Wald on Linguistic classification

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Friend Wald writes (i.a.):
 
Are there any generalizations about where the attempts to unite groups of
languages tend to become problematic?  What are the arguments we can
dismiss (typological ones? areal ones?)  Which ones are generally
bothersome because we don't know quite how to deal with them?
 
Can we get further than:
 
NOT ENOUGH DATA  (because of time-depth; that's the biggie, isn't it?)
CAN'T TELL BORROWINGS FROM INHERITANCES
BASIC VOCABULARY
CHANCE RESEMBLANCES
MULTIPLE SOURCES
 
 
(end of quote)
 
I could not disagree more.  The "biggie" involves one of the
biggest myths in linguistics.  Although I hope that a paper
with my name among several others on it will some day appear
detailing this whole sordid mess, for now I will ask those of
you who trust my competence in the relevant areas (i.e.,
baby mathematics and history of linguistics) that (a) the
vast majority of publications claiming some such limit on
time depth contain not even a shred of the required documentation
that such limit exists or that it is what they claim it is,
(b) that the works that tried to do the math required to
demonstrate such a limit (the earliest of which that I know of
was believe it or not by Swadesh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are mathematically
invalid, and (c) that the only competent work on the subject that
I have been able to find is, I am afraid, the unpublished work
by my coauthors and me, so that if there is a limit, you will
have to either find it or ask us (:-).  As to the other points,
I will just say briefly that the real issue is not whether we
can tell borrowings from cognates etc. but whether IN EACH
INDIVDUAL CASE you accept the proposals of X, Y, or Z linguist.
 
And since the same person may use different methods at different
times or in different cases, you cannot even generalize that you
will or will not accept anything proposed by, say, Sapir or Greenberg
or Kroeber or Swadesh or Hamp.  F.e., everybody accepts Kroeber
and Sapir's Uto-Aztecan and large parts (though not all!) of
Greenberg's African classification, but hardly anyone (maybe no one
at all) accepts Sapir's Hokan-Siouan or his tentative assignment
of Zuni to Azteco-Tanoan.  Likewise, a lot of people agree with
Hamp that Altaic is right, but does anyone accept his compariosn of
Hattic with IE?  Even in the case of Swadesh, most of whose proposals
almost no one accepts or even accepted, it is undeniable thathe
caouthored the proof of Eskimo-Aleut, and his proposals for
linking EA with Chukchi-Kamchatkan has at least been accepted
by Hamp.  Of course, there are some people who do not accept
anything that I myself have proposed or endorsed, apparently
as a matter of policy, but even they I hope will reconsider
when I announce my whole-hearted support for the Indo-European
hypothesis (incl. in particular Armenian).
 
AMR