what is the verdict?

[H. Mark Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
It says that this is a response to Larry Trask, but it isn't.

Larry Trask wrote:
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Alexis Manaster Ramer writes:
>
> [snip quote of me claiming that comparative linguistics is hard]
>
> >  While I respect Larry and we usually agree about a lot of stuff, this is
> >  just plain wrong, and I think it is a cop-out typical of the people who
> >  like to criticize work on language classification but who rarely do it
> >  themselves and who also seem to be reluctant to discussing specific
> >  examples such as those I have repeatedly cited.

I agree completely with Alexis Manaster-Ramer (AMR) and the basis of
reasoning called probability theory and the methods based on it, usually
lumped
under the name "statistics" support AMR and what I say. IT is not just a
cop-out but an insult to the profession to claim that they are too
stupid to understand what can be taught to freshman and sophomore
pscyhology,
and computer science students. Economists, students of finance,
sociologists all learn basic quantitative reasoning based on probability
theory.

If I wrote anything resembling this kind of an insult to the linguistics
community, I would probably be evicted from every list.


I have some works before me which are written by linguists.

Bender, Marvin, "Chance CVC correspondences in unrelated languages",
Language, No. 45, 1969, pp.519-531

Cowan, H. "Statistical determination of linguistic relationships',
Studia Linguistics, 16, 1962, pp.57-96

Greenberg, J. 'A qualitative approach to morphological typology of
language', IJAL, vol. 26, No.3, July 1960, pp.179-194

Embleton, S. Statistics in Historical Linguistics, Studienverlag Dr. N.
Brockmeyer, Bochum, 1986.

Fox, A. Linguistic Reconstruction; An Introduction to Theory and Method,
Oxford University Press, 1995

Lass, Roger, 'How realist are reconstructions?", in Historical
Linguistics, edited by Charles Jones, Longman, 1993


Ohala, J. 'Phonetics of sound change', same book edited by C. Jones

Nichols, J. 'The comparative method as Heuristic', edited by Ross and
Durie.

Ringe, D., 'Nostratic and the Factor of Chance', Diachronica XII:
55-74,1995

Lass, R. Historical Linguistics, 1998

Ringe, D. On Calculating the Factor of Chance in Language Comparison,
American Philological Society, vol. 82, part 1, 1992

Hubey, H.M., Mathematical and Computational Linguistics, Mir Domu
Tvoemu,  Moscow,1994.

Everyone of these seems to say something about chance and the historical
method.

For example, according to Cowan (see above) you only need 3 pairs of
CVC syllables to establish geneticity. According to Greenberg (see
above) you only need 3-4 pairs, and according to Bender (see above) you
need
somewhere between 2 and 7. I am sure J. Nichols, who is probably on this
list has probably also calculated some numbers.

What I am interested in is how many pairs are needed. How many?

PS. To Georg,

The Fox book on p. 240 has a Sanskrit word 'uccakka' (meaning 'high')
which is practically identical to Turkic uch (fly) and uc (end of some
material thing).

Best Regards,
Mark
-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
hubeyh at montclair.edu =-=-=-= http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=