Principled Comparative Method - a new tool

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

> Another perspective on this question is my own view that linguists
> don't know their data as well as they think they do. The jump to
> generalisations is to quick for my liking. My position was
> vindicated in the chinese data where we found far more items than
> the linguist expected that were exceptional by his criteria (Another
> experience that tells me not to accept the rigid Trask criteria for
> defining the vocabulary suitable for the study of early basque).

Jon, this is not a fair or reasonable characterization of my position.

First, I am not jumping to any generalizations at all.  I am merely
invoking reasonable criteria to try to identify the Basque words with
the *strongest* claims to native and ancient status in the language.
Only by examining the resulting list can I hope to reach any
generalizations at all.

Of course there will be a few exceptional forms in the list (I've
already mentioned a couple), but I can't *tell* that they're exceptional
until I first have a reasonable list on which to base some
generalizations.

Second, I am not attempting to "define the vocabulary suitable for the
study of early Basque", at least not with my initial list.  Rather, I am
merely hoping to identify the phonological characteristics of native and
ancient words -- in particular, their morpheme-structure constraints --
in order *then* to see if the results yield us a tool for identifying
the words which may have reasonable claims to ancient status.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk