Linguistic classification

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Here is what I would suggest.  First, this list
could be a place where people who have heard
all kinds of stuff second-, 3d-, 4th-, or even
5th-hand about any of these things (e.g., people
whose only "information" about Altaic comes
from friend Nichols's book or about Nostratic
from the extended coverage that theory had in
Language, or the like) to find out what the
real issues are by talking to some of those of us
who can help in that regard.  Second, this could
be a place where some debates could take place
between people with honest  and well-informed
disagreements (e.g., I bet my friend and collaborator
Stefan Georg would be willing to debate some of the
Altaic issues with me, since he still does not accept
Altaic even though we have joined forces to debunk
many of the prevalent myths about Altaic).  Third,
this could be a great place to discuss existing
literature.  What Scott says re Takelman cannot
be discussed in this way without references to
literature which the rest of us would know or
would be willing to go and read.  But presumably
he could supply us with the required info, much
as I would be happy to provide such info on
for example the Nadene or the Pakawan/Coahuiltecan
issues.  Moreover, in many of these cases the
literature is so scant that it would not be too
much to expect at least a few people to read it.
For Pakawan/Coahuiltecan, I think that the papers
by Campbell and me in Anthro Ling would in fact
suffice (and I could provide by email copies of
Paul Sidwell's and my draft reply to Campbell).
 
In short, I think that there are issues we COULD
discuss profitably, either based on what people
already have read or based on one or two or
a few basic recent references.  This would
be much like the discussions of recently published
books that occasionally occur on the LINGUIST
list in essence.
 
The crucial question is thus not of means but
of the will:  are there people of good will and
intellectual integrity out there who are sufficiently
appalled by the current state of the field to try
to do better?
 
AMR
 
On Mon, 9 Feb 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote:
 
> I fun idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is.  "Discussing
> substantively" means discussing data, and for any given proposal
> that you list (or most others), how many of us are there likely
> to be on the list who can do that?  After all, one reason why some
> of these are so far from being "established" is that hardly anyone
> works on them.  (And vice versa, of course).
>
> Thinking about your suggestion, I start thinking about how to get
> a discussion going on Penutian, and I don't really see how to do
> it.  Here, I'll throw out a provocative statement -- It's time to drop
> the notion of Takelman as a genetic unit; Takelma clearly belongs
> with the Coast languages, and Kalapuya, if we really knew much about
> it, is probably most closely related to the Plateau languages.
>
> Now what?  How can we really talk about something like that on a
> general list like this?
>