Campbell's def. of "language"

[ECOLING at aol.com]

Yesterday I received the latest issue of the Journal "Language",
in which there is a review by Doris Bartholomew of
Lyle Campbell's book
*American Indian Languages: The historical linguistics of Native America*
Oxford University Press 1997

Campbell defines these terms (and reviewer Bartholomew
     does not comment, so presumably regards these definitions
     as quite normal, unremarkable):

'dialect' is a variety (regional or social) of a language,
     mutually intelligible with other dialects

'language' is a distinct linguistic entity that is
     mutually unintelligible with other languages

I simply do not believe that Larry Trask is unaware that this is
     standard linguistic usage.  He is not forced to use it himself,
     but he is obligated to treat this usage with respect,
     not to evade discussions based upon it by ridiculing it.

*****

Both the book and the review are of interest to those interested
in the classification of languages and their genetic groupings
and in the logic of using data and evidence in these domains.

Bartholomew is a specialist in the Otomanguean family of
Mesoamerica, and she finds quite a number of details to criticize
in that area.  She is very polite in her criticisms, expressing her
appreciation for Terrence Kaufman's work, in areas where there
are not yet enough scholars and where basic descriptions are
still being assembled, even as she gives reasons to
not accept Kaufmann's overall results in her area of special knowledge.

Of most interest for the logic of demonstration,
Bartholomew points out that Kaufman commits some of the errors
that Campbell warns about in his discussion of logic and
method, using lookalikes which are not supportable as reconstructions
in component families.

My comment on the immediately preceding:
Should this legitimize use of lookalikes?  No.
Should this delegitimize use of lookalikes?  No.
Arguments on such issues are much more complex.

No single criterion by itself is overriding,
languages of different structures permit different
kinds of evidence to be available for use in reconstruction
of common ancestry.

It is also of course appropriate and expected that a specialist
in one language family will have more to comment on with
regards to that language family, and may detect more errors
in a non-specialist's treatment of that family, than they will
for other language families.

Bartholomew is responsible and gracious in making the
criticisms she has, while recognizing that her finding what
she considers errors of logic, or at least inadequate evidence,
DOES NOT undermine the entire work under review,
does not even necessarily disprove the conclusions that
Kaufman drew from the material
(Campbell to a great extent followed Kaufman
for Mesoamerica and for South America).

***

My own familiarity with Campbell's earlier work makes me
very wary, because in his eagerness to defeat Greenberg's
final conclusions, he has previously made what I consider
serious logical errors, and in parts of his "Language" review of
Greenberg's *Language in the Americas*, he even wrote
in a very seriously misleading fashion, as if Greenberg's
chapter on methodological analysis did not exist.

That does not meet my standards of civic obligation, at least.

Nevertheless, Campbell is an extremely competent scholar.
For several proposed distant genetic groupings,
he provides probability estimates that the groupings
will ultimately prove valid, and separately from that,
a confidence level (based on how adequate he feels the data is
on which he bases his estimate of ultimate relationship).
For example, for Maya - Huave - Mixe/Zoquean,
he estimates the probability of ultimate relationship at 30%,
and gives a 25% confidence level for that estimate.

This book should be of great usefulness both to anyone
interested in what is generally established knowledge
of genetic relationships, and to anyone interested
in methods of establishing new genetic relationships for
languages of the world.

Doris Bartholomew's review covers quite a bit of the content
and conclusions, beyond her specialty in Otomanguean.
She notes Campbell's position that he does not believe
studies of dentition or other non-linguistic matters
will correlate strongly with genetic groupings which linguists
can establish.  (Personally I think that is too negative a
position.)

I have looked at some portions of it in the past,
but am not familiar enough with it at this point
to review it independently.

The price of the book is $75 at
<http://www.amazon.com>

***

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics