Pedersen's role in Nostratic studies

[Alexis Manaster-Ramer]

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


On Sun, 7 Feb 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> I believe Pedersen coined the term "Nostratic" in the twentieth
> century, but I'll leave Pedersen aside for two reasons: I have
> not read him on Nostratic, and I don't think the modern work on
> Nostratic (Illich-Svitych, Dolgopol'skij, Bomhard) owes very much
> to Pedersen except for the name.
>
[snip]

He did coin it in this century, but the rest I don't think is
quite accurate. It is true that he did very little substantive
work on Nostratic (while doin incredible amounts of work on
IE, of course).  But his role was important for more than one
reason.  (1) He made it clear that if there is going to be
Nostratic work done, it should NOT merely compare IE in
a pairwise (binary) fashion to AA or to Uralic or to Altaic
or whatever, but to all of them, something which I-S
and Dolgopolsky were the first to take to heart.
(2) He was such an influential IEnist in his time
(and he lived a VERY long time) that his support of
Nostratic helped to keep it alive. His debates with
Trubetzkoy and other naysayers at the 1933 Congress
were an important occasion, since lesser or younger'
scholars who did more Nostratic would not have been
able to stand up the way he did to largely obscurantist
and a prioristic rhetoric from the other side.
(3) He was quite cautious in what Nostratic
comparisons he accepted and he helped to set a standard
which was largely adopted by I-S and Dolgopolsky which,
while as I have argued in many places not nearly stringent
enough, did make them much more selective than other
authors who like to compare these languages.

I would trace I-S's emphasis on disitnguishing borrowings
from one Nostratic lg into another, on the one hand, and
presumed cognates, on the other, in particular to the
benign influence of Pedersen's views.

However, I have done no careful study of the history of
these issues, and I could be shown wrong by such a study.

AMR