minor quibble: the value of precision

[manaster at umich.edu]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I obviously agree with Tom Cravens.  Indeed why would
anyone WANT to say that Basque is "unrelated" to any
other language rather than "not known to be related"?
In no other science or branch of mathematics that I
am familiar with do people go out of their way to
make this kind of a jump.  The proposition that P equals
NP is not known to be true or false, and no computer
scientist feels compelled to say that P does NOT equal
NP (though I think most of us (a clarification for those
who do not know: for the last decade I have been
teaching theoretical etc. computer science)) suspect
that they are unequal).  It is one thing to note that
once upon a time most linguists said things like this.
It is quite another for anyone TODAY, when we know
better, to say it.
 
As for the substantive questions Stefan Georg raises,
esp. as they relate to Altaic, lete me say first of
all for the sake of everybody else here, that Stefan
and I (and two other people) are the coauthors of a
long forthcoming (and long!) paper on the history and
present state of Altaic studies, in which we do
a lot of things, but mainly point out that all
existing arguments against Altaic are incompetent
or worse, that all statements (by friend Nichols
and others) claiming that Altaic is no longer
widely accepted are incorrect, and that the current
state of Altaic reconstructioon offered by the proponents
of Altaic is unsatisfactory on a number of points. We
do not go further because Stefan is apparently as strongly
interested in purusing the possibility that Altaic is
spurious after all and offering a real account of how
Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japanese could
have borrowed instead of inheriting the things which
the proponents of Altaic take as evidence of kindiship
as I am convinced that he would do better to work on
improving the Altaic reconstruction and testing the
theory that Altaic in turn is related to Uralic, IE,
Yukagir, etc.  In the meantime, of course, we serve
as a reminded that it IS possible for people to
disagree civilly and constructuvely about whether
a given group of languages are related and at the
same time to agree about lots of other things, incl.
methodology.
 
Now, as to the specific points Stefan is raising,
I think the reasonable thing for me to say is that
in order to refute the case for Altaic, one could
logically do as Larry Trask has done for Basque, i.e.,
show thatthe arguments FOR Altaic have been incompetent.
I dont think this canbe done, and I dont think Stefan
thinks it can be done either (since I dont think this
wouldbe consistent withwhat we say in our joint paper).
 
If I am right, then the situation with Altaic is
radically different from that with regard to
Basque-Hebrew or Turkish-Hungarian theories.  And
if so, then indeed Stefan or anyone else who wnats
to refute Altaic would have to come up with much
more, indeed it would be logically like trying to
refute Afro-Asiatic or Uto-Aztecan, that is,
a theory which is reasonably well argued and reasonably
widely accepted.
 
So, I still say that when a relationship is proposed,
the burden of proof is on the proponents, the opponents
need do no more than show that teh burden has not been
met (most obviously by showing that the work is incompetent).
One however a case is presented which stands up well to
whatever criticisms have been offered, then it obviously
becomes much more difficult, though not impossible, to
reject the putative relationship--and the more strongly
that it is argued and the more widely that is accepted
by competent scholars, the more work will be required to
refute it.  Hence, in the case of Basque-anything I would
say the burden is entirely on the proponents of such
relationships, in the case of Uto-Aztecan or Afroasiatic,
just as obviously it is on the opponents (there are none
in the case of UA that I know of but believe it or not
there seem to be some in teh case of AA). In the case of
Altaic (like Sino-Tibetan or perhaps Penutian), it seems
that the situation is a little less clear, but the burden
is mostly on the opponents.  AND it is crucial to note that
since 1956 or so teh opponents of ALtaic have accepted this
disadvantageous position and done so very loudly and emphatically.
 
AMR