isoltes

[Steven Schaufele]

Mark Hale writes,
 
> Can someone tell me why the question of "isolates" is of any
> linguistic interest whatsoever? If we all accept, as I assume we
> must, that the definition of "language" is a socio-political one,
> then the question reduces to "why do we sometimes find groups of
> speakers, sociopolitically defined to be speakers of 'one
> language', who can't be demonstrated, given the limited nature
> of our evidence, the small number of scholars who have invested
> a small amount of time (seen from a human history perspective)
> working on them, and the extremely limited number of plausibly
> reconstructed language families which we could possibly relate
> them to, to be related to another language?"  The answer is then,
> of course, contained in the question. We don't have the right
> kind of evidence (yet), for the reasons I've inserted into the
> question, and we may never have the evidence. Without such evidence,
> the languages will count as 'isolates'. But it isn't a property
> of the language -- it's a property of the evidentiary record.
> Sometimes it's good and allows reconstruction of an ancestor,
> sometimes it isn't and doesn't. Is this surprising or interesting
> in any way?
 
Frankly, i would say the question of `isolates' is of interest primarily
to researchers who find motivation in the label.  As Mark points out, to
call a language an isolate is to confess that we don't *yet* have any
good evidence of its affiliation with any (other) known language or
language family.  The label thus constitutes an invitation for further
research.  I suspect in most cases the invitation falls on deaf ears;
most of us frankly can't get too excited about the possible affiliation
of, say, a certain language of Northern Australia with certain languages
of New Guinea.  But for those of us whose areas of interest and/or
expertise happen to include one or both of these areas, the suggestion is
a spur to possibly fruitful work.
 
So i guess what i'm saying is that `isolate', as a technical term in
linguistics, is of peculiarly `in-house' value.  It doesn't mean much to
tell the general public `Basque/Burushaski/whatever is a "linguistic
isolate"', but saying the same thing to a competent linguist may spur
hann on to some good serious work that may or may not establish a
previously unknown affiliation and, whether it does or not, may along the
way provide us with some very useful/interesting real information.
 
In any case, Mark is quite right when he says that the label really tells
us more about the current state of scholarship on a particular language
than about the language itself.
 
Best,
Steven
---------------------
Dr. Steven Schaufele
712 West Washington
Urbana, IL  61801
217-344-8240
fcosws at prairienet.org
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html
 
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