Fear of "loss of control"; semantic change

[ECOLING at aol.com]

The following two paragraphs began a message received
privately from Marie-Lucie Tarpent today.
In that message she gave permission to quote it to the
full list, which because of its references to her own work
and to relevant work of others I think is useful.

I do not know Paul Newman's book,
and would be interested
in further discussion of it,
also of Marie-Lucie's and Johanna Nichols's
various presentations on these topics.

Lloyd Anderson

***

>I was very pleased to read your message on the topic of denial of
>semantic change.  I presented a paper at the International Congress
>of Historical Linguistics in Vancouver 3 or 4 weeks ago, in which i
>mentioned the fear of "loss of control" that seems to underlie the
>clinging to "the rigor of the comparative method", more by people
>with poor mastery of the CM than otherwise.  Semantic leeway is also
>addressed by Johanna Nichols in her discussions of the comparative
>method.  Another good piece of writing on the subject is "On being
>right", a small brochure by Paul Newman about Greenberg's work in
>African linguistics and related controversial topics in comparative
>linguistics.

>In my paper "Tsimshianic and Penutian" (IJAL 1997) i also addressed
>the subject of semantic range:  in several related languages one is
>likely to find a similar range of meanings for a given root or stem,
>rather than tightly constrained individual meanings which may be more
>indicative of borrowing.  I also defended starting from phonological
>resemblances rather than from a list of meanings in looking for
>potential cognates.

>...<snip>

>Marie-Lucie [Tarpent]