The Significance of Comecrudan

[Alexis Manaster-Ramer]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Max is exactly right about what I intended by saying that
"the proof of "Comecrudan" lies in the broader Pakawan comparison".
I think quite generally that one of the reasons the debates
over language classification have not been as fruitful as they
might have been is that people on one side insist that
whatever evidence they have published for a given language
family should be enough and no further discussion should be
required, while people on the other side insist that if
they can find any flaw, no matter how small, in the other
guys' work, that suffices to refute the work in question.

Neither side wants to look beyond what has already been
done and ask whet MORE can and should be done. My approach
here is based on the example of what Edward Sapir did when
he decided that the preexisting arguments for Uto-Aztecan
were inadequate: without dwelling on all the problems with
the earlier work, he simply did his own work and established
the reality of Uto-Aztecan to everybody's satisfaction.
Nor is it necessary, or even desirable, for an individual
scholar to make a definite commitment for or against a
given theory before making an honest effort to studying
and perhaps improving on it.  What little I have been able
to do with regard to Nostratic was done not because I had
ALREADY decided that Nostratic is right but rather as
part of the process of trying to see for myself WHETHER
it is right, a process which I am still dedicated to
pursuing.

I simply cannot understand the people who declare
that Nostratic, say, is an established fact any more than
I can those who pronounce it dead.

AMR




On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Max W Wheeler wrote:

> In [his] brief final remark I think Alexis draws attention to an
> important methodological point which has not figured at all prominently
> during the discussion of method in comparative linguistics over the last
> few months. There is ideally some feedback relationship between
> hypotheses of subgrouping and hypotheses of broader comparison. Thus the
> (or a) Nostratic hypothesis, if true, might be expected to throw light
> on the problem of Afroasiatic subgrouping which has been raised
> recently. It would do this by making clearer what is an archaism and
> what is an innovation, a distinction which may not often be possible
> just by looking at the lower level.
>
> Is it the case...? or should it be the case, that the fruitfulness of a
> hypothesis carries more weight than the reliability or generality of the
> sound correspondences it is based on?
>
> I take it that this is in line with Alexis's argument.