IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Stefan Georg]

>-- it isn't a coincidence that morphological studies were commenced _after_
>the lexical comparisons (and simple comparisons like the declension of the
>noun) became widely known.

>There had to be a problem, before there could be solutions.  "These
>resemblances are too close for chance" was the fundamental breakthrough; then
>came detailed examination, and the emergence of comparative linguistics as we
>know it.

>Likewise, when doing a "rough cut" on a new language, lexical comparison is
>still used.  Only purists get upset over this.

Though I don't think it to be really objectionable to be a purist of sorts,
I wouldn't really describe myself as one.

I don't get upset when a "rough cut" on unknown languages is started by
looking at the lexicon. I've done this myself.

But what does get me down a bit, however, when this "rough cut" is
presented as the whole story, for which I have a bulky (and pricey)
collection of witnesses on my bookshelf.

"These resemblances are too close for chance" is never a breakthrough to
the establishment of relatedness. It may be the breakthrough to knowing
that something happened here, and this something may also be areal
convergence. The failure to see this is haunting, e.g.,  comparative Altaic
studies ever since the days of Schott (who pinned down "resemblances to
close for chance", for that matter).

If such an observation, which may well serve as a first indicator that a
problem is there, which awaits some kind of solution, I'm with you here, is
taken for a "breakthrough", then we all should re-read Ritter v. Xylander's
1837 "Sprachgeschlecht der Titanen", which argues for Manchu being Greek on
the basis of hundreds of vocabulary resemblances. Yes, of course they lack
systematicity of any kind, and semantics is getting wild at the knight's
hands, but such things do get published even today, which is the result of
allowing lexical "resemblances" as "fundamental breakthroughs".

So, as we shouldn't take first suspicions with fundamental breakthroughs
when we try our luck on language classification ourselves, we shouldn't do
it when writing it's history.

St.G.

Dr. Stefan Georg
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