Me (gLeN):
>True, it's fuzzy - so what? The point is to acquire greater and >greater
>accuracy. We all know that the tree model isn't a _perfect_ >way of looking
>at languages and language interaction but it gives us >an immediate general
>picture of relationship...
Him (pIotR):
>Si parva licet componere magnis, [...]
M meng aa. Lei sik gong Yingman aa?... :( "If small (then) it is alright to
put (it) together greatly [...]??". Is there a Latin translator in the house
over here? :)
>you are arguing not unlike Einstein, who never came to terms with the
> >uncertainty principle. Remember? "God doesn't play dice". "Greater and
> >greater accuracy" is possible up to a certain limit.
Einstein was wonderfully whacky, wasn't he? But hey, I'm no Einstein...
erh... wait a minute... let me restate that. ;( If I'm, symbolically
speaking, playing the role of Albert, and you, perhaps the role of Satan
offering forbidden fruit from the Tree (or Wave) of Knowledge of Bad and
Worse, what am I supposed to come to terms with here?
I can fully accept that the tree model never tells the WHOLE story just like
when thinking of the subatomic world only in terms of particles. That
doesn't mean that the model doesn't say anything or that it undermines
long-range linguistics.
Even more, the uncertainty principle doesn't exactly say that life is
completely unpredictable, nor does it say that the universe is even
moderately unpredictable. As far as I understand, Newton, after receiving
his inspiration from (coincidentally) a malevolent tree bearing
gravitationally-enriched fruit, proposed regular laws of the cosmos that
still have firm domain over the macroscopic hundreds of years later.
The "uncertainty" here is restricted only to the minutest distances (cf.
Plank's Distance), down at the atomic/subatomic level. It has for instance
been suggested that light may not be travelling strictly at 180,000 km/s
like it seems to on average in the macroscopic world. As fascinating as
quantum mechanics is, its place is in the very small microscopic world where
really bizarre things can happen almost at random.
Perhaps, if we may draw this analogy out further, the wave model can also be
viewed as a "microscopic" view of language change or rather a model that one
should use to examine language close-up while the tree model is excellent
for general relationships and to give a more "macroscopic" view of the human
language family. In regards to Nostratic, a macroscopic view and, hence, a
tree model is needed first before delving into the added complexities that
you're rushing into here.
However, these quantum-linguistic analogies may only go so far. You assert
that greater and greater accuracy are possible up to a _certain limit_.
Please prove that statement or gracefully withdraw the ad hominem.
>By stressing the tree/wave duality and its consequences I don't want >to
>argue that "deep" research is hopeless. I only say that the >comparative
>method has its limits [...]
There you go again. How does one assert this rationally? What limit are you
refering to? 2000 BCE? 4000 BCE? 10,000 BCE? 100,000 BCE? How can you be
sure this affects Nostratic linguistics? How can you be sure this doesn't
affect IE linguistics? I'm betting that you, along with many people before
you, can't possibly support this viewpoint with any scrap of logic.
>Ancient Sprachbunds may be as fascinating as protolanguages. As you >say
>(and I agree), there is far too little interest in them, also >among
>IEists.
Thanx for agreeing with something I said... finally :) I, along with
partaking in the joys of tree-like reconstruction, equally delight in
ancient areal influences, dialect continuums and the like, so I guess I am
both a wave and a tree man. I don't know why you persecute me so. :P
>Dialectologists don't use trees at all and still have a lot to say >about
>the history and evolution of languages. Historical linguistics >is not only
>about splits and unitary protolanguages. The Inuit example >in your posting
>is instructive. A dialect network model works >excellently here, while a
>tree model is completely inadequate.
To a degree I agree. Still, the relationship of Inuktitut to outside
language groups, whether it is to be viewed as a group of closely knit
languages or as a dialect continuum, can still be mapped out in a tree
diagram, if not for complete accuracy but for the sake of clarity and
brevity more than anything. Again, a tree model isn't something to be thrown
away. It has its place.
- gLeN
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