"Pan-Americanisms"

[Roger Wright]

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At the Historical Linguistics conference in Stanford in 1979, Lyle
Campbell was assuring us that "universals" could be over-ridden by areal
pressure, thereby producing a phenomenon that seems self-contradictory,
a "near-universal". His examples were specifically from Central
America. ("Explaining Universals and Their Exceptions", Papers from
the 4th ICHL [Benjamins, 1980], 17-26). If we accept this possibility,
then areal pressure is given extraordinary power, and hardly anything
can be deduced for sure about any relationship in the past ..... I
wonder, Lyle, if you're out there, whether you would still agree with
what you said then. I was startled when I heard it.
 
>
>The general problem then seems to be the likelihood of a relatively large
>number of conservative (NOT innovative) forms remaining in two languages
>(or groups) WITHOUT those groups having a special historical relationship
>to each other.  The alternative to "special relation" (i.e., innovation,
>which is precluded by the problem) is that it is just an accident that such
>a set remains in those languages/groups, but not in any other (related)
>languages/groups.