[Corpora-List] language taxons: subgroups, groups, families, unities, etc

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Letter to the linguistic community
Dear colleagues in the field of linguistics, I'd be thankful to you very much for sending me to my e-mail address yutamb at hotmail.com your ideas on classification of languages, language subgroups, groups, families, unities, or other language taxons. What is your opinion on the book by  
Angela M a r c a n t o n io , The Uralic Language Family.Facts, Myths and Statistics, Oxford -Boston 2002 (Publications of the Philological Society 35). 335 p.

Dr. Marcantonio is against the idea of the Uralic languages as a genealogical language family. I should think the proof that Uralic family in the form of the genetic family really exists should rest with Johanna Laakso, Ante Aikio, Merlijn de Smit and the others who belive that this language taxon consists of the genetically related language which originated from one parent language. I guess in a free society everybody can express his or her doubts about anything without any fear. I read 3 negative reviews on Marcantonio's book, may be there are many more pro or contra reviews. I have no access to Western journals since Russian libraries do not buy any Western journals on linguistics. I have no access to any websites either.  What Dr. Angela Marcantonio did was: she read again what the scholars who put forward the idea of the Uralic language family really wrote. What was their proof and what is the proof now. Otherwise this discussion looks like the discussion between those who believe in something without any proof and those who want it proven. I've studied Mansi (Vogul) and Hungarian and I am not convinced that these languages are really genetically related like Ukrainian and Russian or Polish and Czech. I also dealt with some Turkic languages, which do seem to be one solid linguistic family. The same is true for Tungus-Manchurian family. It is less evident for the Ugric languages, like Mansi (Vogul) and Hungarian. May be,  there used to be a lot of dead languages between Mansi and Hungarian, and they are the ends of the long language chain, like Russian and English (if there was such a language chain between Russian and English at all?). Or may be, they acquired similar features by close contacts.The reality of every language family should be proven exactly and with a fixed threshold of the reliability. The reliability of the proof should be 99% or at least 95%. I can state almost anything with the reliability of 1%. In the case of the Uralic family, the reliability is much lower than 99% or even 95%. I guess linguists should speak about language families with the remarks about its reliability. Otherwise, the discussions about language families have no sense. I should suggest that more strict proofs should be introduced into linguistics by mathematical methods. I am sure it is very interesting to hear the opinions of other linguists about solid fundamental proofs in linguistics. I wonder what linguists think about the Indo-European, Paleo-Asiatic, and other language families. Looking forward to hearing from you soon to yutamb at hotmail.com Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia 
Angela M a r c a n t o n io , The Uralic Language Family.

Facts, Myths and Statistics, Oxford -Boston 2002 (Publications of the Philological Society 35). 335 p.

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