Re: [cybalist] Re: Computational Historical Linguistics

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2038
Date: 2000-04-04

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory L. Eyink <eyink@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 11:28 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Computational Historical Linguistics

Dear Greg,
 
I absolutely agree with your criticism. It seems to me the UPenn group apply the methods of computational taxonomy mechanically and blindly, largely ignoring the crucial differences between biological and linguistic evolution.
 
Most obviously, areal effects, bilingualism and creolisation play a more serious role in historical linguistics than horizontal gene transfer, symbiosis and hybridisation do in evolutionary biology, especially if one takes into account the different rates of change involved. The tree model has some validity in linguistics, but the tree is certainly "fuzzier" than in biology and more difficult to reduce to a bifurcating structure. If we were dealing with infinite "Lebensraum" in which languages may spread forever, each drifting away from its sister after the split, there would be no further interaction. But Eurasia is not spacious enough, and there HAS been a lot of secondary interaction. Unlike organisms, even distantly related languages may freely influence each other; there is no reproductive barrier to prevent them. If one wants to conduct a cladistic analysis of a group of languages, some PRINCIPLED way of predicting and recognising the effects of language contact should be proposed. It may be the case that phonological and morphological features (being less borrowable) should be trusted more than lexical "characters", but one has to bear in mind that many similarities in these domains are coincidental, typological or due to parallel development rather than common origin.
 
In biology, it's more or less clear what counts as a genomically determined character and what character states may be assumed to represent synapomorphies. In linguistics, it would seem, anything goes. Unique and trivial sound changes and morphological traits are lumped together as "characters". I share your feeling that proposing a retrograde process of de-satemisation for Germanic (with the simultaneous re-labialisation of former labiovelars!) is absurd. No mechanism of linguistic change that I'm familiar with would work that way. It would be like a modern species of bird growing clawed fingers on its forelimbs, a long tail and a set of teeth. Of course synapomorphic features may be secondarily lost, like hairs in the Cetacea, but it's a NEW SYNAPOMORPHY of that clade, not a return to proto-synapsid hairlessness (which was, anatomically, something very different from cetacean hairlessness). The Romance languages have developed conditioned fricative and/or affricate reflexes of Latin velars and labiovelars, but French is not a satem language though it has [sa~] for *k@....
 
The "findings" of the project are hardly spectacular. They are partly trivial ("confirming" what everybody knows), partly too obviously fallacious (such as the "Graeco-Armenian" grouping, resulting no doubt from a traditionalist bias in the choice of characters). As for Germanic, the bottom line is that they simply have no idea how it fits anywhere. Inflated claims such as quoted in your posting raise serious doubts as to the researchers' ability to be self-critical and don't invite an informed reader to take their model seriously. Which is a pity, in a way, since as you rightly point out the method, if applied with more caution, could be of some legitimate use in analysing genetic relationship.
 
Piotr
 
 
Greg wrote [responding to Mark]:
 
