[Corpora-List] any opinion or argument on Language, Vol. 81, no. 2 (June, 2005

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Corpora colleagues, I wonder if you did buy into the article published in Language, Vol. 81, no. 2 (June, 2005, about which Jim Marchand wrote. (see below). He did not buy into it. But why, if he stated that it was "well done and well documented". I could not understand Jim. If he liked it then he bought into it. Am I right? If he didn't, then it is not "well done and well documented". I wish I could hear more comments on this article. Looking forward to hearing from you to yutamb at hotmail.com I am interested in the phylogenetics of language, on cladistics, language classification and the use of a more rigorous `mathematical' approach to reconstruction and taxonomy in linguistscs.  Remain your sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk Ped. University (KF), Russia
Subject : 19.111 phylogenetics of language
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 10:18:29 +0100 
 "Jim Marchand"  
Subject: phylogenetics of language 
We have had discussions off and on on cladistics and 
the use of a more rigorous `mathematical' approach 
to reconstruction and the phylogenetics of languages.  The last issue of 
_Language_, Vol. 81, no. 2 (June, 2005) has a 
well-argued and documented article, 
"Perfect phylogenetic networks: A new methodology for 
 reconstructing the evolutionary history of natural languages," 
 by Lucy Nakhleh, Don Ringe, and Tandy Warnow, pp. 382-420.
I do not buy into it, since most of our concepts, such 
as language, dialect, idiolect, reconstructed language,
etc. are ideal types rather than Aristotelian (yes/no)
concepts, but it is, as I said, well done and 
well documented. 

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