LINGUIST List 5.929

Mon 29 Aug 1994

Disc: Altaic

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Message 1: Re: 5.926 Altaic

Date: Sun, 28 Aug 94 13:14:42 ESRe: 5.926 Altaic
From: <AVVOVINMIAMIU.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: 5.926 Altaic

I am very glad that Marshall Unger testified himself that contents of his 1990 article were twisted. I believe that Unger's approach is typical for the absolute majority of historical linguists on Japanese/Korean side of Altaic in North America: nobody doubts Japanese-Korean genetic relationship, and everybody looks with a great deal of sympathy on the the further connec- tion with Manchu-Tungus. This is, for example, as far as I know, Samuel Martin' s position, too. As far as Mongolian and Turkic are concerned, opinions vary, but even here to the best of my knowledge we have uncertainty or various shades of doubt, but never direct denial of a possible genetic link. However, this uncertainty is used by anti-Altaicists here and there as a support of their own position! I can't help but to draw a political analogy between anti-Altaistics and Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is "omnipotent because it is true" or vice versa is"true because it is omnipotent". In other words, neither bothers with providing a proof, while the opponents are classified as "backwards", "sectarian", "enemies of the people (or scholarship)". Both love to use slogans (see Doerfer's works). Lenin devised a theory that a proletarian revolution can breach a chain of capitalism in a single country: so did the theory of LOANWORDS breach the comparative method in Altaistic. The results were disastrous in both cases: a number of peoples of Europe and Asia strayed away from the main highway of development, and found themselves after 70 years exactly where they embarked on the marxist ship. Altaistic, too, was almost strangled for thirty years, but the tide has turned now. Marxism-Le- ninism has brought into being and cherished for many years Nikolai Marr's "New Language Teaching", which turned comparative linguitics upside down, claiming that any modern language originated from hundreds of thousands genetically unrelated languages. It seems that theory of omnipotent loanwords so popular in Altaistics, leads us exactly in the same direction. Twisting other peoples works, and citing certain passages from them which distort the general picture and do not reflect author's opinion, but may be used in one's own interests is very typical for marxism-leninism. The case with Unger's article is far from being the exception. In 1986 I personally heard Shcherbak claiming that G. Ramstedt's "Einf"uhrung" is a student's work, and that later in his life(?!) the great Finnish scholar turned to anti-Altaistic as he realised that this is the only true approach to the data: Anti-Altaistic is omnipotent, because it is true; it is true, because it is omnipotent. The reade rs of Altaic discussion in the forthcoming JSFOu will definitely enjoy seeing Samuel Martin's name cited as an opponent of not only Altaic, but Ja- panese-Korean relationship as well. REcently at the "international Circle of Korean Linguistics" in London I was asked by one of colleagues: "I have heard that you are an opponent of Altaic, since you disproved Ainu-Altaic relation- ship, is it true?" The chain of these anecdotes may be easily continued. The problem is, however, that there are too many of them, and the more anti-Alta- istic loses its ground recently, the more we hear them. And, therefore, I am far from being sure that Unger is right saying that "these things happen": it more looks like a deliberate desinformation -- another trick frequently used by marxists-leninists. Finally, the nature of scholarly discourse among anti-Altaicists also reminds me closely a Marxist-Leninist one: any kind of Altaistic research is branded "fallacious", "futile", "mad", "crazy", "Omni- comparativismus", "incredible" etc. without providing any basis for such claim. On the other hand, any attempt to argue or criticize anti-Altaistic approach usually is met as "attacks ad hominem" -- very convenient way to avoid any real scholarly polemics. The only constructive criticism I have seen recently was B. Comrie's review of Starostin's book. Comrie seems to be alone among anti-Altaicists who tries to criticize the system of correspondences proposed. Thus, he demonstrates that Tungusic dilacaa "sun" cannot be related to Japanese tosi "year" and Korean twols "anniversary", because it violates the system of correspondences proposed by Starostin himself. I cannot but agree with Comrie on that issue. That, however, does not prove that Japanese and Korean words are not related to each other and to Turkic *yal2 "year of age" and Mongolian *dzil 'year'. Starostin is not a God, and he cam make mistakes, and this is not the only one in his book, but this, however, does not diminish the overall quality and importance of his book. And, certainly, disproving one or even ten etymologies (really disproving, like Comrie does on the basis of violation of proposed correspondences, and not "disproving" by application of the epithet s cited above) does not yet demonstrate that the whole theory is wrong. But I will certainly like to see constructive criticism of Altaic -- it is stimula- ting and helps to improve the reconstruction. Both Comrie and Janhunen accuse Starostin of easily dismissing "competing" etymologies, such as Austronesian for Japanese. Obviously, it was not in Staros tin's mind to provide detailed criticism of Benedict's or Kawamoto's opuses -- his book has quite different goals. Anyone reading Benedict or Kawamoto can easily detect that there is no REGULARITY in the correspondences they propose between Japanese and Austronesian (for detailed analysis please see my two review articles in Diachronica XI-1, 1994 and forthcoming in December issue of "Oceanic linguistics"), and, therefore, Austronesian hypothesis cannot even re- motely stand a chance in competing with Altaic theory, where all correspondence s are regular. Moreover, different Altaicists may disagree one with another on certain number of etymologies, but agree on the main bulk which constitutes at least 80%. The case of Benedict and Kawamoto is quite different: they more often propose completely different Austronesian etymologies for one and the same Japanese word than they don't.

