Logical Gap

ECOLING at aol.com ECOLING at aol.com
Fri Mar 3 05:43:18 UTC 2000


Larry Trask writes,
concerning his criteria for including words as potential early Basque
monosyllabic words:

>My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

I have no doubt that Trask believes this.
But it has been pointed out before that it does not follow.

There is a logical non-sequitur here, which is *one* of the core
difficulties in the entire discussion we have been having on this subject.

It is perfectly possible that criteria may be *stated* in words
none of which have the slightest thing to do with phonological form,
and yet, in the real world, the combination of those criteria have
some consequence which end up excluding some category
of vocabulary elements describable by a particular phonological
form, at least statistically.

(Statistically is for me systematically, especially when in quite
a number of cases the exclusions may reach near-complete
exclusion.
If Trask wishes to define "systemically" as meaning "100%",
then I would probably agree with him on his statement above;
but then he would be discussing a different question from the
one I was discussing, and we should not be continuing this
conversation.  Assuming Trask wishes to discuss what I was
discussing, since his message appears to be a response to what
I said, I continue...)

Here is an example of an exclusion which is an indirect consequence,
not explicitly stated in a set of criteria, yet a real exclusion nonetheless.
None of Trask's criteria refer explicitly or directly to verbs,
yet given the structure of Basque, in which as I understand Trask
no verbal word is monosyllabic (though verbal *roots* are),
his criteria do end up excluding all verbs.
In this case, we only need a single criterion, monosyllabicity of the word,
to end up excluding all verbs.  Yet "monosyllabicity of the word"
is a criterion which nowhere mentions anything directly related to
"verb".  The exclusion is indirect, because of something else,
a fact of verb structure (specific to, though not unique to, Basque).

In the case of a criterion based on early attestation,
there is nothing referring explicitly to excluding any particular
strata of vocabulary or individual lexical items,
yet an indirect consequence is that any strata of vocabulary
which are selectively disfavored for written attestation,
or any individual lexical items so disfavored,
will be statistically excluded.

So it can happen, through using a combination of criteria,
that several strata of vocabulary end up being excluded *statistically*
(all I have ever claimed) by Trask's criteria.
Since most of us know independently of Trask's criteria
that most or all living languages contain vocabulary of such strata,
it would normally be considered appropriate to include some of them
as candidates for reconstruction of any pattern which is expected
to have any sort of general validity for the language.
("general" does not mean "universal").

And any set of criteria which had the effect, direct or
indirect, of excluding such vocabulary strata systematically
(statistically), would be judged as a poor set of criteria.

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics

***

An addendum:

Given the previous publication on this list of a very detailed message
by me listing 9 very specific points in which I argue it would be
better to modify Trask's general criteria for including and
for excluding potential words as reflecting ancient Basque,
the following statements by Trask seem exceedingly odd.

I refrain from repeating the nine specific items,
since they can be found in the archives.
The message was titled
"9 specifics on Including and excluding data"
and was posted on 30th October, 1999.
I have had in preparation for about a month a list of an
*additional* eight or so specific modifications which I argue would
improve such a set of criteria, numbers 10-17.
It will be sent to the IE list shortly.

These statements by Trask:

[LA]
>>  It is not that the long monomorphemic words have been generally lost,
>>  it is that Trask's criteria exclude them from his considering them as
>>  early Basque (this has been discussed in many other messages, one a
>>  cumulation of 9 ways in which his criteria might usefully be modified).
>
[LT]
>Oh, no -- not this again! ;-)

It's not going to go away.  There are responsible people
who disagree with Trask on what are linguistically justifiable criteria,
*even* for the goal Trask says he has set himself.
I believe that in stating the 9 (soon 17) specific modifications I have
proposed,
I am being *more conservative* in the sense of *more careful*
than Trask, careful not to jump to conclusions which have a
substantial probability of being incorrect.

>Lloyd, this is not true.  My criteria are independent of phonological form,
>and therefore they cannot possibly systematically exclude words of any
>particular phonological form.

Discussed above in the main portion of this message.

[LA]
>>  It is one respect in which the totality of Trask's criteria embody a
>> bias against certain vocabulary
>>  not justified by careful linguistic methodology.

[LT]
>And just what "careful linguistic methodology" would you put in place of
>my explicit criteria?
>
>Lloyd, I have asked you this question countless times now, and you have
>still refused to answer it.

Answered many times, in specifics.

***
[I interrupt here to insert a direct quotation from Larry Trask's message
of 9th December, 1999, in which Trask *admits* the comments were
specifics, though he had been contending they were only generalities,
not specifics.  Perhaps Larry has forgotten he agreed they were specifics.

Quote:

>OK.  Lloyd Anderson has raised a number of specific points concerning
>my criteria for assembling a plausible list of Pre-Basque words.
>His posting is too long to address at one go, so I'll try to deal with it
>in a series of postings, one for each point raised.]
***

>You just keep muttering darkly

No, not muttering,
rather crafting careful responses, worded carefully.

>that there must be something wrong with my criteria,
>but you have *never* advanced any other
>explicit criteria.  Now have you?

Yes, I have.  In the message cited, and in many other messages.
Trask knows this.

>If you want to pursue this matter, will you *please* finally now spell
>out the criteria you think we should be using?
>Mine are on the table: where are yours?

Already did spell out specific modifications to Trask's criteria.
*Including* explicitly cases where
the best modification is to partly or wholly remove a criterion,
as wrong-headed at least when used as an absolute exclusionary
barrier rather than as part of a weighted set of criteria balanced
against each other.

Trask doesn't agree with them.
But that is quite another matter from claiming they
were not spelled out.

***

A tangent in Trask's message:

I am perfectly well aware that /tx/ is an affricate.
In the terminology I use, along with many other linguists,
affricates are considered or may be considered as a sub-class of stops.
I did so refer to them that way.
I do not care what Trask wishes to call affricates phonetically.
It has no bearing on any substantive differences of views at the moment.

Whether /txitxi/ (my error) or /txito/ (as Trask corrects the form),
there are two voiceless stops (in my terms)
and there are voiceless initial stops (in my terms),
and I believe Trask argues that (translated into those same terms)
voicless initial stops do not occur in native ancient Basque vocabulary.
(If we call some of them "affricates",
then we simply say that "stops or affricates" are excluded initially...?
Or did the statement of initial non-occurrence
apply only to voicless stops which are *not* affricated?).

(I think I stated in my first reference to the word for 'chick'
that I was not sure I had remembered the spelling right.
Trask states that it is /txito/ rather than /txitxi/.
Of course it is then no longer an example of apparent reduplication.
But that correction has no bearing on the main point I was making,
that a word of highly exceptional form, as Trask states,
was nevertheless quite plausibly a part of ancient Basque vocabulary
(a status he was inclined in this case not to deny,
even though it might stick out a mile).



More information about the Indo-european mailing list