Excluding data

[Jon Patrick]

    Date:       Thu, 9 Sep 1999 11:26:01 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

    On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

    > Lloyd Anderson's message of 19th Aug expresses, much better that I
    > could, the method I intend to apply in the study of early BAsque.
    > For me the key factor is to present a record of ALL words available
    > for analysis and record HOW I can classify them. In the case of
    > sound imitative words it is important to retain them in the database
    > and show how their phonological profile as a class is similar or not
    > to non-imitative words.

    But, in order to do that, you must first have some independent criterion
    for distinguishing imitative words from others.  What do you propose?

Good question. At first it will have to be based on expert opinion.

    > In keeping with my last message I find the
    > idea of excluding data because they don't conform to someone's
    > particular expectation about the data inappropriate in trying to
    > produce a generalised stochastic profile of the language.

    First, I myself am not trying to produce a generalized stochastic
    profile of the language, and hence chiding me for going about my own
    quite different task in a way that is not suitable for your task is
    entirely inappropriate.

Is that what we are doing to each other? Talking at crossed purposes.

    Second, I repeat yet again that I am *not* excluding any data because
    they don't fit my expectations.  I am excluding data for entirely
    different reasons, reasons that are independent of my expectations and,
    in my view, entirely justified for the task I have in mind.  For
    example, the universal word <ke> `smoke' definitely does not fit my
    expectations, but I have to include it anyway, because it satisfies all
    of my criteria.

See below

    > In basque we have the word for the sound of the heartbeat as <taup>
    > and the word for heartbeat as <taupa> as reported to me by native
    > speakers.

    Of course.  But this word is not general in Basque.  It is more or less
    confined to the center of the country, being restricted, as far as I can
    determine, to the Gipuzkoan dialect and to adjoining parts of the
    Bizkaian dialect.  It appears to be unknown in the French Basque
    Country, unrecorded in the Pyrenean dialects and in High Navarrese, and
    not general in the Bizkaian dialect.  Furthermore, the word is only
    first recorded, in the form of its derivative <taupada>, in 1888.

    On top of this, the word violates at least four of the
    morpheme-structure constraints which are generally obeyed by words
    meeting my criteria:


    (1) No initial voiceless plosive;
    (2) No initial coronal plosive;
    (3) No final plosive;
    (4) No final labial.

This is a key point that I opened up in my previous mail item. I speculate
that the initial 6 criteria you defined, create a close coincidence with an
expectation about what the  phonological profile of early euskara should be
(as for example what is defined above) , hence the possibility of revealing
more structure to euskara is limited by this unspoken correspondence.  I seek
to test my speculation by using a less restrictive criteria and by studying
classes of words not previously given individual scrutiny. You could say why
bother to do this when talented scholars have already worked over all the
material available in euskara. I have two responses to that. Computers enable
us to do a more systematic job on a larger volume of data, more quickly, hence
we are likely to pick up omissions and oversights of earlier workers. A bit
like using modern technology to reprocess the tailings of 19th century gold
mines. Secondly, my experience has taught me that linguists don't know their
material as well as they think they do, so to me statments of generalisations
I take a little more scpetically than most others. This of course is an
intrinsic human oversight, not just the province of linguists and one I could
equally be accused of committing.

Jon patrick
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