Conservative dilemma

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

Herb Stahlke wrote:

> Perhaps
> this is why many Africanists are bemused at the intensity of the
> Americanist
> reaction to Greenberg's work.

> As to Greenberg's alleged absolutism in his claims of
> relationship, what is
> relevant is what the field does with his work, not what he thinks
> it means.  As
> Bill Welmers used to say of G's Niger-Congo, "G hasn't proved that the
> languages are genetically related; he's made it inconceivable that they
> aren't."

This is the main difference between Greenberg's African work and his
"Amerind" work.  G. has NOT made it inconceivable that the "Amerind"
languages are genetically unrelated.  There is also a fundamental
anthropological difference between Africa and Native America.  African was
generally populated "from within", that is, no one had to come there in
order for it to be full of people (indeed, it's the only continent that was
not populated through immigration).  The Americas were colonized by
immigrants.  Greenberg assumes one tribe speaking one language (excluding
the much later Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut immigrations) entered the Americas
and then differentiated.  We cannot (at this time, and possibly never) prove
whether the populating of the Americas was a one-time, one-tribe,
one-language event, or a multi-time, multi-tribe, multi-language event.
Indeed, Greenberg himself believes there were three events--one for Amerind,
one for Na-Dene, and one for Eskimo-Aleut over the course of the last 40
some-odd thousand years.  Just three immigrations in 40,000 years.  Hmmmm.
That's the difference between the Americas and Africa.  Africa's had a
stable indigenous population.  The Americas haven't.  Indeed, it's quite
possible that northwestern North America has been the site of many groups of
people from Asia, speaking different languages, landing on the shores of or
walking across the "bridge" to a New World.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
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Utah State University
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