LINGUIST List 5.945

Fri 02 Sep 1994

Disc: Altaic, Binary comparison

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Directory

  • "J. Marshall Unger", Re: 5.935 Altaic
  • Alexis Manaster Ramer, Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?
  • Richard M. Alderson III, Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?

    Message 1: Re: 5.935 Altaic

    Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 16:50:31 Re: 5.935 Altaic
    From: "J. Marshall Unger" <jungerdeans.umd.edu>
    Subject: Re: 5.935 Altaic


    For the record: (1) I don't think the claims of Rona-Tas or Larry Clark should be dismissed out of hand; (2) there was no conspiracy going on at Baldi's 1987 workshop; (3) I don't think Miller's work is reliable; (4) I don't see what harm is done by taking I Kimun's advice and looking at Korean and Japanese in relation to Tungusic languages before bringing in other witnesses. Those who want to pick a fight: please beat up on Nichols and leave me alone. Better yet: instead of spending effort negatively, how about doing something positive, like systematizing and evaluating the etymologies in the Tungusic etymological dictionary so that they can be used by others? I recall Austerlitz saying, in our discussions, that he found the dictionary to be very uneven in quality: it would be most helpful to have a short list of really secure etymologies and reconstructions for Tungusic to work with.

    Message 2: Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?

    Date: Thu, 1 Sep 94 08:37:21 -04Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?
    From: Alexis Manaster Ramer <amrcs.wayne.edu>
    Subject: Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?


    In response to Scott DeLancey's query, some of the so-called anti-Altaicists HAVE stated that only binary comparison should be allowed (e.g., Turkic and Mongolic but not Turkic, Mongolic, and (Manchu-)Tungusic all at once). I am sure that Doerfer has said this although I have no reference at hand, and I am also sure that no basis for this has been given (much as he gave no basis for his assertion vis-a-vis Nostratic that you cannot compare reconstructed (proto-)languages to each other). As I read Ringe's little book and his exchange with Greenberg in the Procs of the Am. Philosophical Society (see my forthcoming review in Diachronic, he seems to be saying that (a) language classifications should be done on the basis of overtly probabilistic arguments about the distributions of sounds in certain positions in certain lists of words with fixed meanings, and (b) when doing this, you should only do two languages at a time rather than more than two, because it is, informally speaking, easier to get a spurious resemblence between more than two than between two.

    Neither point seems acceptable to me, neither the first, since as the discussion between Ringe and Greenberg (if I can call that mud-fest a discussion) seems to have concluded with one point being agreed on and one only, namely, that the kind of method Ringe has in mind could not show the relatedness of certain pairs of Indo-European languages, nor the second, since the only situation Ringe evaluates carefully in his attack on n-ary vs. binary comparison is one where you compare a whole bunch of languages (15 I think in his examp) and only require a small subset of the total to agree on any given word (I forget how many in his work, but it is certainly less than 13 or 14). Now, in reality, the odds of a chance resemblence can be much higher or much lower with binary than with n-ary comparison depending on how large the total set of languages is, how many of these are required to agree, and what the probabilities are of the various outcomes (e.g., are there two possible phonemes for a given position in each language and are they equally frequent or are there twenty).

    So, yes, Scott, there is a Santa Claus, and there are published arguments that assume that binary comparison is better than n-ary or indeed the only valid method to use. (I will look for specific references in the anti-Altaic literature, unless Sasha Vovin beats me to it).

    Alexis Manaster Ramer

    Message 3: Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?

    Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 15:19:19 Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?
    From: Richard M. Alderson III <aldersonnetcom.com>
    Subject: Re: 5.939 Binary Comparison?


    Like Scott DeLancey, I was intrigued by AMR's references to binary comparison. I have in the past asked for references for this proposed methodology, because the only place I have seen it referred to is in the writings of Greenberg and Ruhlen, where it is characterized as the way "professional linguists" (G & R's scare quotes, not mine) do things.

    Haas, in _The Prehistory of Languages_, makes reference to Bloomfield's dictum regarding the best number of languages with which to start a comparison; this is drawn from both his _Language_ and his Algonquian paper in Hoijer et al. Dyen took it so greatly to heart that in his course on Comapartive Method he insisted on allowing students no fewer, and no more, than four languages for their term project.

    Anttila and Lehmann at least tacitly assume non-binary comparison in the examples presented in their textbooks; I assume that Hock does as well.

    As an Indo-Europeanist, I have always assumed a large number of comparanda to be desirable, as did my teachers in any comparative study I undertook.

    So, once again I must ask: Who are these linguists whom G & R see as the enemy and the anti-Altaicists see as supports? And how have they concluded that a binary comparison is reasonable?

    Rich Alderson