it is simply illogical to argue that because we have no universally accepted protolanguage older than say Proto-Afro-Asiatic, that emans we can never in principle find another older one. OK? Is that acceptable? Or who is offended now? AMR From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Feb 26 18:48:09 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:48:09 EST Subject: IE "break-up", dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Wright wrote: > Most noticeably in the case of the Romance languages, >perhaps, for in this field modern datings for when they "broke up" range >from the third century B.C. (Robert de Dardel's view) (no, I'm not >making that up) to the sixteenth century or so (Rebecca Posner's). You're making that up :-) There's a difference between "started to break up" and "had become mutually unintelligible". The Roland is not written in the same language as the Cid. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From mcv at wxs.nl Fri Feb 27 00:25:37 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 19:25:37 EST Subject: IE, dates, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jacob Baltuch wrote: >It is a pleasure to watch a civil debate on the problems of dating >(the breakup of) PIE, even if PIE only came up as an example in a >broader discussion. If anybody's _really_ interested in how such a debate develops on the Usenet group sci.archaeology, I have uploaded the recent threads in which I participated to http://home.wxs.nl/~mcv/IE.txt There is civil debate between myself and (principally) S.M. Sterling, there are Swadesh lists, Renfrew, Mallory and Gimbutas are discussed, there's kookery, there's Hubey, there's Out-of-India, there's a surprising amount of talk about Eskimos, there's poetry and there's abuse... And it's only half a megabyte. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From vovin at hawaii.edu Fri Feb 27 02:07:41 1998 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (Alexander Vovin) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 21:07:41 EST Subject: Larry on Altaic In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > Sasha Vovin writes: > > > Larry, may we have the names of mysterious Altaicists whom you > > consulted and who all unanimously reject Altaic? I am getting > > curious, may be you conferred with the wrong guys? (:-) > > Yes, I thought somebody would ask this. If you don't mind, I'll > decline, since the people I've talked to gave me the clear impression > that they were expressing a purely private opinion which they > preferred not to make public, and one of them said so explicitly. > > This is reasonable. I know of other cases of linguists who hold > private views about proposed genetic groupings which they prefer not > to go public with, merely because they want to maintain good relations > with colleagues whose public views are very different. Well, Larry, this is not reasonable since you actually disseminate gossip without any reference to the source of this gossip. And what is more, you speak with a voice of authority, relying on anonimous authority. Just for example, person X on this list sends a message saying that Basque is related to North Caucasian, and that his source of information is anominous. What would be your reaction? Besides, working in this field for more than 10 years, I possibly can imagine obnly three people who have a competence in more than two branches of Altaic and who have negative attitude towards the genetic unity. Remember that being a specialist in just one branch of Altaic does not make this or that scholar a competent judge of Altaic as a whole, by the same token that every Slavicist or a Germanist is not by default an IEpeanist. Therefore, I can only conclude that you either consulted these pseudo-Altaicists, or you made a deliberate choice, asking these three people. If you asked Miller, Starostin, Menges, Dybo, Street, or yours truly, for the starters, the results will be different. Alexander Vovin Associate Professor of Japanese Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures 382 Moore Hall 1890 East-West Road University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 vovin at hawaii.edu fax (808)956-9515 (o.) t.(808)956-6881 (o.) From Georg at home.ivm.de Fri Feb 27 11:54:09 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 06:54:09 EST Subject: Larry on Altaic Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sasha Vovin writes: > Besides, working in this field for more than 10 years, I possibly >can imagine obnly three people who have a competence in more than two >branches of Altaic and who have negative attitude towards the genetic >unity. Remember that being a specialist in just one branch of Altaic does >not make this or that scholar a competent judge of Altaic as a whole, by >the same token that every Slavicist or a Germanist is not by default an >IEpeanist. Therefore, I can only conclude that you either consulted these >pseudo-Altaicists, or you made a deliberate choice, asking these three >people. If you asked Miller, Starostin, Menges, Dybo, Street, or yours >truly, for the starters, the results will be different. That these people endorse Altaic is well known, Sasha. The quality of *some* of there work, also, though probably not to everyone on this list. No, Sasha, I cannot subscribe fully to what you say. It takes a specialist in all five branches to set the relationship up and work it out, this is true. It takes a specialist in only one of these languages to remove a pillar (if the data from that language is used in an improper way). Larry Trask is a specialist in Basque, so he may not be able to demolish, say, the whole of Dene-Caucasian. But he can remove Basque out of it single-handedly. Life ain't easy and complx. doubly so ... Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Fri Feb 27 13:51:47 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:51:47 EST Subject: discussion closed Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The discussion about linguistic relationships has dwindled to a conversa- tion between a small group of people. Consequently, I will ask them to continue the discussion off list. Dorothy Disterheft Moderator