> [...] I understand that their algorithm produces rootless trees. What I am
> really questioning is the value and
meaning of such a model, HOWEVER
> it is produced. If an evolutionary
biologist has a theory of bird
> origins which postulates that the
maniraptorian clade divided into
> aves, dromaeosaurs, troodontids,
therizinosaurs,and oviraptors, then
> he may or may not be correct, but I
know exactly what he means.
> According to the papers at the Upenn website
they propose that the
> tree model should apply to linguistic families
which are
> geographically spreading, so that separating members should no
longer
> interact. Fine. However, when the UPenn tree shows that
>
Germano-Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian divided from a common ancestor,
>
what does this really mean? If I take their model literally, then one
>
must assume that either (i) Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic
> independently
underwent a satemic shift or (ii) the satem shift
> occurred in the common
proto-language and Germanic underwent a
> retrograde centum shift! (Very
unlikely phonologically.) It is not
> just an issue with the placement of
Germanic either. For example,
> Armenian also has satemic features. The
proper conclusion really seems
> to be that the tree model is just not a
valid representation of
> linguistic facts for the IE family. I still
don't see the value
> of using fancy mathematics to "correctly" produce a
bad model!
> This linguistic theory produces contradictions whose
explanation
> requires going outside the tree model itself, e.g. invoking
areal
> change, or wave theory.
>
> >
> >
Essentially, all they are saying is that OE (which is NOT a satem
>
language) is nonetheless best placed inside the group which did
> undergo
satemization. The literature I've read says there are
> incompletely
explained peculiarities in Germanic which largely
> disappear if you posit
a strong genetic (but pre-satemic) relationship
> with the B-S and I-I
branches.
> >
>
>
> The UPenn group certainly
emphasizes the anomalous position of
> Germanic in construction of the
optimal tree. For example, they have
> found that if they removed Germanic
from the tree construction, then
> they obtained a "perfect phylogeny",
i.e. a tree for which all
> linguistic characters employed were
compatible. But does this mean
> that this "perfect" tree should be
regarded as having established
> validity of the tree concept,  and
representing an historic fact?
> There are many aspects of the "perfect"
tree that are still very
> controversial. For example, it supports the
existence of a
> Greco-Armenian proto-language. Yet very credible
arguments have been
> presented against such an hypothesis, e.g. by James
Clackson in his
> 1994 Oxford monograph, "The Linguistic Relationship
Between Armenian
> and Greek." There is a lot hidden in the UPenn results
in terms
> of the linguistic characters employed and the values assigned
to
> compatibilities.
>
>
> > Much of what they
are doing seems to be 'tinkering'. They are
> attempting to find those
linguistic features which can accurately
> predict known relationships,
and then apply the same methodology to
> unknown relationships. One can
only wish them success.
>
> I wish any honest scientist well. I
certainly did not intend my
> remarks to be "nasty", just an honest
criticism. However, my negative
> remarks are a reaction against what I
see as the UPenn's group
> tendency to "oversell" their method, or to
"intimidate" with
> sophisticated mathematics. An example: In their IRCS
report they claim
> that one of the important results of their methodology
is "the ability
> to detect and handle loanwords that are not
distinguishable from
> cognates by traditional methods." This sounds
really wonderful, right?
> Isn't it great that they can feed well-known
linguistic data into
> their miraculous mathematical machine and get such
striking
> conclusions as the output? However, an examination of their
work shows
> otherwise. The above claim is based upon their difficulty in
fitting
> Germanic into the tree. They found that using linguistic
characters
> based upon phonology and morphology gave the tree in with
Germanic
> was
> grouped with Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic.
However, if they used
> characters based upon vocabulary, then Germanic
was best grouped with
> Italo-Celtic. To explain the discrepancy, they
THEORIZED a non-tree
> effect: that Germanic at an early stage had
borrowed much of the
> distinctive common Western vocabulary (e.g. Goth.
`fisks', Lat.
> `piscis', OIr. `iasc') from Italo-Celtic. This is not an
automatic
> output of their mathematical apparatus, but an independent
speculation
> on their part. It is also not the only possible explanation
> (e.g. the items in question could be independent borrowings
>
from a western-European pre-IE substrate.) What the example really
>
shows, again, is that the tree model breaks down. If the underlying
>
linguistic theory of separate development were correct, then it
> wouldn't
matter which set of linguistic characters were employed
>
(phonological-morphological vs. vocabulary) and the same tree would
>
result. The fact that it doesn't just means that the tree model is
>
insufficient. 
>
> I can see some value in using the UPenn
algorithms as a way of testing
> the limits of validity of the tree model.
I see a lot of their
> conclusions as being not so different from what
traditional linguistic
> methods have produced using the same data, but
perhaps better
> quantified. For example, it could be useful to have
"compatibility
> scores" for different possible trees, or to see that
different trees
> result from different linguistic characters. This would
all be
> valuable if used correctly. However, this is not the UPenn
attitude.
> They take it as a CRITICISM of lexicostatistics that
the
> "best-informed mathematical linguist who attempted such work
makes
> notably modest and reserved claims for the method." Instead, they
make
> very arrogant and overblown claims for theirs. They claim to
"resolve
> longstanding open problems" such as the Indo-Hittite and
Italo-Celtic
> hypotheses. They boast that their method "has been able to
construct
> a robust evolutionary tree of the IE languages" whereas
"traditional
> methods failed." This is just not honest.