isolates

[Larry Trask]

Alexander Vovin writes:
 
> I would like to offer some corrections for the following passage in
> Larry Trask's posting, as some of the claims regarding the certain
> Asian languages as isolates are out of date, I am afraid.
 
Well, I am happy to be corrected, but I have my doubts about some of
what follows.
 
>     First, there is a general consensus nowadays among all linguists
> working in historical Korean and Japanese that Korean and Japanese
> are related.
 
"All"?  I doubt it.  I know that this idea has been gathering support,
but it's news to me that *all* specialists now accept it as
established.  Anyway, I can name one specialist who certainly doesn't
accept this "consensus": Masayoshi Shibatani, who has repreatedly
characterized the proposed Japanese-Korean link as unsubstantiated.
And Shibatani also repeatedly points out that views on the possible
affiliations of Japanese are numerous, varied, and much debated.
 
> Their link to the rest of Altaic remains more disputable, but even
> here majority of the scholars lean toward the acceptance of genetic
> relationship between Japanese, Korean, and Tungusic.
 
Well, even if this is true, "leaning toward the acceptance" of a
hypothesis is hardly the same thing as seeing it established to
general satisfaction.  As far as I know, Japanese has not been
demonstrated to be securely related to anything else at all, and it
remains an isolate, as does Korean.
 
> In addition, none of these proposals are long-range, in
> the sense of long-range proposals concerning genetic affiliation of
> Basque or Nihali. Besides, both "Japanese" and "Korean" are to a
> great extent sociolinguistic terms: under "Japanese" we have a
> number of mutually unintelligible languages or "dialects", as they
> are usually called, with the depth comparable to that of
> Germanic. The same is true of "Korean": there are at least three
> Korean languages, again normally called "dialects", mutually
> unintelligible and with the depth comparable to that of
> Slavic. Thus, even if they were not related (but they are), each of
> them would represent a mini-family, and not a true isolate.
 
This is news to me, and I am skeptical.  No reference source available
to me even so much as mentions the possibility that either Japanese or
Korean might plausibly be regarded as a family of three or more
languages.  The most I have seen is a suggestion that the highly
divergent Ryukyuan varieties of Japanese might be regarded as a
distinct language, but even this appears to be a minority view today
(though it was formerly more prominent).
 
>     Second, over last seven years there has been presented quite a
> chunk of evidence allowing us tentatively to link Ainu with
> Austronesian and Austroasiatic.
 
> There is a consensus between anyone who ever tried to venture in
> this field (late Murayama S., L. Reid, J. Bengtson, P. Sidwell,
> I.Pejros, Yanagizaki Y. , and myself) that Austric connection is the
> likeliest for Ainu. Although, none has yet come up with a proof
> beyond the reasonable doubt, this is the only connection among
> proposed for Ainu that cannot be easily disproved (contrary to the
> case, e.g., with Ainu and Altaic). Thus, this is situation
> remarkably different from Basque situation, where majority of
> specialists reject any remote proposals.
 
But no relationship has been established between Ainu and anything
else at all, and it remains an isolate.  Having a favorite conjecture
is a far cry from having a persuasive case.  Anyway, even Austric
itself is not generally accepted as a valid construct.
 
>      Third, since both Ket and Yukaghir did have relatives in the
> recent past, this very fact seems to work against Larry Trask point
> that there are more isolates among us than we suppose. As a matter
> of fact, it shows us how isolates come into being: by extinction of
> the other family members. Thus, there are probably less true
> isolates than we suppose.
 
I don't follow this at all.  If we can watch isolates come into
existence before our eyes in historical times, then why is that an
argument against the existence of numerous isolates which lost any
relatives they may have had ages ago?
 
> In particular, as I intended to demonstrate above, Larry Trask's
> Asia list can be safely reduced to Gilyak, Nihali, and Burushaski.
 
"Safely"?  I don't think so.
 
> Among those remaining three, Gilyak looks like a Nostratic language
> (although it has yet to be proven),
 
Er, um...but *Nostratic* is still very far from being established.
 
> and I even will not be very surprised if ultimately it turns out to
> be a very abberant member of Altaic family: after all, scholars so
> far applied only internal reconstruction to Gilyak, but we should
> not overlook the fact that what we call Gilyak actually consists of
> three or four mutually untelligible and pretty much divergent
> languages, the fact that allows comparative reconstruction that is
> yet to be done.
 
Interesting, certainly, but Gilyak is still an isolate.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk