Preservation Principle

The opposite theory, the 'Away Theory', has also been proposed!

I'm reposting the message below because unfortunately this useful
group reserves its archives for members. The context was a report
that applied the 'Away Theory' to argue that the further flung
members of the Tai family had kept the older terminology.

Richard.

--- In austronesian@yahoogroups.com, "Ross Clark (FOA DALSL)"
<r.clark@...> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: hduc <hduc@...> [mailto:hduc@...]
> Sent: Sunday, 29 December 2002 9:56 p.m.
> To: austronesian@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [@ustronesian network] Old Chinese-Austronesian
> and Austric
>
>
> --- In austronesian@yahoogroups.com, "Ross Clark (FOA DALSL)"
> <r.clark@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > This is a puzzling article. Not the least puzzling aspect is just
> what NASA
> > has to do with it?
>
> Hello Ross,
>
> Puzzling ?. You puzzle me :-). Why should not NASA be allowed to
> give data to any scientist in any field to research and apply in
> their own field ?. In the past, they and NOAA gave paleoclimate

data

> (from ice cores, modelling..) to paleotologists to reconstruct
> ancient worlds. Climate data such as El-Nino, ocean circulation..
> can be modelled and recontructed back to a few thousand years. In
> fact if you want to find opportunities to do research, you may find
> these data could be useful to corroborate the pattern of ancient
> migration in the Pacific. Once you use it, just acknowledge the
> sources as any good researcher is doing. You (or in this case
> Hartman) are in charge of the research in your field, not NASA.

This is a little more than just footnoting. The article was actually
featured on a NASA web site. Eventually I found that they had
supplied some
data (presumably from satellite photos) on topography and vegetation
in
southern China. I can understand their wish to publicize their
contributions
to various kinds of research.

>
> > But more relevantly to this discussion: Hartmann is quoted as
> enunciating
> > the "Away Theory" of language migration and change -- in the
> process,
> > unfortunately, repeating tired myths about "Appalachian English".
> One
> > anticipates that the Thai study will be presented as offering
> evidence in
> > support of the "Away Theory" (that migrant dialects/languages
> change *less*
> > than stay-at-homes). However, at a later point (if I am
> understanding it
> > correctly), this "Away Theory" appears to be one of the
> *assumptions* of the
> > study, on which the location of the Tai homeland is based.
>
> Interesting point you raise. I am not a linguist, carrying no
> baggages about any theory, and would like to learn. Could you give

a

> few lines on the myths of "Appalachian English" and the current
> status of the "Away theory" and the circumtances that it is all
> wrong ?. It could be of interest to me as i observed amongs some of
> the Vietnamese emigre communities exiled since 1975, that (besides
> their morbid anti-communist) they still retain some quaint
> expressions and words that no longer used in Vietnam. Many of them
> (also myself) when visited Vietnam, found that the people there can
> identify emigre right away after a few exchanges via the way they
> express and some word usages.

The idea that "Elizabethan English" or "Shakespearian English" is
still
spoken in some remote part of the USA (often the southern
Appalachians) is a
persistent bit of folklore. John Hartmann of SIU is quoted in the
article
presenting a version of this story as if it were established fact.
You can
find some discussion of its origins and the reasons for its
persistence in
H.L.Mencken's _The American Language_ (Part III, Ch.4), more recently
in the
book _Language Myths_ edited by Bauer & Trudgill (Penguin, 1998). The
myth
is based on a small number of selected verb forms and lexical items
which
are used in some of these dialects but not in General American, and
which
are demonstrably old enough that Shakespeare might have used them
("holp" as
past tense of "help" is one frequently cited example). This of course
does
not add up to any miraculously preserved 16th century English. The
myth was
probably originated and promoted by people who wanted to oppose the
idea
that these dialects were degenerate, the result of poverty and
ignorance.
The negative stereotype of the "hillbilly" is still strong, and to
associate
these people with Shakespeare is a powerful counter-move.

Now there are individual words and forms which have been preserved in
these
areas and not in the more widespread forms of English. But this is
true of
any dialect anywhere. Indeed it is true of the standard, if compared
against
one of the non-standard dialects. So an Appalachian who
pronounces "right"
as [ra:t] could see General American (and British) [rait] as a quaint
archaism harking back to (almost) Shakespeare's time. But we aren't
encouraged to see things that way.

When a language community separates into two or more, the two groups
will
begin to change their language independently. If one group stays in
the
original location, and the other moves away, which will tend to change
faster? As far as I can see, there is no well-supported answer to this
question, though there are lots of opinions. The "Away Theory" (those
who
leave will change less) is not "all wrong", it's just not an
established
principle one can assume. See the papers by Blust and Ross in the
Grace
Festschrift (Currents in Pacific Linguistics, 1991) for some evidence
for
the "Home Theory" (those who stay will change less), based on
Austronesian
data.

This is why the Tai study bothered me. I thought maybe they were
going to
bring some new data to bear on this unresolved question, but in the
end it
looked as if they had already assumed an answer.

> > Two of the three primary references given are inaccessible to me,
> so I
> > wonder if someone more familiar with this work can clarify?
> >
>
> I am also waiting for some linguists to comment on this. So far no
> one had replied.
>
> The results of the Tai study above were made by linguist and i am
> not qualified to judge it (except by other linguists). As far as i
> know, the Guangxi and Guizhou region is the homeland of the Zhuang
> (in China) and the Nung (in Vietnam).
>
> This leads me to some questions (addressed to all) that bugs me
> recently:
>
> (1) are there any consensus amongs linguists about the validity of
> some of the theories on the Austronesian, Austro-Asiatics homelands
> and language relations yet ? In particular, R. Blust, Reid on
> Austric in Yunnan , Soldheim on Austronesian in Indo-Phillippines
> islands and L. Sagart on Austronesian in North Yangzi. Surely, one
> of them could be reasonably right but all can not be right.
>
> (2) how the peer review system in linguist publication works ? the
> reason i ask this is that it seems to me there are quite a lot of
> differences in interpretations, reconstructing and "vigorous
> discussions" about competing theories between proponents. What
> happens if one submit the work to a journal and get reviewed by one
> or two peers who have a completely different perspectives on the
> values of the work on the particular theory ?. Is the editor the
> ultimate decision maker ?. What journals got most impact and
> scholarly valued in the field ?

Haven't got time to say anything on the first question, but I'm sure
others
will. As for the second, I don't think linguistics is different from
any
other field. There are differences of theory, methodology and basic
views.
People refereeing for journals mostly try to be fair, and won't reject
something that is relevant and cogently argued and meets basic
scholarly
standards, just because it happens to disagree with their position.
But
nobody's perfect.;-)

Ross Clark
--- End forwarded message ---