isolates

[Alexander Vovin]

On Fri, 28 Mar 1997, Larry Trask wrote:
 
> Alexander Vovin writes:
>
>L.T.:
> We are going in circles.  It is already clear from other postings that
> the validity of Austric is not generally accepted, in which case no
> Ainu-Austric link can possibly be generally accepted.  Moreover, I
> think there are grounds for doubting your assertion that Ainu has been
> shown, to general satisfaction, to be related to *something*.
 
A.V.:
 
    I'm sorry but may be you can enlighten me and the rest of us what is
"general acceptance" and "general satisfaction"? Is it a matter of the
vote? More people accept IE than Austric, but you of course can find more
people who had some experience with IE than with Austric. And of course
Austric cannot be as developped as IE: the very idea of Austric is younger
than a century. I agree that neither Austric nor Ainu-Austric are
finally proven, but it is accepted as the only perspective direction of
research by people who work in this particular field, and I named several.
However, neither you nor Mark Hale gave a specific reference to anyone who
outright refutes Austric. Instead, we see references to "general
acceptance". It seems to me that you a priori throw
away all cases under construction, whether it is Austric or Nostratic.
Baby can be gone with the water (:-).
 
L.T.:
[snip]
>  What I did
> was merely to demonstrate, to my own satisfaction at least, that the
> evidence on offer *did not stand up to scrutiny*, and hence that their
> case could not be accepted.  And that is a very different thing from
> proving the absence of a relation.
 
A.V.:
 
   Using the formal logic, you are right, but as a matter of fact the
impossibility to prove the relationship means that there is no possibility
to prove the relationship, therefore it should not concern us as long as
we are doing science and not entertaining the speculations. Therefore the
relationship is non-existent for analysis, not in GENERAL, of course.
 
L.T.:
>
> So, Bengtson's case fails.  There remain at least three logical
> possibilities:
>
> (1) Basque and Caucasian really are discoverably related, but no one
> has yet uncovered the available evidence.
>
> I can't scrutinize a case that has never been made.
>
> (2) Basque and Caucasian are indeed very remotely related, but the
> evidence for that relationship has long since disappeared and cannot
> be recovered.
>
> There is no earthly way I could disprove this possibility.
>
> (3) Basque and Caucasian are not related at any level.
>
> Again, there is no earthly way I could prove this.
 
A.V.:
Of course, since all three are speculative solutions.
 
L.T.:>
> The evaluation of your case will have to await the scrutiny of
> specialists in the relevant languages.  If your case withstands that
> scrutiny, you win; if it doesn't, you lose.  That's the way it is in
> this business.
 
A.V.:
 
  I agree with this point, but please note that evaluation by the
specialists in the relevant languages is very different from "general
acceptance" which you used as a criterion before. Therefore I'd like to
suggest to you
asking a poll opinion of SPECIALISTS in historical Japanese and Korean
(not only me, of course) or in Austronesian and Austroasiatic before you
pronounce them isolates (J and K) or unrelated (AN and AA).
 
>
> > 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?  >
 
L.T.:
>
> Again, we are merely quibbling about words.  Being an isolate is not
> an intrinsic property of a language; it's merely, as others have
> pointed out, a property we project onto a language as a result of our
> investigations to date.  It's purely a matter of taste whether we want
> to apply the term to a living language with no known living relatives
> but with known extinct relatives.
 
A.V.:
 
Hopefully for the last time. Even leaving aside extinct relatives there
are in fact TWO (2) Yukaghir and TWO (2) Ket languages. May be checking
out the standard descriptions of Yukaghir and Ket such as Kreinovich 1957,
1968 and Dul'zon 1968 will finally persuade you that there is more than
ONE (1) LIVING LANGUAGE and that I am not making that up. Therefore none
of this cases is similar to Nihali that is much more homogeneous, and can
be called a real isolate.