Updates to Athabaskan notes

[Bill Poser]

I don't think that reports of mutual intelligibility are a valid basis for
considering two speech varieties to be the same language, for two reasons.
One is that such reports do not necessarily reflect the intrinsic
intelligibility of the two varieties. All too often, they mean that
so-and-so, a speaker of A, also understands B. This may, however, be due to
at least passive bilingualism. Only if one really knows that the report
means that a speaker of A can understand B without prior exposure are such
reports to be taken seriously.

More importantly, intelligibility is not suited for this purpose because it
is not an equivalence relation: it is not transitive. That is, for purposes
of classification, it should be true that if A and B are mutually
intelligible and B and C are mutually intelligible then A and C are mutually
intelligible. It is, however, false as one can easily find chains where
mutual intelligibility obtains between neighbors but more distant varieties
are not mutually intelligible.

If two varieties are not mutually intelligible, they are arguably not
varieties of the same language, but the mere fact that two varieties are
mutually intelligible is not a valid basis for concluding that they are
varieties of the same language.
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