Arabic and IE

[Clyde A. Winters]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------


On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Alexis Manaster-Ramer wrote:

> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
>
> On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, H. Mark Hubey wrote (inter alia):
>
> >
> > Those who have been on Altainet know that I have not
> > agreed with Alexis on a number of issues so if I write
> > this in support it is certainly not due to 'buddyism'.
>
> This is certinly true.  I fear my responses to Dr. Hubey
> on other lists have bordered on rude. It is very kind of
> Mark to rise about that.
>
> [snip]
>
> > Most linguists do not seem to study anything at all,
> > but merely memorize somethings they read and then assert them
> > everywhere they go and expect everyone to bow down and kiss
> > their feet.
>
> I do think that linguists have the same relationship to
> language that physicists do to the physical universe,
> and that we should be listened to in our area as much
> as they are in theirs.  This indeed has been my main
> bone of contention with Mark, who is one of the many
> nonlinguists who seem to feel that they know much
> more about lg than we do.
>
> > There is no such thing as "proof by assertion".
> > Contrary to what some of the more ignorant members of this
> > profession claim (and write in their books), there is also
> > no such thing as "proof by repetetion".
>
> That's true, but even in the natural sciences we find
> people behaving as though there were.
>
> >
> > Linguists like economists, sociologists and psychologists
> > before them will have to learn to wield the tools of science,
> > mostly logic and probability theory and reason cogently.
>
> I disagree in the sense that I think linguistics is
> in most regards much more scientific than the other three
> fields mentioned. Moreover, I believe that, when the real
> history of Western science is written, everyone will see
> that linguistics has been the source of some very important
> ideas.  More generally, it is not by any means true that
> the natural sciences have always been ahead of the social/
> humanistic ones. The whole idea of evolution originated with
> Vico in history/social science, first became really
> scientific in linguistics, only then (and in part thence)
> in geology and biology, and much later in physics.
>
> AMR
>

I must disagree, linguistics as it is practiced today does not always
appear to rely on science. Science depends on hypothesis testing and
experimentation. As pointed out in the Goddard example, the data can be
interpreted in both a positive or negative way, but given the stature of
Goddard his views were accepted.
   Science is only one way of knowing. The other ways of knowing are 1)
the method of tenacity (one holds firmly to the truth, because, 'they know
it' to be true); 2) method of authority or established belief, i.e., the
Bible or an "expert" said it,  so it must be so); 3) method of intuition
(the method where a proposition agrees with reason, but not necessarily
with experience); 4) the method of science which calls on self-correction
(through falsification) as a way of attaining knowledge. The fact that
when one becomes an expert, and has the support of a number of other
linguist, that his work is accepted uncritically suggest that we may be
adhering to a research method based on "authority", rather than science.
   This does not mean that some linguists are not using a scientific
method to advance historical linguistics because they are. Yet in many
cases, views regarding the results obtained by some linguistists
advocating the relationship between language A and B, are rejected due to
the methods of intuition and authority, rather than a rigorous
falsification of the hypothesis rejected by the "experts", for example
the Nostratic Hypothesis.

C.A. Winters