Re: Stacking up on standard works

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> You make it sound very simple, but it *isn't* that simple at all.
> Patterns are only too easy to see. Any random process may generate
> "patterns". Even the stars in the sky form patterns.
> >
> > I disagree. Randomness is just the opposite of a pattern.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness
>
> I didn't say that patterns are random. I said that random processes

can

> generate (regular or semiregular) patterns, or at least things that we
> perceive as patterns.
>

Well, I'm not aware such "random patterns" actually exist in comparative
linguistics.

> How do you know
> that the patterns you see "here and there" in two different languages
> are evidence of their shared ancestry?
>
> > IMHO all you can prove (to a reasonable degree of certainity) is a

set

> > of words in language A and another set of words in language B have a
> > shared *source*.
>
> Comparative analysis goes way beyond comparing sets of words. It is

not

> just a critical mass of matching words that constitutes clinching
> evidence of relatedness.
>

This is why we can't accept languages such as Burushaski or Basque as
part of the IE family, despite the claims of some crackpots. But the
comparative method isn't restricted to the reconstruction of
proto-languages but it also is useful to posit long-range relationships.

> > The problem is that a the lexicon of a given language is typically

made

> > up of several strata (multi-layer) due to language replacement and
> > contact processes, and it isn't always easy to tell which is the
> > "inherited" part. This is where morphology usually comes to the

rescue.

>
> Indeed. And this is the really important part.
>

Unfortunately, morphology is of little help in long-range comparisons,
apparently because of its higher evolution rate with regard to lexicon.