Nostratic, Afro-Asiatic, and so on (fwd)

Mon Feb 1 21:21:05 UTC 1999

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dorothy, hi, Peter Michalove can't seem to be able
to post the attached and asked me to forward it.Thanks. Alexis

**Peter writes:**

The recent exchanges on this list have brought up a number of important
points and, despite some of the rhetoric used in the heat of battle, some
ideas are firming up that I think everyone would agree with.

First, Alexis has pointed out that there have been a number of very
well-informed scholars who have done their homework, and have been
convinced of, or at least sympathetic to some incarnation of a Nostratic
family.  Thus to dismiss any genetic connection between IE and Semitic (or
more properly Afroasiatic) without any reference to the Nostratic theory
would be misleading.  The correct answer, as Alexis pointed out, is simply
that it's controversial.

Alexis' excellent summary of the history of Nostratic research explains
some of the reasons why many scholars may not be aware of it, or may have
only read somewhere that it's absurd and deserves no further consideration.
But there's another factor too.

In reality, there has been (and continues to be) a huge number of
uninformed proposals of language connections suggested between, say, Basque
and Tagalog (as Larry Trask can well attest), and most of these just aren't
worth considering or even responding to.  So we live in an environment
where otherwise busy scholars are used to dismissing such hair-brained
ideas.

The point to make here is that Nostratic (even if it ultimately turns out
to be a chimera) is presently worthy of substantially more serious
consideration than the latest Basque-Tagalog theory.  It is taken seriously
by a large number of scholars who have studied the languages involved.  And
there's a substantial body of literature on it (of greatly varying quality)
that can be evaluated on its own merits.

Going back a step (in the thread), Larry mentioned that when we speak of
"related" languages, that's simply shorthand for "languages shown to be
related and accepted as such by scholars who have worked in that area."  I
agree that's a mouthful, and I humbly suggest "demonstrably related" as a
convenient expression.  Of course that still begs the question of
"demonstrably related to whose satisfaction?" but it does define the
question, which is a step forward.

And finally, I'd like to bring up a point that's been alluded to here, but
needs to be stated explicitly:  If you're going to propose a relationship
among some set of languages, OR if you're going to say, "No, the evidence
just isn't there to support such a claim," IN EITHER CASE you first have to
make the effort to learn something (actually quite a lot) about the
languages involved.  An exception to this might be the case in which a
critic who is only knowledgeable about part of the data offers an analysis
of the part of the proposal with which he's familiar.  An example is
Larry's criticism of the Dene-Caucasian proposal, in which he limits
himself to discussing Basque forms compared that may be loans, incorrectly
segmented, etc.  Larry has never claimed any expertise in Sino-Tibetan,
Burushaski, and the other language families involved.  Similarly, Brent
Vine in his critiques of Nostratic has scrupulously confined himself to
discussion of the data about which he is knowledgeable, the Indo-European
portion.  And proponents of both hypotheses agree that the constructive
criticism of Trask and Vine has been a positive thing, the kind of thing we
need more of.

It goes without saying that open-minded scholars can study the evidence and
honestly come to different interpretations.  Unfortunately though, much of
the criticism of Nostratic has come from people who reject the entire thing
despite their limited background, without examining the data.  Or much
worse, those who say it simply can't be done, so the data is a priori
meaningless.

In fact, if you take the effort to learn about the data involved, you'll
find much that can justifiably be criticized in all the versions of
Nostratic that have been put forward so far.  But it's only through that
kind of informed criticism that we can make any headway in seeing if
there's something persuasive there despite the noise, of if there isn't.

Peter A. Michalove
Assistant to the Head
Department of Geology
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
(217) 244-3190
peterm at hercules.geology.uiuc.edu