LINGUIST List 5.910

Sat 20 Aug 1994

Disc: Altaic

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Directory

  • , Altaic
  • John E. Koontz, Re: 5.905 Altaic
  • Scott C DeLancey, Re: 5.908 Altaic
  • Ecological Linguistics,Anderson,PRT, Re: 5.908 Altaic

    Message 1: Altaic

     Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 10:21:24 Altaic
    From: <coonCVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU>
    Subject: Altaic


    A.M.Ramis' recent posting concerning Altaic has piqued my interest. Most of the what I have read about Altaic is at least 20 years old. I am looking for references to the proposed Japanese/Korean relationship to Altaic. Poppe's work was I thought particularly convincing for the body of Altaic but the little that I had seen for these two was less so. I am also interested in work that has been done on external relations for Ainu, other than Patrie (1982)Thanks, ************************************************* (Roger) Brad Coon "Lions are basically COONIPFWCVAX.BITNET scavengers of COONCVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU hyaena kills." Hans Kruuk

    Kill a lion, save a hyaena! Boycott Disney lionist propaganda! *************************************************

    Message 2: Re: 5.905 Altaic

    Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 09:57:10 Re: 5.905 Altaic
    From: John E. Koontz <koontzalpha.bldr.nist.gov>
    Subject: Re: 5.905 Altaic


    > From: amrzeus.cs.wayne.edu > Subject: Altaic

    > Thus, I think we need to discuss two separate questions. One is what is > the true state of the scholarship (both pro and con) on the Altaic > question (as opposed to the nonsense that has been going around).

    I believe that Bernard Comrie, in his <Languages of the USSR>, suggested that Altaic was not a family, but that its proposed components might well belong with, e.g., IE, Uralic, etc., in some higher entity. While this is certainly one logical subgrouping, and different per se from a hypothesis of Altaic unity within such a higher entity, it struck me as a way of denying the Altaic hypothesis without denying it, by making it dependent on a more controversial hypothesis. You might want to address this approach in your discussion.

    Message 3: Re: 5.908 Altaic

    Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 15:00:28 Re: 5.908 Altaic
    From: Scott C DeLancey <delanceydarkwing.uoregon.edu>
    Subject: Re: 5.908 Altaic


    Reinhard (Ron) F. Hahn <rhahnu.washington.edu> lists as among the perhaps inappropriate arguments that have been raised against the Altaic hypothesis the "Absence or scarcity of cognates among numeral", and notes:

    > This poses questions regarding the universal validity of > numerals as mandatory indicators of genealogical affinity. The > fact that numerals seem to supply evidence for the > Indo-European hypothesis ought not lead us to assume that this > applies universally.

    This an important point. It simply is not true that numerals are particularly stable vocabulary items around the globe. In North America, for example, they seem to be readily subject to both replacement and borrowing.

    Scott DeLancey delanceydarkwing.uoregon.edu Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA

    Message 4: Re: 5.908 Altaic

    Date: 20 Aug 94 14:25 GMT
    From: Ecological Linguistics,Anderson,PRT <ECOLINGapplelink.apple.com>
    Subject: Re: 5.908 Altaic


    Thanks now to Rheinhard (Ron) F. Hahn and to Harold Schiffman for further commentary on Altaic.

    I do not assume the family-tree method is the norm for historical linguistics. It tends to be more valid when the descendents are few and the time depth is great. But if **either** of those criteria is not met, then the descendents may more often than is believed form a network reflecting an original language **area** as it first was differentiated by waves of innovations spreading from different centers and overlapping in complex ways, thus leaving a dialect chain or more appropriately even, a dialect network.

    Now this kind of data distribution is conceptually not too far from the opposite pole, waves of borrowings, except that borrowing implies languages which were originally unrelated (or at least unrelated back to a very substantial time depth before the borrowings took place), while the dialect network model implies an original sameness later differentiated regionally. These are in principle distinguishable.

    The bottom line for me is that the family-tree is usually much too strong a kind of claim to make, recklessly so. However, I find many historical linguists who think that if one is not making such an explicit tree claim, one is not doing proper historical linguistics. There are just more subtle ways of handling data now.

    For this reason I would doubt the need of setting up a framework for discussion which assumes from the outset that Korean is at a more distant remove, to be related to Altaic itself (Mongolic-Tungusic-Turkic) rather than as a branch within Altaic. Also, although "Tungusic" makes sense, the older Manchu-Tungus did indirectly and incompletely recognize a regional grouping into southern Tungusic and northern Tungusic? I do not care about the terminology (much), but want to avoid artificially isolating groups (Tungusic?) when perhaps Korean might be a much changed distant outlier of southern Tungusic?

    For those interested, I have about 8 copies of a 43-page paper, "Sound change and pitch-accent systems in Korean dialects: two results of original differences in *stress-accents". It appeared in Chin-Wu Kim, ed.: Papers in Korean Lingusitics (1978). Available free for the mailing cost, send $1.90 in stamps along with a stick-on address label to the address below.

    ========================================================================== On the pronominal system, this note from Ron Hahn: >The Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic pronominal systems bear astonishing >resemblance, which enables us to reconstruct a proto-Altaic system. >This has been dismissed as irrelevant, since this proto-Altaic system >bears great resemblance not only to the proto-Uralic one but also to >the Indo-European one. (Obviously, the anti-Altaists are among those >least likely to accept the possibility of even earlier genealogical >affinity, "Nostratic" or otherwise.)

    When I have asked some honest linguists about this pronominal question, they have essentially said "the field is not yet ready to deal with" these excessively strong resemblances. I guess implying is it sound symbolism or chance or historical relationship and we can't figure out which?

    For a small amount of analysis of Uralic pronominal systems which seems to imply Indo-European relations to Indo-European and Altaic, please see my 1975 article "Grammar-meaning universals and proto-language reconstruction" in Papers from the Eleventh Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. Section 6 of that paper, examples (25) and (26) and (24). I still believe some portion of what is in that article, including much of the northern Eurasian pronominal material.

    ======== Especially core to the article is the idea that historical recontruction depends crucially on what are typologically normal paths of historical change, and the accumulation of typological universals of paths of historical change equally depends crucially on solid cases of historical reconstruction. The two are built together. (That is not to deny that abnormal cases of change do occur, of course.)

    Because so many historical linguistics have a visceral aversion to typology (because it has been misused to assert historical relation based merely on typological similarity), they find it I think difficult to remember and to acknowledge that much of the plausibility of hypotheses of historical relatedness comes from the plausibility (i.e. the typological normalcy) of the paths of change and intermediate stages hypothesized to get from posited ancestors to each descendent. The other basis for the plausibility of hypotheses of historical relatedness comes from having actual data on intermediate stages, when such is available. At greater time depths, less such data is available, for which reason those who focus exclusively on it claim reconstruction becomes less possible, while those of us who recognize the double base of historical hypotheses then rely more on typologically normal paths of change.

    ==========================================================================

    For some mention of Altaic numerals (Mongolic and Tungusic, I think I did not attempt to link Turkic numerals!) in the context of a much fuller analysis of the numeral systems of Northeastern Asia (Luorawetlan, Chukchi-Koryak-Alyutor, Kamchadal, Chuvan, etc.), please see my 1983 "Number Words in Northeastern Asia", Proceedings of the Second Conference on the Non-Slavic Languages of the USSR, pp.27-65.

    Copies of this paper are available to anyone who requests it and sends a self-addressed stamped envelope (52 cents stamps) to

    Ecological Linguistics P.O. Box 15156 Washington, D.C., 20003

    I should mention the most iffy part of the numerals paper is the attempt to get information out of Pallas' 1787 recordings of old Japanese, because some of the variation may be matters of faulty interpretation of original handwriting when the material was transcribed in older times from handwriting into cyrillic print (so Sam Martin's view if I remember correctly).

    ----- Lloyd Anderson