minor quibble: the value of precision

[Ralf-Stefan Georg]

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>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"?
 
This, for sure, is an acceptable compromise wording in every case.
My point with the "heuristically related" thing - quite the same - was
mainly that every science which has developed means/strategies/procedures
to say "yes" should be able to find some way of  saying "no" in a
well-defined and meaningful way as well.
 
 
>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,
 
This is correct, and I have no reason to deny or conceal this. Most attacks
on Altaic, when they tried to bring principled arguments on "what related
languages really should look like and why Altaic doesn't exactly look like
that" into the discussion were seriously misguided for the most part and
actually didn't help the Anti-Altaic cause.
 
. 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
 
You'll not be able to describe the histories of these languages without
paying attention to massive borrowing processes, every single responsible
Altaicist said and says so. Yet they are rarely investigated, despite some
lip-service. First the chaff has to be sorted out, which is hard and
sometimes boring work. What will be left will be the real nuggets. I don't
deny that they exist, but I reserve the right for pessimism for the time
being.
And, there is not only the issue of borrowing, but also the
pseudo-existence of comparanda, as e.g. Tibetan loan-words in
Gansu-Mongolian, artificial neologisms in literary Manchu, hapaxlegomena in
hardly readable Yenissey-Turkic inscriptions, wrong segmentations of
polysyllabic words with sometimes clear, sometimes not-so-clear,
morphological elements, rearranged and re-segmented for better comparative
performance, sound-laws with some seemingly bearable examples (defended
like the crown-jewels) and more perfect counter-examples (sneered at),
pseudo-morphemes quoted by author after author throughout the decades, but,
when checked, turning out to be based on nothing more than a reading-error
by the original "detector" who admittedly is unable to read Old Turkic in
Uighur script, yet goes by the name of "Altaicist" and has the nerve to
call others "Anti-Altaicists" (i.e. those who *can* read the documents),
the declaration of the most difficult problems in, say, Turkic historical
phonology as simply "solved", without supporting discussion, and sometimes
not displaying a basic familiarity with the history of the question, waving
away all possible problems as "cooked up", "invented" or "psychologically
motivated" (all real quotes !).
All this (and much more) *does* play a role in proposed Altaic etymologies,
and what is more, this stuff is to found (my personal opinion: in
abundance) in contributions directed at the more general public, where, in
sometimes unbearable tones of haughtiness and assumed authority, every
possible remaining sceptic is described as someone barely short of being
fit for the straightjacket.
This is the most accurate and impartial (;-) description of the field as of
now, which I can possibly offer.
 
As I said, stuff like this plays a role, how big and important that role
is, has to be seen, I admit that I may be too much determined to see the
dark stains on the Altaic shirt, rather than the white linen beneath. But
I'm sure that any honest and responsable believer should greet every effort
to clean that shirt. Someone has to do it, or Altaic linguistics will be a
forgotten curiosity in a few decades.
 
 
>as I am convinced that he would do better to work on
>improving the Altaic reconstruction
 
I've tried. But how come that every time I look at one etymological
proposal for  longer than twenty minutes, it falls to pieces under my sore
eye ?
Take the "every" cum grano salis, I don't doubt that there are goodies, but
which ones may some day qualify for that epithet is still totally unclear
to me.
Altaic linguistics is difficult.
 
  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.
 
Only this can bring the Altaic "civil-war" (Ruhlen's quote) eventually to
an end and turn it into a "debate". We have gone far on this way, let's
continue.
 
>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).
 
It will of course be impossible for me to maintain the methodologically
unsound positions of most prominent Anti-Altaicists which we, I think, were
able to successfully deconstruct, and I won't. They stood in the way of a
reasoned approach to the issue *from both sides*, and I'm glad that we
removed these obstacles for a new yet-to-invent "Altaic linguistics".
It's data-handling I'm interested in now, that's where the problems remain,
much to my regret.
 
>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,
 
True, it won't be easy and I'm fully aware that I may fail in the end. But
what does "fail" mean ? Maybe not all the etymologies proposed so far can
be demasked as spurious for some of the reasons mentioned above, and the
rest boiled down to borrowings. Then, everything which remains can be said
to have stood up against really determined scrutiny. It will be the *real*
Altaic stuff. Nothing to be afraid of, at least for me.
(At this time I should insert a disclaimer that I don't regard my own
competence and qualification for this as unquestionably high enough for
doing this singlehandedly, especially since I have not written up anything
on it so far; I'm only trying to speak for all those who might share my
experience with Altaic with all its ups and downs).
 
Maybe it is not altogether unimportant here to state that I (as I would
hope for others, as well) *don't care* (in terms of personal interest)
whether there is an Altaic family or not. That is, the ultimate question,
whether on our linguistic maps a big blue area has to be painted from
Anatolia to Japan, labelled Altaic, or whether three or five (or four ...)
colors will have to be used for this, is not of primary importance for me;
what I'm interested in is *what happened in history* to those languages,
what made them look like they do (similar at times, seemingly
irreconcilably different at others), how can phenomena of the most diverse
kind found in them be *explained* ?
Part of the answers to this array of heterogenous, yet interrelated
questions, may be "Altaic" in nature, other parts clearly not. The question
of Altaic thus is an ancillary question for me only. Does the assumption
help to understand why Tungus is like it is ? Welcome, Altaic. If not, what
do we lose if we quite simply throw it away ? I'll certainly lose nothing,
as well as I don't think I'll jump out of the window if I finally will have
to swallow Altaic.
In the meantime, I simply ask the Altaicists: tell me something interesting
and potentially useful about Mongolian!
 
It is not unimportant to note that the Indo-European story was a story of
success, *because* it had interesting and definitely useful things to tell
the Hellenicists about Greek, helping them to understand Greek better.
 
 
>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.
 
I can agree wholeheartedly. Georg's conjecture: "Altaic is difficult,
Anti-Altaic doubly so".
 
> 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.
 
The boat is getting empty, Janhunen has advocated Mong.-Tung. recently
("Khinganic"), so has Johanna Nichols on this list (whether based on
Janhunen's observations or on own ones, remains unclear, though, but I'm
looking forward to any publication on this issue), the remaining
Anti-Altaicists of this planet can possibly comfortly convene in the room
I'm currently sitting in (18 square meters) to conspire on the next major
nihilist plot ...
 
OK, I'll shut up here, next thing to do will be to put up. Alexis has once
diagnosed that "deep inside I love the Altaic theory"; there's certainly a
lot of truth in that, but so far I failed to make the Altaic theory to love
me too (and showing this by doing to me things I like !).
 
 
Stefan Georg
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