Campbell's def. of "language"

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

Lloyd Anderson wrote

> 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

...

> 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.

I think that Greenberg is mistaken in his conclusions, but I also agree that
many Americanists seemed to jump on the anti-Greenberg bandwagon.  However,
Greenberg's views on the languages of Native America were not a surprise
when they were published in 1987 and Americanists had been lining up for and
against for about a decade prior to their publication.  Greenberg had first
published in 1960 on the classification of the languages of Central and
South America, but at that time so little was known about those areas that
anyone could have said just about anything and not caused a ripple.  But I
was in the audience at Norman, Oklahoma in 1978 at the Mid-America
Linguistics Conference when he first presented his views on North America.
(He actually sat in on the paper that I read and asked me a couple of
questions at this my first professional meeting as a grad student, so I'll
always have a "warm fuzzy" memory of him despite my disagreements with his
conclusions.)  Mary Haas and several other legends of the Native American
linguistic pantheon were sitting in the front row as he spoke (he was the
keynote speaker).  You could have heard a pin drop and most of us were
stunned at his presentation and the conclusions he reached without using
careful comparative methodology.  That was the beginning of the division
among Americanists and the source of Lyle Campbell's vitriol.

> 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.

I completely agree.  The methodology chapters actually occupy a very large
portion of the book.

> 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.

I've owned my copy for about a year now and have read it a couple of times
already.  The methodology sections are very sound and represent the
classical comparative methodology.  There are also carefully argued sections
devoted to a variety of iconoclasms including Greenberg's.  He is thoughtful
and very careful in his discussions and he approaches the apostates with
much more care and respect than his Language review would indicate.  I saw a
draft of this book in Wick Miller's library when I helped clean out his
office after his untimely passing in 1994.  I'm not sure how long Wick had
it before his death, but Wick's copy was dog-eared, so Campbell had worked
on this for a long time.  It shows.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
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Utah State University
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