Andrew Smith:
>I expect that 30 years from now, linguistic questions will be >routinely
>addressed by computer-aided statistical tests, just as >economic questions
>are today. This is likely to be less error prone >than today's anecdotal
>approach. The plausibility of hypotheses such >as the Nostratic hypothesis
>should then be amenable to statistical >quantification.
Well, Mr. Economics Person, your idea is pretty and everything in a
make-believe world but it'll never be reality no matter how hard we wish
upon a star because the world just isn't that predictable and ordered.
Sometimes the equations don't even work for economics let alone linguistics.
In my statistical examinations (smirk), you seem to be one of many
non-linguistic-oriented persons driven by the dillusional obsession to
somehow make linguistics a "real science", at least, as it would appear in
your eyes. Linguistics is still a productive science without mathematics,
just as psychology is. It's best to seperate sciences into two main
categories: "digital"/"physical" sciences and "analog"/"theoretical"
sciences.
The former answers questions with "true" and "false" and the latter takes
"the likeliest probability". The first can conclusively prove a theory with
tangible tests, the second will have to rely on Occam's Razor until a time
machine is finally built by the fine people at Harvard.
The reason why statistics isn't popular in psychology is the same as for
comparative linguistics where these sciences deal with something involving
those wacky, unpredictable human beings. They can't be subjected to
mathematical equations no matter how hard one might try. You can't plug some
magic variables into an equation and somehow discover from a bunch of
numbers which words of a particular language are borrowed from some other
language (whether written or unattested) or that some particular aspect of
conjugation is derived from some precise earlier form.
Don't be daft. At most, it will only speak of language in a very general and
probably very moot way. 'Fraid an equation will never replace deductive
reasoning and from the looks of your posting, my friend, you need another
equation. :)
PS: Looks like the return to Blue Chip stocks, huh?
- gLeN
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