Excluding data

[Jon Patrick]

ON Thu, 16 Sep 1999 09:38:02 +0100 (BST) Larry Trask said

    Sorry, but I don't see how my criteria do anything of the sort.  The
    word <taup> is excluded because of its very late first attestation and
    because of its limited distribution in the language, not because of its
    form.  If the word had proved to be found throughout the language and
    first recorded in the 16th century, then it would be in my list,
    regardless of its bizarre form.  The four observations listed above are
    just that: observations about what appears to be generally true about
    words that *do* satisfy my criteria.  The word <taup> is not excluded
    because it fails to meet these four criteria: it is excluded for other,
    and highly principled reasons, and I merely note afterward that it
    furthermore has a bizarre form.

    Now, in a study of Pre-Basque, as opposed to a study of modern Basque,
    what would be the point of including <taup> in a list of lexical items?
    This word is *most* unlikely to be ancient in Basque, and it is a fine
    example of the kind of thing I want to eliminate from consideration at
    once.

This comment is a red herring. My commentaries were not about the inclusion or
exclusion of this word in the analysis but that your criteria have high
correlation with a model of the phonology that you object to being re-analysed
from a different perspective.

    > 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.

    Well, I have nothing against computers, but I don't regard them as a
    form of magic.  If you put together a list of words 95% of which are not
    ancient in Basque, what exactly can your computer program do that will
    be informative about Pre-Basque?

Once again you are choosing to make inaccurate assertions. I think it was
discussed previously in the list as the Straw Man arguement.
A counter arguement to your position is "if you put together a list of of
words of 5% of which are only ancient Basque how informative of the whole
picture is that."

    > A bit like using modern technology to reprocess the tailings of 19th
    > century gold mines.

    A colorful analogy, but I'm afraid I don't follow it.

Pity. It is the essence of our debate.

    > 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.

    But the generalizations can come only after the list has been compiled
    in the first place.  We are talking about how the list should be
    compiled, not about the generalizations that will emerge from it --
    though, as I have pointed out often, I *think* I have a pretty good idea
    what those generalizations will look like -- though I'm prepared to be
    surprised on occasion.  But, once more: I *never* exclude a word from my
    list because it doesn't match any generalizations about form which I may
    have in mind.

I've never asserted that you did. However I do think that your criteria are
designed to create an analysis that is more strongly consistent with the
generalisations you "think you have a pretty good idea" about. My comment is
that the human mind is more frail than we give it credit and a computer based
analaysis helps us be more rigorous in our undertakings. It is unwarranted
that you imply I present it as a tool of magic. I think we have seen an
example of the extensiveness if not rigour of method that the computer can
assist us with from the small analysis of the consonant cluster <-ltz> I
presented in the previous message.

Jon
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