Doing historical linguistics (part 1)

Tue Nov 10 23:27:04 UTC 1998

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask wrote:
>
> On Sat, 7 Nov 1998, H.M.Hubey wrote:

> My Sumerianist colleagues assure me that there exist a number of
> (especially older) works on Sumerian which are outdated and which
> contain errors of fact and interpretation, and they complain that
> various attempts at seeking relatives for Sumerian have relied upon
> these defective and unreliable sources.

Yes, on the one hand, no science is immune to error, and on the other
hand it is unlikely that pages and pages of materials can be "mostly
wrong" and still convey more or less the correct message. If there are
going to be changes it will probably be with finer shades of meaning.
If I now write a book of cognates from Halloran's list, then some of
your
"Sumerianist" colleagues will again change them. The chances are,
reasoning
probabilistically, that small changes will create small effects and
large
scale changes will void past Sumerian works. Since when does a field get
a thorough overhaul? Do you think Hittite needs a thorough overhaul?

>
> So, the question is not whether Tuna has taken his forms from published
> sources, but rather how reliable those sources are.  And the only people
> who are in a position to judge the reliability of Tuna's sources are
> those who have a good specialist knowledge of the language.
>
> Moreover, even when a Sumerian word is cited correctly, it does not
> follow that it is a valid comparandum in comparative enterprises.  Many
> Sumerian words are attested only in late texts, and not in early ones,
> and hence cannot be used as comparanda.  (This I know is true.)

IT does not matter. Because the Sumer-Turk cognates come from a
"proto-Euphratic" substrate and these people happened to be around
that neighborhood a couple of thousand years BC. That means that
"Turk" (whatever it is) peoples were not living in the forests of
the Altai-Siberia region. There is too much evidence against it and
Turko-Sumer cognates are just a small part of the story.

In other cases, a word may have a transparent etymology within Sumerian,
> say as a compound or a derivative, and hence it too is unavailable as a
> comparandum.  (I don't know if this is the case in Sumerian, but it is
> very commonly the case with other languages invoked in remote
> comparisons.)  In still other instances, a word may have changed its
> form or meaning substantially during the historical period of the
> language, in which case it is only the earliest form and meaning which
> is available for comparison, and not the later ones.

So what? In NJ among the hispanics "mines" has replaced "mine" because
of hypercorrection. That is one mechanism of regularization and things
like that happen all the time. What difference does that make except
give ammunition to those who want to make Sumerian fall from the sky?

> In short, merely finding a Sumerian word cited in the specialist
> literature, even if that literature is reliable (which it may not be),
> does not automatically permit you to cite that word as a comparandum in
> seeking genetic links.

Sure it does. It is roots that count, and the root is presumably in many
words that have that root and are derived from it.

Where did you find these rules?

> A few examples from Basque, since I don't know Sumerian.  Among the
> Basque words frequently cited as comparanda in seeking genetic links are
> the following.
>
> <agor> `dry'.  This looks very similar to something in Caucasian and
> even more similar to something in Berber.  But the earliest sense of the
> word is `barren, sterile', and it has developed semantically, via
> `dried-up' (of a well or a spring) to `dry'.  So you can't have the
> modern sense.

So what? Many words shift meaning over time. Do you think humans 30,000
years ago had 100,000 words in their lexicons? How about 100,000 years
ago?
Was there ever a time when humans had maybe 1000 words? How can you be
sure that none of these roots has survived (albeit in semantically
shifted form)? You can't. That is so simple, it makes me wonder about
the
motives of people who become so irrational. What are you afraid of
losing?

> <emakume> `woman'.  The second half looks like words for `woman' or
> `wife' in several other languages, and eager comparativists have
> brandished this delightedly while throwing away the first half as
> meaningless junk.  But the earlier sense of this word was `girl', and it
> is transparently bimorphemic, from <ema->, the regular combining form of

Wow. YOu mean there is no semantic connection between girl, woman and
female?
Do the hipsters and hippies who used the word "bitch" for women make a
gigantic error, and there is no connection between female dog and female
person?

> <eme> `female' (which itself is borrowed from Occitan), plus <-kume>

And where is that borrowed from?

em (to suck), am (cunt in Turkish), amma (mother), amcik (pussy),
emesal (female speech in Sumerian), emcek (breasts, udder), meme
(breast),
emzirik, etc etc.

Do you understand the probabilistic implication of such patterns?

> `offspring, child'.  So you can't have the word at all, and you
> certainly can't assign the `female' element to the second half.

Are you trying to convince me that historical linguistics works only
with "exact" meanings and "exact" phonological/phonetic/sound shapes
of words? Are you kidding?

> <lapa> `burdock', `limpet'.  This looks strikingly like something in
> Caucasian.  But it is a transparent (and fully regular) borrowing of
> Latin <lappa> `burdock' and its Spanish descendant <lapa> `limpet'.  So
> you can't have this one either.

Accidents happen all the time. That is the whole purpose of learning
and understanding probability theory and statistics. AT least then you
don't have to repeat yourself over and over trying to prove general
statements by giving 2-3 examples.

Did you read what I wrote about the farmer who fed his duck for 33 days?

How much value do these examples have? None for me, because I got the
general idea years ago after 2-3 examples. I already know that
generalities
cannot be proven or assumed because of 2-3 examples. I also know how
probability theory works, and I can recognize those who are ignorant of
it
and hence constantly make the same mistake over and over and over again.

I also have to tell you that there is no such thing as "proof by
repetetion". If you want to pile up your examples and then try
statistics
please be my guest, go right ahead.

> All genuine Basque words, all found in any halfway decent dictionary,
> but all totally unavailable as comparanda in seeking relatives for
> Basque.  People who cite such data as comparanda are wasting their time.

Hardly. It is more likely that you are wasting your time trying to
convince
me that I should take your 2-3 examples as proof and substitute "proof
by
repetetion" and "proof by example" for logic, probability theory and
fuzzy set theory, and the rest of math.

> So, I'm not accusing Tuna of falsifying data.  But, if he doesn't have a
> profound knowledge of Sumerian, and is merely extracting words
> incomprehendingly from other people's work, then he is running a very
> grave risk of obtaining meaningless results -- just as many others have
> done in extracting Basque words from dictionaries without having any
> knowledge of the language.

Fortunately, most people have common sense and that eventually will
drive
them to accept conclusions derived from probability theory and logic,
and the
rest of math because they know that the world around them was built by
people
who use all the tools in this bag of cheap tricks called math.

What is funny is why when you extoll the virtues of
correlation-regression
analysis (Labov?) to high heaven in your book, you seem to have turned
against
math on this list?

Is that because other linguists extolled Labov and you decided you had
to do it?

OR is it because you can understand CR analysis but don't understand
probability
theory?

Or is it because you think Labov was a linguist and I am not?

OR is it because you think Sumerian is too valuable to allow to be
related even in
the remotest sense to barbarians when truly civilized Aryans are hanging
around?

For what reason do you find it necessary to stick to this irrational
manner of
discourse?

>
> Larry Trask
> COGS
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

--
Best Regards,
Mark
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