Alexander Vovin Miami University Dept. of German, Russian, and East Asian Languages avvovinmiamiu.acs.muohio.edu

Message 2: 5.926 Altaic

Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 21:44:27 5.926 Altaic
From: "Reinhard <rhahnu.washington.edu>
Subject: 5.926 Altaic

Thanks to Alexander Vovin for his contribution to the current discussion about the Altaic Hypothesis (AH). Unfortunately, it seems to me that he, and hopefully only he, has been under the mistaken impression that I disagree with his fundamental premises, ideas and arguments as well as with those of Alexis Manaster Ramer. I do not. I apologize in case it was I who unwittingly created this impression.

One of the basic purposes for my initial posting was to support Alexis Manaster Rames' call for discussion of the AH at a time when certain non-Altaicist linguists unquestioningly choose to follow the anti-Altaicist route. Another purpose was to provide a brief overview of what I believe to be the basic premises of the AH and the major trends and dynamics in its history. I deemed this necessary as a courtesy toward those in this extensive forum who have less or no familiarity with the subject matter. Although I made no attempt to hide my pro-Altaicist position, I tried to refrain from making my overview too personal, save for a few terminological and strategical suggestions. It is a mistake to assume that my outline reflects my personal picture of the Altaic family of languages.

I had been under the impression that the anti-Altaicist camp has a tendency toward wanting it both ways: on the one hand they make much of the alleged lack of correspondences among numerals and body part terms (which many of us understand to have arisen from Indo-European-based expectations), and on the other hand they dismiss Turcic-Mongolic- Tungusic cognates as "loanwords" and the pronominal correspondences as basically irrelevant. Certainly, Alexander Vovin's point regarding the "bizarre" methodology of the anti-Altaicists is well taken, though it seems to be more obvious to him than to me that it was actually *in opposition* to comparative methodology as such. This is an interesting point I am sure many of us would like to learn more about.

I did not intend to impose my own opinion with regard to extent and depth of "Altaic." In fact, I did not express my opinion, nor did I as much as say that I *have* an opinion about this. In my simplified overview I merely intended to show that *everyone* who does not reject the AH definitely considers Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic to be Altaic. While it may be regrettable to Alexander Vovin and others, it is still a fact that so far not *everyone* is totally convinced that Korean and Japanese are related to them or are closely enough related to them to be called "Altaic."

As for terminology, I suggested the non-compound forms for the sake of simplicity. Certainly, there is good reason to use the compound "Manchu-Tungusic" in place of simply "Tungusic." However, there is also good reason to use "Chuvash-Turkic" or "Bolghar-Turkic" in place of simply "Turkic," but few people do so. As for my suggestion to use generic "Mongolic", it is after all consistent with "Tungusic" and "Turkic" ("-ic" being the typical generic marker), and it is partly for this reason that my suggestion has been welcomed by many who kindly sent me private responses. Furthermore, "Mongolic" can be easily distinguished from the specific language commonly known as "Mongolian." As for Alexander Vovin's suggestion to keep "Mongolian" as a generic term and to refer to the specific language as "Khalkha", it would not only be inconsistent and create confusion, at least among non-linguists, but it is also incorrect, since Khalkha is only one among several dialects of what is generally known as the Mongolian language, other dialects being Chakhar, Urdus, Urat, Tumut, Kharchin, etc. This suggestion could be compared to referring to the Germanic languages as "German" and to start referring to German by a dialect name: e.g. "Franconian."