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[Dorothy Disterheft]

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> Date:   Fri, 28 Mar 1997 00:10:08 -1000
> From:   Alexander Vovin <vovin at hawaii.edu>
> X-Sender: vovin at uhunix2
> To:     "Sarah G. Thomason" <sally at ISP.PITT.EDU>
> cc:     HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU
> Subject: Re: isolates
> In-Reply-To: <9222.859488084 at pogo>
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> The response follows...
>
> On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Sarah G. Thomason wrote:
>
> >   In discussing the hypothesis of Japanese-Korean relationship,
> > Alexander Vovin says, rightly, that I shouldn't have referred
> > to a review without checking the exact reference.  So I have now
> > checked: the reviewer was David Solnit, the review was of Paul
> > Benedict's JAPANESE/AUSTRO-TAI (Ann Arbor: Karoma), and the review
> > appeared in LANGUAGE 68:188-96 (1992).  Solnit concludes his review
> > as follows: "Finally, the correspondences with Austronesian and with
> > Altaic, to the extent that both are valid, need to be evaluated and
> > placed in relation to each other, whether that entails choosing one as
> > inherited and the other as borrowed, or whether Japanese is one of
> > those rare cases having in its past a break in normal genetic
> > transmission."
>
> A.V.:
>      Several things needed to be mentioned. First, David Solnit is an
> excellent specialist in Thai and Karen, but not a Japanologist, therefore
> he can hardly evaluate Japanese side of things. Moreover, since we were
> once both in the U of Michigan, I recollect directing him to some of the
> materials on Japanese-Altaic, but I believe that he could not fully
> utilize Starostin 1991 book, as he does not have a command of Russian. I
> have wrote myself a longer review of the same book by Benedict, in
> Diachronica XI.1 and a longer analysis of Japanese-Austronesian
> "hypotheses"(sic) by Benedict and Kawamoto (they do not agree between
> themselves reagarding almost a single etymology, since plural) in Oceanic
> linguistics in 1994. In both cases I have demonstrated that both Benedict
> and Kawamoto completely disregard Japanese language history, misanalyze
> morphemic structure of Japanese words, etc., etc. I have also demonstrated
> in these two publications that there is no regularity in Benedict
> Austro-Japanese correspondences (Kawamoto does not bother about
> correspondences at all, at least not in the sense like it is done by those
> of us who work within comparative method). There are also alternative
> Altaic etymologies cum phonetic correspondences. In sum,
> Japanese-Austronesian fares no better than Japanese-Dravidian or
> Japanese-Sumerian, or Japanese-Basque. HISTLINGers can judge for
> themselves.
>
>
> S.T.:
> >
> >    A.V. goes on to say that I have grossly misrepresented his own work,
> > in my reference to his reconstruction of *hd- for a correspondence set
> > consisting mainly of w's.  My methodological point was that a claim of
> > genetic relationship that rests in part on such reconstructions is not
> > one that I, at least, would place very much confidence in.
>
> A.V.:
>  I have to repeat once again, that Ainu-Austroasiatic hypothesis does not
> stand on this particular reconstruction: there are only two etymologies
> where *hd is involved among 50+.
>
> S.T.:
>   He asks if
> > I can offer a better reconstruction for the correspondence set in
> > question.  I do believe that I can: I propose *w.
>
> a.V.:
>
> I thought about this solution, but *w does not explain why there is an
> alternation between /w/ and /s/:
>
> cf.: wan '10', tu-pe-san '8' (lit.: two-thing-ten), sine-pe-san '9'
> (one-thing-ten).
>
> S.T.:
>
>   The fact that *w would,
> > on the evidence of the dialects, be a rare Proto-Ainu phoneme doesn't bother
> > me nearly as much as A.V.'s own proposal.  Here is the relevant material
> > from his book A RECONSTRUCTION OF PROTO-AINU (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993):
> >
> > 1.  The correspondence set (which I call large because it ranges over a
> >     large number of dialects):
> >
> >     w : w : w : w : w : w : w : w : w : w : u-/w- : -G- : v : v : -gu-
> >
> >
> > 2.  A.V.'s rationale for reconstructing *hd-: He does not reconstruct *w
> > because "[w] is extremely rare in common Ainu.  It occurs initially in
> > five words, one of which is doubtful, and in medial position in three
> > words....the distribution of [w] is quite peculiar -- it occurs mostly
> > before [a], once before [e], and once before [o]...."  He also considers,
> > and rejects, reconstructing *hw- or *gw-, saying that "the existence of
> > such a cluster seems quite unnatural in a system which lacks [w] itself."
> > Therefore, he continues, "we have to look for some sound which existed in
> > PA and could produce the [w] sound in the process of development."  He
> > likes *h for the first segment because it "can be easily reconstructed on
> > the basis of [two particular dialects, the ones with -G- and -gu-]"; and
> > he likes *d for the second segment in the cluster because "it could undergo
> > spirantisation *d > <dh> [eth, sorry no voiced interdental fricative on
> > my computer], and the shift *<dh> > w is rather probable."
>
> A.V.:
>
>    Prof. Thomason omits the part where I say about w/s alternation
> from my reasoning (see above). If I relied exclusively on comparative data
> and disregarded internal reconstruction, I'd reconstruct *hw or *gw.
> However, it cannot be disregarded. If anyone knows of examples where *w >
> s, I will gladly accept Prof. Thomason proposal
>
> S.T.:
> >
>  I no longer have the
> > book at hand, but I don't recall any elaborate C clusters at all, much
> > less something as weird as hd-, in any of the dialects.
>
> A.V.:
> I am afraid that this is again incorrect. I reconstruct a number of
> consonantal clusters for PA, and cluster tr- is attested for Sakhalin and
> Kuril dialects. Besides, lack of clusters in modern dialects cannot be
> hardly used as a proof against existence of clusters not only in the
> protolanguage but even in the recent past. Modern Vietnamese does not have
> any clusters, but there is plenty of them in Proto-Vietic, and even de
> Rhodes dictionary reflecting 17th century Vietnamese has a lot of words
> with clusters.
>
>
> S.T.:
>   The sound changes
> > A.V. posits from this very strange C cluster are themselves not compelling.
> > Since we are talking about dialects of the same language, there also isn't
> > much time for the weird cluster to undergo all these INDEPENDENT  changes
> > in every single dialect....changes that just happen to lead to the very
> > same rather surprising result in ten dialects, for instance.
> >
> >    I leave it to other HISTLINGers to judge the plausibility of this
> > reconstruction (and others in the book).
> >
>
> A.V.:
>   Well, I would prefer to have uncompelling sound changes in dialects
> rather than unexplained morphonological alternation, and I believe that a
> reconstruction *w does not explain it -- it rather sweeps things under the
> rug.
>
> S.T.:
> >
> > P.S. The point I made in the same message  about isolates in remote
> > mountain valleys was a methodological one, not a claim either about
> > polygenesis of human language or about the existence of  such cases
> > ...though Basque comes close.  I made no reference to complete
> > homogeneity of my hypothetical speech community, as A.V. suggests in
> > his reply.
>
>
> A.V.:
> I believe that "no splits" suggests homogeneity in this particular case.
> >
>