Re: [tied] About methodology...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2000 5:22 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] About methodology...


>
> Piotr:
> >You don't seem to appreciate the complexity of the
analogy. Humans
> > reproduce sexually.
>
> True, and in this way humans differ from languages where,
at least on
> average, languages do not "reproduce sexually" (ie.
converge).
>
> >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.
>
> Yes, this is where my reasoning and analogy lie. It is a
sufficient model to
> explain comparative linguistics and, again, your strategy
here seems to be
> to infuse unnecessary confusion into the debate.

You strategy, in turn, seems to be to turn a blind eye to
anything that migh undermine the validity of the tree model
at great time depths: I'm not saying that languages converge
"on the average" (though some diffusion ALWAYS takes place
when there is prolonged contact). They converge often enough
and strongly enough for the cumulative effect of diffusion
to lead to a "tangled bush" situation among many small-sized
families occupying a given area. You speak in axioms: [the
tree model] "is sufficient to explain comparative
linguistics", as if it required no proof. Actually thare has
been a lot of debate between "arborealists" and
"diffusionists" over the last 150 years, and the consensus
between comparative linguists at present is that NEITHER of
the the two models is sufficient in itself and they must be
regarded as complementary. This complementarity imposes
certain limitations on the applicability of the comparative
method.

> Quite frankly, if someone like Starostin, who is no doubt
an average, nice
> guy who eats and breathes like the rest of us and who
would appear to have a
> strong amount of information and resources at his
fingertips, can come up
> with wild reconstructions that in no way conform to
regularity within reason
> (and I've checked thoroughly), then... no, he is not in my
league.

It's perfectly legitimate to criticise somebody's faulty
analyses and interpretations (and rest assured I'll do it
for you when I find more time). It's the smug ad hominem
part that is embarrassing. If you feel better endowed than
Starostin or Illich-Svitych, there's no need to tell us
about it. Just produce something that will impress us.

> Piotr:
> >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.
>
> Now, now. No need to speak through your burning effigy of
me. I can make my
> own quotes, thanx. :)
>
> What I do know with 100% certainty concerning Nivkh is
fragmentary, yes. But
> the fragments are sufficient to piece together a bit of
the larger picture.
>
> I do know the following vocabulary terms, aside from the
numerals, which
> I've dedicated to memory for future reference:
>
> my *n'i-/*n'e-
> your *ci-/*ce-
> mountain *-bal (*n'-val "my mountain",
> *c-fal "your mountain")
> harpoon *-r^ly
> sky *-r^la
>
> The language clearly has vowel harmony - this is
coincidentally a feature of
> Altaic languages. However, this fact in itself could be
easily reduced to
> simple areal influence if it weren't for the fact that the
language employs
> clearly Nostratic pronominal stems (see above) to express
possessive
> relationship. By the geographical position of this
language, it could only
> be a Nostratic _Steppe_ language or something closely
related to that group.
>
> What's more, /ci-/ "your" (Nostratic *tu) conforms to the
same Altaic
> softening of voiceless stops as we find in Altaic
(Mongolian /c^i/, Turkish
> /sen/). This is further evidenced with /tho-/ "five" where
it clearly, along
> with the other numerals, relates best with the Altaic and
Korean languages
> where *k- has been softened and lost (Korean ta-sot,
Classical Mongolian
> ta-bun, Classical Japanese itu-). However, if it is Altaic
in appearance, it
> certainly cannot be part of the Altaic family itself if
"four" contains
> initial /n-/ (/n@-/) just as is found in Korean /net/.
Altaic distinctively
> changes certain instances of *n- to *d- (Turkish do"rt,
Mong. do"ro"v).
>
> Therefore, based on these grammatical, phonological and
even geographical
> grounds, the likeliest relationship I can see is within an
AltaicGilyak
> family comprised of Altaic, Gilyak and Korean. I see no
need to complicate
> things and view these connections as simply borrowings or
coincidence yet.
>
> I await further information to adapt my hypothesis. Do you
have some extra
> info that could help me?

In other words, you DON'T know enough even to begin to
analyse the correspondences. Yet you glance at a few forms
and determine the place of Nivkh among the world's languages
(not unlike Joseph Greenberg).

On geographical grouds, Hungarian or Basque "could only be"
Indo-European.

As for further info, at the moment, I can only quote from

http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/nivkhs.shtml

(where you can also find a few Nivkh words -- just four or
five random items, but they will significantly increase you
Nivkh vocabulary)

"Research. The study of the Nivkhs began in the 1890s, with
L. Sternberg on Sakhalin. In 1900 he published part of his
collected linguistic examples and later, in 1908, the main
part The Study of Gilyak Language and Folklore. More
detailed research has been made recently on the founding and
development of the literary language, and collection and
study in the field of linguistic material. In 1934, E.
Kreinovich published his first survey of the Nivkh language.
In the 60s V. Panfilov compiled an academic grammar book
(1 -- 1962, 2 -- 1965). A Russian-Nivkh dictionary, compiled
by V. Savelyeva and Ch. Taksami, was published in 1965 and a
Nivkh-Russian dictionary in 1970. No information is
available about monographs on dialects or folklore."

Other recent publications mentioned there are all in
Russian, but you should consider learning Russian anyway if
you're going to study the languages of the region.

Piotr