Ket-Na-Dene affiliation?

[Larry Trask]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Tue, 10 Nov 1998, Steven Schaufele wrote:
 
> My wife has just forwarded to me a Reuters story (posted on www.cnn.com)
> about an article by Merritt Ruhlen appearing this week in the
> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claiming an affiliation
> between Ket, the sole surviving Yeniseian language, and the Na-Dene
> family of North America.  The Reuters story begins with the (to a
> historical/comparative linguist) ominous statement, `A few words in one
> of the planet's most obscure languages support the theory that Native
> Americans left Asia in several separate migrations', and goes on to note
> that Ruhlen's paper `gives examples of 36 words that are similar in the
> two language families, including the words for birch bark, children and
> rabbit'. (However, the only actual lexemes mentioned in the Reuters
> story are the Ket word for `birch bark' -- it's simply asserted that `in
> several existing Na-Dene languages it is pronounced similarly' -- and
> the Ket and Koyukon words for `breast'.)  The Reuters story goes on to
> reassure us that the whole hypothesis isn't really based only on 36
> lexemes: `Ruhlen found enough other similarities to convince him of the
> link.  "I just picked ouit 36 for this article that looked like the best
> and most obvious and strongest," he said.'
 
> I'm wanting to know, does anybody subscribing to this EBB know anything
> about this?  Is there anything to this proposed affiliation?
 
I haven't seen this particular article, but Ruhlen has in fact been
pushing a link between Yeniseian (the family to which Ket belongs) and
Na-Dene for some time.  Take a look at chapter 4 of the following book:
 
Merritt Ruhlen (1994), On the Origin of Languages, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
 
(Do not confuse this with Ruhlen's 1994 book of nearly identical title
published by Wiley.)
 
This chapter, co-written with Sergei Starostin, proposes 300+
Proto-Yeniseian reconstructions, plus external comparisons with Na-Dene,
Basque, Abkhaz-Adyghe, Nakh-Dagestan, PIE, Basque, Burushaski, and
Nahali.  All the items mentioned by Steven are there, though the details
are perhaps different: for example, no Na-Dene comparandum is proposed
for the Proto-Yeniseian word for `birch bark'.
 
My own view is that the comparisons on offer are devoid of value.  They
consist of nothing more than the usual miscellaneous lookalikes.  The
Basque comparanda, I can testify, are characterized by the most awful
collection of errors.
 
Here are the particular items mentioned by Steven, with only
Proto-Yeniseian (PY) and Na-Dene (ND) comparanda; diacritics are
omitted:
 
`birch back': PY *<Xi?w>.  No ND comparandum.
 
`breast': PY *<t at ga>; Haida <tek'ogo> `heart', Tlingit <tek'> `heart',
Kutchin <t'agu> `breast', Tahltan <t'odzhe> `breast', Hare <t'oy>
`breast', Mattole <tsoo?> `breast'.
 
`children': PY *<g@?t>; Haida <gyi:t'> `child', <git> `son', Tlingit
<git'a> `child', <git> `son', Eyak <qe:ch'> `child', <qe:> `son', Navajo
<[gamma]e?> `son'.
 
`rabbit': PY *<?aX> ~ *<?ak>: Eyak <G at X> `rabbit', Slave <gah> `rabbit',
Tsetsaut <qax> `rabbit', Navajo <ga?> `rabbit'.
 
> And if not, is anybody doing anything about clarifying the issue for
> the general public?
 
This is not easy. Last year the Times of London published a solemn
article about a particularly imbecilic book "proving" that Etruscan was
Basque, and even added an editorial praising this "achievement".  I
wrote a letter to the Times drawing attention to the absurdity which
they had perpetrated, but I never got so much as a reply, let alone
anything in print.  It appears that even seemingly serious publications
prefer eye-catching drivel to sober assessment.
 
> i'm worried about a story like this in the general press.
 
Me too, but what can we do?
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk