the Trask-Hubey debate

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Robert R. Ratcliffe wrote:
>
>
> My view:
>
> That "reconstruction" is (or even could be) a matter of algorithm, or
> rule is a widely held misunderstanding outside the field, no doubt
> supported by a misinterpretation of the technical term "reconstruction"
> in its ordinary sense. We cannot literally "reconstruct" anything. A
> "reconstruction" is a hypothesis, neither more nor less. Like any
>
 
Of course, there is no proof even in physics. I state this regularly.
 
 hypothesis in any field of science we arrive at it by guesswork, by
> intuition, by imagination, by accident.  There is no path of deductive
> reasoning, no "discovery procedure", no algorithm which leads from the
> data to the hypothesis.  The rigor in historical linguistics as in the
> natural sciences is not in the way in which hypotheses are reached but
> in the way in which the hypotheses are submitted to the test of the
> data. A good reconstruction should be testable in principle-- it should
> be a specific hypothetical prediction about the way a particular
> language was spoken by a particular group of people at a particular
> point in time. A reconstruction is virtually never (directly) testable
> in practice-- it is so only on those extremely rare occasions when new
> texts of ancient languages are unearthed.
 
That is lots of evidence for correctness but not proof. If some new
language
that was unearthed was remarkably like someone's prediction, that is
cause for celebration.
 
 
 
How do we test it then?-- By
> implication. Each reconstruction (of a proto-phoneme for example) has
> implications for the whole system of the proto language (the whole
> phonological system, eg), for the development path leading from the
> proto-language to the attested languages (the sequence of sound changes,
> eg), and for the forms of the reflexes in the descendant languages.
> Only the last is directly observable, of course, and only this real data
> can be used to rule out a proposed reconstruction absolutely.
 
But here is where the iteration comes in. The first attempt at
reconstruction of a protolanguage *X will be based on N languages.
If we add the (N+1)st language then *X might have to be changed.
 
We might find another language y to add to the family. How many
correspondences do we need?
 
Even worse, if the similarity of the language to other languages is
not considered, it will be added to the most established, largest
family, and it will continue to snowball.
 
If you want to see if A is more like B or like C you have to have
both the compare. This is the "forced binary discrimination" test
which is often used (in phonology and phonetics in lingistics).
 
But then those languages that got writing first keep piling up
everything because of these factors.
 
 
> proposed development path implied by the reconstruction cannot be tested
> as right or wrong but only as plausible or implausible based on the
> statistical frequency of observed patterns of change.
 
To me that says that we need numbers so we can compare languages to
others. That means standardization.
 
 
> implications which a reconstruction has for the whole system can only be
> tested under the assumption of the "uniformitarian principle" - the
> assumption that prehistoric languages were not fundamentally different
> in kind from attested languages and hence should not show structural
> anomalies of a type not found in attested languages (languages shouldn't
> be reconstructed with  no vowels, or all verbs, for example).
> Probability and statistics is involved in all of this, and much could be
> gained from making it more explicit.  Much could also gained if
> historical linguists made an effort to base assumptions about plausible
> directions of changes on an explicit, accesible, statistically
> analyzable body of evidence of changes, rather than on implicit personal
> knowledge.
 
Amen!
 
 
>
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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