Genetic Descent

[Larry Trask]

--On Friday, June 1, 2001 12:26 pm -0500 "David L. White"
<dlwhite at texas.net> wrote:

[on Thomason and Kaufman]

>>         Well, I can, on p. 14:  "... any linguistic feature can be
>> transferred from any language to any other language."  No restrictions
>> are mentioned, and TK consistently fail to note that not everything that
>> could conceivably occur actually does.

> LT:  Ah, I see.  But this statement seems very different from the
> position you imputed to T and K: "Anything goes."  This quote plainly
> does not say that anything can happen at all, but only that there are no
> linguistic features that cannot be borrowed.  Are you aware of any
> features that cannot be borrowed?

> DLW:  There are apparently no cases of things like 1) singular personal
> endings being borrowed without plural personal endings being borrowed, or
> 2) past morphemes being borrowed without future morphemes.

But these, even if they stand up, are not counterexamples.  T & K say
"anything can be borrowed"; you reply with "Y can only be borrowed after X
is borrowed".  There is no contradiction here.

Suppose I say the following to my students:

1. "You may read any book on IE linguistics you like."

2. "However, you may only read Szemerenyi if you have first read a more
elementary introduction."

Have I contradicted myself?  I think not.

> Whether TK
> meant "anything goes" or not depends on how strong a reading we give to
> their statement.

But why should we impute to them a position which they have never asserted
or endorsed?  Is this fair?

> They certainly did not exclude it.

Well, they also do not expressly exclude the possibility that some
languages were introduced to earth by Martians.  Should we therefore darkly
suspect them of harboring such beliefs? ;-)

> It should be noted
> that whether finite verbal morphology gets borowed at all is a matter of
> definition,

Sorry; I can't agree.  If language A gradually replaces most of its
inherited verbal morphology with morphology taken from language B, while at
the same time retaining much of its inherited lexicon and grammar, then
there is no definition about it: the language has borrowed verbal
morphology, and that is the end of the matter.  T & K's stance is that we
should consider this a possibility and look to see if there are any
examples of it.  Thomason now concludes that Laha, at least, is indeed an
example of this very thing.  Whether she is right in this is a matter for
empirical investigation, not a matter of definition.

> because if it is never mixed, then it could (or could not) be
> taken as an indicator of genetic descent.

Well, Laha is on the table.  The chief investigator, Collins, has concluded
that Laha has indeed borrowed almost all of its verbal morphology from
Malay.  What is there to discuss, apart from the possibility that Collins
may be in error?  We can't just wave the case away by invoking arbitrary
"definitions".  And why should we want to, anyway?

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
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