Penutian (and Sino-Tibetan)

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> 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
 
>From my sense of the Altaic situation neither analogy is precise
(are they ever?), but Penutian is closer.  As far as I know, the
only contemporary challenge to Sino-Tibetan (i.e. the hypothesis
of a genetic relationship between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman) is
a recent suggestion, due to Laurent Sagart, that Chinese
is "really" related to Austronesian and (therefor) not to T-B.
(A number of Chinese scholars maintain the otherwise unfashionable
hypothesis that Kadai (= Kam-Tai) is related to S-T, but this is
in addition to Chinese-TB, not an alternate hypothesis).  As far
as I know, hardly anyone besides Sagart takes this very seriously
(there's been serious work done for a generation now documenting
Austronesian and Austroasiatic *loan* vocabulary in Chinese; there's
not much reason to think that Sagart has anything new beyond this).
That is to say, at present Sino-Tibetan has no serious public opponents;
if any such should want to come forward, the burden of proof would be
entirely on them to justify their opposition.
 
Penutian, of course, is an entirely different kettle of correspondences.
Some subparts of it are well-established--no one disputes Utian
(= Miwok-Costanoan), an excellent and, to my mind, indisputable case has
now been made (by Catherine Callaghan and Geoff Gamble and, inadvertently,
Marvin Kramer) that Utian and Yokuts are related, and lately even
Ives Goddard has publicly accepted Plateau Penutian (= Klamath-Sahaptian-
Molala).  Beyond this the evidence is much more fragmentary.  I have
a nice (though not very long) list of impressive (IMO) correlations
between Klamath and Yokuts, which by the logic of transitivity gives
us Yok-Utian :: Plateau; there are detailed correspondences between
the pronominal systems of Klamath and Wintu, and Stefan Liedtke has
an interesting list of Klamath-Wintu lexical sets, so, again by
the logic of transitivity, another language is tied in.  Some interesting
structural parallels suggest that Takelma links to Yokuts; other
lexical and grammatical evidence ties Takelma to the Coast languages
(Coosan, Siuslaw, Alsea), though this evidence is not of the same
order as that linking Yokuts and Utian; Tarpent now presents nice
evidence that Tsimshianic is related to the Coast languages (with
intriguing bits and pieces corresponding nicely to other Penutian
languages).
 
But obviously this sort of piecemeal argument is going to meet resistance
from more conservative scholars, and sure there's something to be
said for holding off final endorsement of a family until some family-
wide correspondences are established.  Not that there's no such evidence
at all--Dell Hymes has presented a number of lexical sets which span
the family, and there are a few other items which show up in many
of the languages, crossing the possible boundaries suggested in my
previous paragraph.  But to be perfectly honest--though I myself am
an enthusiastic proponent of Penutian--I'm not sure one could say at
present that the burden of proof in this matter lies predominantly
with either proponents or detractors.  There's been enough evidence
produced that detractors would need to have a story to tell about
it, but not enough yet that honest detractors would necessarily have
to feel they are facing an uphill battle.
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html