--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- mkelkar2003 <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:
>
> > Any comments on the following paragraph?
> >
> > M. Kelkar
> >
> > "Most debated is the Russian structuralist
> > Prince Niklaj Trubestkoj (1890-1938), [should be
> Nikolaj Trubetskoj- GK] who argues in
> > the famous
> > article
> > "Gedanken uber das Indogermanenproblem" (1936)
> > although it is
> > possible
> > that the similarities between the Indo-European
> > languages are due to
> > a
> > common origin, this hypothesis is not necessary. He
> > found that notion
> > of an original language (the family tree model) more
> > romantic than
> > scientific and imagined that the genetic
> > classification might be
> > replaced with a structuralist one (Arvidsson 2006,
> > p.296)."
>
> *****GK: I'll let the linguists handle this one. If it
> parallels Trubetskoy's "Eurasian" historiosophy, that
> shouldn't be too difficult.******
>
Thanks to S. Kalyanaraman for the link below:
<
http://www.linguistics.utah.edu/Faculty/campbell/Areal_Linguistics_sh
ort.doc>
quotes:
"Some, in the zeal for areal explanations as presumed challenges to
the comparative method, call for alternative models and methods:
A main thesis of this essay [Dixon 1997] is that the family tree
model, while appropriate and useful in many circumstances, is not
applicable everywhere and cannot explain every type of relationship
between languages. We need a more inclusive model, which integrates
together the ideas of the family tree and of diffusion area. (Dixon
1997:28.)
To reconstruct the history of a language adequately, a model is needed
which is significantly more sophisticated than the family tree based
on the use of the comparative method. It needs to incorporate the
diffusion and layering process as well as other language-contact
phenomena such as convergence, metatypy and hybridization. The
desideratum is a synthesis of all the processes that affect language
formation and development. (Chappell (2001:354.)
Though these citations suggest otherwise, mainstream historical
linguists agree that the family tree is not everything and does not
explain all the kinds of historical relationships that can affect
languages. They agree insist that attention must be paid to
diffusion. Historical linguistics has never been limited to only the
family tree borrowing, wave theory, and later areal linguistics, are
taken into account (cf. Garrett 1999). Moreover, a consequence of
Dixon's (1997:11) "assumption 4", that "in the normal course of
linguistic evolution, each language has a single parent," is that the
family tree model is always relevant, regardless of whether the
application of methods to determine the family tree in given instances
is complicated by changes for example of an areal linguistic nature
which require the use of other historical linguistic techniques for
full understanding. Therefore, most historical linguists would say
that we do not need the more inclusive integrative model that Dixon,
Aikhenvald, and Chappell have called for we already have one"
"Family trees are not the targets, not the bad guys. It is never a
question of diffusion or convergence vs. the family tree; rather it is
always a question of both. We want to answer the question, what
happened?, and for that we need both inheritance and diffusion."
Trubetskoy's work is now available in English for the first time (as
the publishers claim) in the folllwing book:
From Amazon.com
N. S. Trubetzkoy: Studies in General Linguistics and Language
Structure (Sound and Meaning) (Paperback)
by Anatoly Liberman (Editor), Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoi (Editor)
# Paperback: 324 pages
# Publisher: Duke University Press (April 1, 2001)
# Language: English
# ISBN: 0822322994
Book Description
N. S. Trubetzkoy (18901939) is generally celebrated today as the
creator of the science of phonology. While his monumental Grundzüge
der Phonologie was published posthumously and contains a summary of
Trubetzkoy's late views on the linguistic function of speech sounds,
there has been, until now, no practical way to trace the development
of his thought or to clarify the conclusions appearing in that later
work. With the publication of Studies in General Linguistics and
Language Structure, not only will linguists have that opportunity,
but a collection of Trubetzkoy's work will appear in English for the
first time.
"Translated from the French, German, and Russian originals, these
articles and letters present Trubetzkoy's work in general and Indo-
European linguistics. The correspondence reprinted here, also for
the first time in English, is between Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson.
The resulting collection offers a view of the evolution of
Trubetzkoy's ideas on phonology, the logic in laws of linguistic
geography and relative chronology, and the breadth of his
involvement with Caucasian phonology and the Finno-Ugric languages.
A valuable resource, this volume will make Trubetzkoy's work
available to a larger audience as it sheds light on problems that
remain at the center of contemporary linguistics. --This text refers
to the Hardcover edition."
M. Kelkar
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