Alexis on classification

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
On Thu, 29 Jan 1998, Johanna Nichols responded to my posting
by claiming that (a) she has not attacked Altaic, (b) that
I accept her assessment of the controversy surrdouning
Greenberg, and (c) that she did not misrepresent the state of
the Altaic controversy.
 
Let me make some thing perfectly clear:
 
(a) Nichols's book contains a completely unprovoked and inaccurate
attack on Altaic, which she there claims is a discredited theory which
no one accepts,
 
(b) I continue to maintain that virtually all critiques of Greenberg
except mine have been beside the point inasmuch as they have
focused on details which do not affect the big picture and/or
refuse to discuss the central issues raised by G, namely, those of
how to classify the languages of the Americas and/or make all manner
of incompetent claims about the history and methods of comparative
linguistics, the mathematical modeling of lg classification and
lg change, the current state of classificatory lg, etc.  I may
of course have missed some major exception to this sad generalization.
As I said eafrlier, it would more appropriate for others to judge my
work, but if Nichols wants to derive from that any concession on
my part, she is mistaken.
 
(c) Nichols' statements about Altaic are wrong, and so are her
statments about what Altaic scholars believe.  There are those who
reject Altaic, but not for the reasons she has adduced.  What she
claimed in her book bears no relation to any published scholarship
on Altaic and the only explanation seems to be that she misunderstood
a third-hand report (or as it now appears perhaps a second-hand one)
on the state of the field, produced (in either case) by someone not
particularly known for their expertise on this particular subject.
 
AMR