PIE vs. Proto-World (Proto-Language)

[Sean Crist]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> There is no *tangible* way for us to ever know whether languages arose
> monogenetically or polygenetically however most linguists, even when they
> deny its recoverability, have correctly weighed the odds of mono- vs.
> polygenesis, and subscribe to monogenesis.

I don't think this correctly represents the field; I'd say that most
linguists are agnostic on this question.  The majority view is that there
isn't evidence to allow us to answer the question one way or the other. In
any case, it's not a question that most linguists spend a lot of time
pondering.  There was so much unverifiable silliness written on this topic
earlier in the history of linguistics that the whole topic has a rather
disreputable air to it.

> If a probablistically calculated
> hypothesis is "ideology", then everything done in historical linguistics is
> "ideology".

A probabilistic model is one in which each of the possible outcomes of an
event has a particular numeric probability assigned to it.  The
Comparative Method is not probabilistic; it is categorical.

I can't see any sense in which the monogenesis hypothesis is
"probabilistically calculated".  One can imagine that there could be a
probabilistic model of language genesis, but there are so many unknowns
that such a model would likely not be of much use.  It would probably be
worse off than (for example) the Drake formula for calculating the
probability that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe; the
fact is that we just don't know the answer, and there's nothing wrong with
saying that we don't know.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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