Linguistic classification

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I would still like to see whether there are really no historical
linguists on this list who would be interested in discussing
substantively either particular proposed linguistic classifications
(e.g., Pakawa, Nostratic, Nadene, Altaic, Eskichatkan, Austro-Asiatic-
Ainu, Penutian, etc.) or at least the real
problems inherent in this kind of work.  I have in published work
repeatedly cautioned against the entirely false dichotomies which
the current discourse in the field assumes, such as that between
lumpers and splitters, Greenbergians and anti-Greenbergians, and so
on--false because many a scholar with accomplishments in the
area of classification is a counterexample to the dichotomies (Sapir's
Uto-Aztecan for example is a polar opposite methodologically to his
work on Coahuiltecan/Pakawan).  But there IS one dichotomy which
it is difficult to get around: between actual work on linguistic
classification (of whatever variety) and public posturing by people
who as Larry Trask points out apparently are not competent to either
do or judge such work and yet insist on trying to do so in loud
tones (in which group I include equally people who never heard of
a proposed language family they did not immediately like and those who
never heard of one they did not immediately reject).
 
AMR