"mono-descent is implicit in the comparative method ..."

Brian M. Scott bmscott at stratos.net
Mon Jul 2 13:22:40 UTC 2001


On 28 Jun 2001, at 1:19, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> BTW, let's look at that statement: "By the way, since "mono-descent"
> is implicit in the comparative method,..."

> I have four different historical linguistics textbooks in front of
> me, including the admirable one written by Prof Trask.  I don't see
> a single definition that says anything about mono-descent.

You shouldn't expect to find *implicit* consequences in a definition.
You will, however, find an explicit statement of this consequence in
Section 6.6 of Anthony Fox, _Linguistic Reconstruction: An
Introduction to Theory and Method_ (Oxford: OUP, 1995):

    Of course, it must be acknowledged that the nature of genetic
    continuity, and therefore of language inheritance, is, as noted
    above, somewhat ambiguous.  If language contact is a major
    factor in linguistic change, with substratum influence as a
    typical manifestation, then there is continuity between a
    language and its substratum as well as with earlier stages of
    the 'same' language.  If, for example, features of French can be
    attributed to the Celtic substratum of Gaul, then Celtic, as
    well as Latin, can be regarded as a legitimate ancestor of
    French.  But the Comparative Method is only able to accommodate
    a single source.  Again, however, it is clear that this is
    entirely in keeping with the aims of the method: given a set of
    languages with a common inheritance (e.g. the Romance or
    Germanic languages) the method will identify only those features
    that belong to this inheritance, and exclude features from any
    other source, including the substratum.  This is simply a
    consequence of the way in which the method works: by
    establishing sets of correspondences between the languages
    compared.

You'll find there a great deal more on what the comparative method
can and cannot do.  You might also look at Roger Lass, _Historical
Linguistics and Language Change_ (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).

>  I do see references to "systematic correspondence" between two
> languages.  I don't see anything that logically demands those
> "systematic correspondences" be only related back to only one
> ancestor.

Are you suggesting that some of the phonological correspondences
might go back to an ancestor L1, while others went back to a
different ancestor L2?  If so, please explain how this would work.  If
not, what do you mean?

In a related post you write: 'If you assume only one parent where
there was more than one parent, the comparative method can be used
to reconstruct a language that never existed'.  How?  (Presumably you
have something more in mind than the familiar ways in which
reconstructed languages are oversimplifications and approximations.)
Assuming that the situation could actually arise, it seems to me that the
comparative method would either partially reconstruct one parent or,
more likely, fail to reconstruct anything.

Finally, are you suggesting that the comparative method could
somehow be applied differently if one assumed from the beginning that
the languages being compared had, say, two parents?  If so, please
explain how.  What would one do differently?

Brian M. Scott



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