Sino-Tibetan Lives

[Alexis Manaster-Ramer]

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


On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Scott DeLancey wrote [in response to my response his
response to my originally saying that the state of S-T linguistic
was "unsatisfactory".

> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
> OK, I was just making sure [sc. that I accept S-T as a valid
language family--AMR]
> 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.
>
[snip re the name of Mizo alias Lushai]

[re the claim that language relatedness can only be established
with reference to morphological comparisons, as per Goddard
and early Meillet et al.]:

> 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.

I had forgotten about Tai, thank you for pointing this out.
It IS interesting though that for many years many linguists
(e.g., Meillet) seemed to think that ALL East/Southeast Asian
lgs lack morphology, and actually this seems to be quite
restricted in time and space.  I mean lgs which lost ALL
their old morphology, like Chinese losing finally all S-T
morphology, has finally started making some new morphology
like the Mandarin -r and other suffixes (I know nothing
about any other Chinese language but Mandarin, so I don't
know if it generalizes to all of them).

BTW, although this is off-topic I think it is
important to call attention to the fact that
The Economist has just devoted an extensive article
to largely accurate coverage of what linguists have
discovered about some basic points of Chinese, incl.
the fact that it is not one but several languages
(though some other things in the article are nonsense).

> Realistically, I think you might find some resistance to this
[sc. Comecrudan--AMR]
> 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.
>
Yes I am aware.  Thanks again.  But if I may beat the drum
again, the trouble is that linguists who make methodological
claims and are prepared to in effect accuse others (e.g.,
Greenberg or me) of incompetence in comparative ling because
we do not accept these claims apparently do NOT read Li's
Handbook or refuse to learn from the reading.  Perhaps Dr. Thomason
would care to comment.

[in response to AMR's praise of Sagart]:
>
> 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.
>
Of course, I agree. I am only disappointed that you did not
comment on my claim that the respectful and scholarly way in
which you guys in S-T have conducted yourselves with Laurent
and he with y'all is a shining example of how such things ought
to be handled and stands in stark contrast to the shabby way
in which, for example, Greenberg and the late Illich-Svitych
have been treated (not to mention, as an example picked
at random, that fellow Monstrous Rumor from Wayne State
or whatever his name is).

AMR