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[Dorothy Disterheft]

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> Date:   Thu, 27 Mar 1997 23:08:45 -1000
> From:   Alexander Vovin <vovin at hawaii.edu>
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> To:     Larry Trask <larryt at COGS.SUSX.AC.UK>
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> Subject: Re: isolates
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> Whoops, I forgot to answer the following points.
>
> On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Larry Trask wrote:
>
> >
> > What you're raising here is the old question of how we distinguish
> > languages from dialects, and of course we can't.  Yes, I'm aware of
> > the mutual incomprehensibility of the several varieties of Japanese
> > (though I didn't know about the similar case for Korean).  But mutual
> > comprehensibility is only one possible criterion for recognizing
> > language boundaries, and it's not even the one we mainly rely on.
>
> A.V.:
> You of course are right that languages are not to be defined solely on the
> mutual intelligibility. Being a native speaker of Russian, I can
> understand Ukranian and Belourussian without any effort at all, and with
> more strain even good chunks of Polish and Bulgarian, which are all, of
> course, different languages. Here I used mutual intellgbility solely to
> demonstrate that there is considerable linguistic diversity in both Japan
> and Korea, which you seemed to doubt in your previous posting. I can
> easily demonstrate that we deal with various languages, not dialects by
> other means: showing that they have divergent morphology and lexicon. I
> can do it if you are still in doubt.
>
> L.T.:
> >
> > I'm sorry, but I simply cannot understand this.  You are telling me
> > that Ainu is "unlikely" to be an isolate, even though no relationship
> > has been demonstrated between Ainu and anything else at all.  I find
> > this position incomprehensible.
>
> A.V.:
> Should I repeat again that there have been established a number of
> Ainu-Austric parallels which do satisfy the principle of
> regularity of phonetic correspondences. The regularity of many
correspondences has been
demonstrated, but there is still many things
> left. Nevertheless, most of the proposed etymologies withstood the
scrutiny of the specialists. Did we hear anyone who specializes in Austric
and/or Ainu saying otherwise?
Don't you think that this is a different situation from your Basque?
>
>
> L.T.:
> >
> > You are joking.  It is not on my shoulders to demonstrate that any
> > languages are not related; this is a logical impossibility.  If you
> > can demonstrate that J and K are related beyond reasonable doubt, I'll
> > be delighted, since I prefer positive results to negative ones.
>
> A.V.:
>
>    If you maintain the point of view that it is impossible to demonstrate
> that two or more languages are not related, then you obviously cannot
> demonstrate that Basque is unrelated to North Caucasian or whatever.
> Meanwhile, this is exactly the opposite what you did over the last year:
> showing your
> audience the impossibility of the connection. What is true for Basque,
> should be
> true for other languages. Demonstrate that Japanese-Korean etymologies are
> either faulty, because they are build on erroneous reconstructions, or
> that there are no regular correspondences, or even better both -- exactly
> like you do with Basque. This is in my opinion a quite logical way to
> disprove a genetic relationship.
>
>
> A.V.:
> >
[on the fact that there are two living Yukaghir and two living Ket
languages]
>
> L.T.:
> >
> > We are merely quibbling over words here.  A small family of one
> > language with no apparent relatives is my idea of an isolate.
>
> A.V.:
> Again, neither Yukaghir, nor Ket are in fact a single language: there are
> two living languages in each case and more extinct ones. If you are going
> to call a family consisting of more than one language an isolate, then
> where is going to be the line?