Re: [tied] About methodology...

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 10:09 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] About methodology...

... In the end, only a percentage of original human genes could have survived to the present day; Just as only some language families survived to the present day. The languages, and the people, represent only a fraction of the large diversity that would have existed at genesis. Whether language or people are ultimately polygenetic or whether there is consensus on the matter is very irrelevant to the present-day evidence which can only serve to show "monogenetic" tendencies due to natural selection over aeons. A polygenetic past would precede a monogenetic ancestor. In this sense, I am both a follower of polygenesis AND monogenesis.

You don't seem to appreciate the complexity of the analogy. Humans reproduce sexually. The family-tree model (and your reasoning) applies to those fragments of the genome that don't undergo recombination -- mtDNA and the Y chromosome in the maternal and paternal lines of descent, respectively. In all other respects our genomic lineages are so intertwined that it only makes sense to talk about the geographical distribution of alleles or their statistical profiles in populations -- a very close analogue of areal linguistics. Selective pressures may in the long run globally eliminate some alleles originally present in the total genetic pool of the species, but since the history of any recombining fragment cannot be represented as a tree, the alleles that survive today certainly don't come from a single primitive community (unless we assume a REALLY tight bottleneck at some point).

 

Languages don't just split and diverge; they also interact, borrow from one another, form convergence areas and undergo hybridisation. Was there ever a time when English was a homogeneous language? Do its modern dialects derive from a single proto-dialect whose unfortunate sisters have died out?

 

The effects of lateral diffusion taking place "over aeons" distort the evidence of cognacy and will ultimately drown its detectable signal completely.

Although temporal horizons, splits, divergences and convergences are fascinating and very important concepts when dealing with reconstruction, they are by no means a good arguement to downplay long-range comparative linguistics. You use these terms only to confuse and create unnecessary doubt in the field.

Advocatus Diaboli: Your Honour, I object! Doubt is ALWAYS necessary.

Now, as I was sipping some Earl Grey, looking at the weekend newspaper, I noticed a beautiful and very easy-to-understand analogy to explain "extrapolative methodology".

When doing a crossword puzzle, Piotr, do you fill in only the answers that you are 100% certain of? How about the ones you don't know? Do you, perhaps.... "guess" at them, by chance? I'm very sure you cannot resist this very human temptation.

Did I say anything about 100% certainty in historical linguistics? It's something you keep putting in my mouth. I'm all for educated guessing as a preliminary strategy. It's rather the scale on which you guess that I object to.

But why? Quite simply, this is the most logical and efficient algorithm in which to complete the game, as any Artificial Intelligence expert will tell you.

Without guessing at the questions you aren't sure of, you will never hope to discover new patterns that could help further fill in the puzzle. You will not learn _new_ answers. You will not adapt and grow. In the end, the one who dares to guess advances faster and is far readier for the next challenge ahead.

... and even if you can't fill in the puzzle completely, you can always cheat by filling in any words that seem to fit even if they don't match the cues ;)

Piotr:
>As a matter of fact, I have no pet hypothesis about the relationships of Nivkh, that's all. Why should I have one? I'm not a specialist in Nivkh and I certainly wouldn't venture an opinion based on a cursory examination of word lists or selected grammatical patterns.

While there is some logical rational to your lack of pet hypothesis for Nivkh, it remains a far less efficient means of deduction. Your specialization in Nivkh is irrelevant - The term "specialization" is in itself a gradient, personal and meaningless term as is your previous usage of "proof". You have a functioning brain. Therefore, you, as much as anyone else, can become (and are) a specialist of Nivkh.

Afterall, "specialist" is in the eye of the beholder. I, personally, don't consider much-loved personnages like Starostin or Illich-Svitych to be very adept at general reconstruction at all, even though there still remain some benefits to the products of their unskilled curiosity - They provide a founding theory to be further improved upon.

I may be strongly critical of Illich-Svitych and Starostin, but you talk about their "unskilled curiosity" as if they simply weren't in your league (though their results can be utilised). Glen, have you ever seen a Nivkh dictionary? A grammar of Nivkh, perhaps? Can you say "My name is Glen" in Nivkh? Do you know anything about the history of the Nivkh people and their contacts with other languages? Are you in a position to verify whatever little information about Nivkh you can scrape from secondary sources like Starostin? Are you trying to tell me it's all irrelevant? Be serious, at least sometimes.

 

Oops, I forgot. This request is illogical and meaningless: seriousness, after all, is gradient, relative and subjective.

 

Piotr