Sino-Tibetan (was: Re: Arabic and IE)

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Thu, 4 Feb 1999 manaster at umich.edu wrote:

        [a lot]

OK, I was just making sure.  I agree with most of what you say.  It's
true that we don't have a clear, coherent, generally-agreed-upon
reconstruction scheme for ST, and that is certainly an unsatisfactory
situation.  And it's quite true that a lot of Benedict's work (much as
I loved the man, and never denying his substantial contributions to
the field) is not anything you'd want to show your historical linguistics
students as an example of how to do reconstruction.  And that people
like Miller (actually, by this date, I think he's the only one left)
are attacking ghosts rather than addressing the overall body of evidence.
And, the overall body of evidence for the genetic unity of Sino-Tibetan,
in my opinion and (with the exception of Sagart) that of everyone I know
of who has looked at it carefully, is overwhelming.

> other ST language at all, though I did once know
> a bit of whatever the language of Mizoram is called
> (Mizo is it) but have now forgotten it down to the

Nowadays they call it Mizo; in the older literature it's
referred to as Lushai or Lushei.

> Thank you very much for bringing this up. I have both in
> print and here excoriated Godard and others for this false
> methodological "principle" which seems to go to a paper in
> which Meillet got carried away in his fight with Kroeber
> and asserted it but later even Meillet saw he was wrong
> and specifically said that it is the languages of E Asia
> that show that the principle is a false one--although he
> underestimated the role of morphology in E Asia.

Well, in S-T, yes, everybody did, until reconstruction of Old
Chinese proceeded far enough that we could begin to see it.
But if you're looking for a clear example of an indisputable
family established without any morphological basis, Tai will
do fine.  Actually, I mentioned this to Goddard once when we
were disagreeing about exactly this point, and what I remember
him saying (again, he's not responsible for my memory) was,
essentially, well then, we can never really be sure that the
relationship among these languages is genetic.  Since Goddard
hasn't ever looked at Tai, I suppose I can imagine how he might
say such a thing, but really--this is a relationship that is
inspectionally evident.

> points, But Comecrudan will make the same point.

Realistically, I think you might find some resistance to this
example, as I'm sure you're aware.  Tai is better, because there's
no room anywhere for doubt.  Take dictionaries of any 2 or 3 Tai
languages and the relationship is obvious.  And, surely, no
historical linguist could spend half an hour with Li's _Handbook
of Comparative Tai_ and come away with any doubts at all about
what we're looking at.

> and I am impressed by the professional and scholarly tone
> of teh debate, no matter how ANNOYED most of you must
> be with Sagart and how FRUSTRATED he must be so alone.

Laurent Sagart is a gentleman and a scholar, and, as you say, an
able and well-informed linguist.  He happens to be dead wrong
about something important.  Alas, I rather doubt that that fact
significantly distinguishes him from any of the rest of us.


Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA

delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html