Principled Comparative Method - a new tool

[Jon Patrick]

    Date:       Thu, 9 Sep 1999 11:35:51 +0100 (BST)
    From:       Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

    On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, Jon Patrick wrote:

    > Another perspective on this question is my own view that linguists
    > don't know their data as well as they think they do. The jump to
    > generalisations is to quick for my liking. My position was
    > vindicated in the chinese data where we found far more items than
    > the linguist expected that were exceptional by his criteria (Another
    > experience that tells me not to accept the rigid Trask criteria for
    > defining the vocabulary suitable for the study of early basque).

    Jon, this is not a fair or reasonable characterization of my position.

I do not wish to misrepresent your position - it would only serve to create
misunderstanding. I am making a general comment based on my experience and it
is an expression of how I view ANY linguistic materials I now approach. It
just so happens that some of that material you are connected to, e.g. the
Mitxelena reconstruction of Basque phonolgy and your own additions to it.

    First, I am not jumping to any generalizations at all.  I am merely
    invoking reasonable criteria to try to identify the Basque words with
    the *strongest* claims to native and ancient status in the language.
    Only by examining the resulting list can I hope to reach any
    generalizations at all.

answered in previous mail item

    Of course there will be a few exceptional forms in the list (I've
    already mentioned a couple), but I can't *tell* that they're exceptional
    until I first have a reasonable list on which to base some
    generalizations.

    Second, I am not attempting to "define the vocabulary suitable for the
    study of early Basque", at least not with my initial list.  Rather, I am
    merely hoping to identify the phonological characteristics of native and
    ancient words -- in particular, their morpheme-structure constraints --
    in order *then* to see if the results yield us a tool for identifying
    the words which may have reasonable claims to ancient status.

Here we both have a common task - perhaps your in-depth knowledge and my
computing expertise could be brought together to do something really creative
on the topic
cheers
Jon
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