rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[Ross Clark]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Date:          Thu, 12 Nov 1998 07:48:55 EST
> Reply-to:      hubeyh at montclair.edu
> From:          "H.M.Hubey" <hubeyh at montclair.edu>
> Organization:  Montclair State University
> Subject:       Re: rhotacism from Ray Hickey
> To:            HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Ross Clark wrote:
> >
> > Could you cite an example or two? I don't mean of 1. or 2. in use
> > separately, but of the two used together as a fallacious syllogism.
>
> There are too many cases. I don't feel like embarrasing people
> and making it worse.
>
 
I must insist. I deny that anybody uses 1. and 2. in this way. Prove
me wrong. Embarrass somebody.
 
>
>
> > > But borrowings also create regular sound correspondences.
> >
> > Yes, just as things other than measles can produce spots on the face.
> > We need to take such things into consideration if we want to raise
> > our competence in historical linguistics (or medical diagnosis) from
> > this very rudimentary level.
>
> But that is not all.
>
> Human family members resemble each other. That does not mean that
> unrelated
> people cannot resemble each other. And despite the fact that we know
> both
> we still consider two people who resemble each other to be related
> unless
> there's proof to the contrary.
 
We do?
 
 We arrive at this through experience. We
> see
> families (which we can confirm) resemble each other and therefore create
> a general inductive rule.
>
> For measles, doctors know very well what healty people look like.
>
> How many language families has any human experienced? I do not mean the
> purported/alleged language families.
 
Since I don't know which entities qualify in your mind as "language
families" as opposed to "purported/alleged language families", I
can't answer this. However, on my own understanding of what a
language family is, any competent historical linguist has experienced
(has some knowledge of) a variety of language families and of various
languages not known to be related.
 
 If a human could be created who
> could
> live 100,000 years or more and if we can send him to the past to learn
> dozens of languages, then he would have 'experienced' language families
> like human families and the way doctors (and others) have the experience
> of
> knowing what measles does.
>
> No such thing can be done in linguistics so all of it is based on
> analogy
> to models from the rest of the world, such as Linnaean trees, etc. That
> is
> coupled with some intuitive calculation of whether the resemblence is
> due
> to chance.
 
You seem to be suggesting that the empirical base of historical
linguistics is too small. Unless you have some realistic suggestion
as to how it could be signficantly enlarged, we have to live with it.
If that disqualifies it as "science" in your opinion, too bad.
 
 
>
>
> > Well, we do in fact have records of various language families. What
> > are you trying to say here?
>
> There we go again. Do we know these families like we know human
> families or is this based on some calculation that the occurences
> cannot be due to chance?
 
Calculation of whether resemblances could be due to chance or not
becomes relevant in distant relationships or borderline cases, about
which so much argument goes on now. I'm talking about families even
Lyle Campbell believes in, where there is no argument. In some cases
(eg Latin and Romance) we have the proto-language through direct
documentation. We also have recorded histories of many individual
languages which tell us a lot about how languages change.
 
>
> >
> > > 1. These languages have too many things in common. IOW, there are many
> > > words in
> > > these languages which can be made to look like each other with similar
> > > meanings
> > > and which could not be due to chance.
> > >
> > > 2. If that is not due to chance then either they got these words from
> > > each other
> > > or the words are all descended from a common language.
> > >
> > > 3. We have plenty of evidence (what?) that these languages did not get
> > > these
> > > words from each other.
> > >
> > > 4. Therefore these words in these languages must all come from an
> > > earlier common
> > > source.
>
> > Yes, problems crop up and arguments occur, to be sure.
> >
> > I recognize 1-4 as a rough outline of the reasoning by which one
> > arrives at a hypothesis of genetic relatedness among languages.
> > Rather than argue about details, I'd like to know where you're going
> > with it. Are we finished with the idea that it's logically circular?
>
> But it is not finished. The key here is that we have to know what is
> due to chance and what is not. Otherwise we can be creating an argument
> like this:  Well, this mathematical method says that X and Y are related
> but I know that they are not, so the mathematical method is wrong. There
> are people (yes, real people, and linguists too) who do this. In fact
> one
> of the superstarts of sci.lang and linguistics actually argued exactly
> like this in email to me.
 
This is not circularity. Mathematical methods can be wrong. A number
of different proposals have been made for calculating the probability
of accidental linguistic resemblances. They give different results.
Therefore they can't all be right. They may be free of mathematical
error, but they do not necessarily yield historically correct
conclusions.
 
On the other hand, one would want to ask the linguist in question
just what was the basis of his/her certainty that X and Y are _not_
related.
 
Ross Clark