Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!cam-news-feed3.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!csn!nntp-xfer-1.csn.net!ncar!uchinews!not-for-mail
From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Greenberg and Chong [was: Re: Sun Language Theory?
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: ellis-nfs.uchicago.edu
Message-ID: <E40Hs7.226@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: The University of Chicago
References: <5a7qak$8fc@nyheter.chalmers.se> <32daa7f9.9106304@news.exodus.net> <E3zGDH.CB8@midway.uchicago.edu> <32db2819.41906258@news.exodus.net>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 18:52:55 GMT
Lines: 91

[All newsgroups besides sci.lang trimmed.  I doubt they'll miss this.]

In article <32db2819.41906258@news.exodus.net>,
Bill Vaughan <bill@osisoft.com> wrote:
>deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>	Don't even get me started on Greenberg, et al.  I don't see how
>>throwing out two centuries of hard-won experience in comparative
>>reconstruction and replacing it with "eye comparisons" (what *are* his
>>systematic rules for determining whether two or more words are cognate in
>>a mass-comparison list?) advances our knowledge of language origins one
>>bit.
>
>Well, that depends on just how strongly anti-Greenberg you are,
>doesn't it? I agree with you that his methodology is intuitive,
>perhaps to the point of sloppiness, but his work on African languages
>has stood up quite well, and it seems that his results on Native
>American languages may be in general correct as well. And to the
>extent this is true, he has certainly advanced the state of the art.

Okay, I grant this point.  I didn't mean to say that the man had done
nothing for linguistics.  But accurate reconstructions have long had their
start in intuitive eye-comparisons without anyone promulgating this as a
"new methodology".

>As I understand it, the pro-Greenberg faction advances multilateral
>comparison as a method _in addition to_ rather than _in opposition to_
>bilateral comparison. I am not aware that anyone on the pro-Greenberg
>side advocates "throwing out" comparative reconstruction.

	What's so different about this approach?  The very birth of
comparative reconstruction stems from a multilateral comparison
(Greek-Latin-Sanskrit).  William Jones was intuitive, perhaps to the point
of sloppiness, but his work has weathered fairly well, doncha think?

>>>> ... Why is Mr. Chong starting with
>>>>modern forms anyway?  If he really wants to prove a relationship, why
>>>>doesn't he compare Sumerian to reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric and
>>>>Proto-Altaic?

[snip]
>>>Working from reconstructions is second-generation
>>>research -- one step further removed from the raw data, with all the
>>>ambiguities, errors, and occasional prejudices that are accidentally
>>>embedded in the reconstruction. It is akin to what the statisticians
>>>call "data-mining" -- very useful, if you are very careful.
>>
>>	Yes, but working in ignorance of data that, in some cases,
>>represent a lifetime of painstaking reconstruction just strikes me as
>>foolhardy.  By all means, double check the data sets to see if your
>>predecessors knew what they were talking about, by why rediscover Grimm's
>>Law?
>
>I don't suggest reinventing the wheel. Trusting and extending previous
>effort is after all the hallmark of science, isn't it. But I thought
>(correct me if I was wrong) you were asserting that because the
>reconstructions exist, using modern languages was wrong. That's pretty
>much like appealing to Aristotle.

Hardly.  Ural-Altaic reconstruction is not that old a field.  Starting
work on it without any reference to recent work is like deciding, today,
to build a heavier-than-air flying craft without reading Bertoulli or his
succeesors.  It's those who dispense with modern comparative
reconstruction techniques in favour of intuitive comparison who are
appealing, if not to Aristotle, to Enlightenment philologists and their
search for the language of Adam.

>It is not inconceivable that modern languages could shed some light on
>mr Chong's attempt to show a relationship between Sumerian and
>Altaic... imagine, if you will, that there are some cognates between
>Sumerian and Mongolian, and some other cognates between Sumerian and
>Manchu, but that Manchu and Mongolian didn't share these -- or at
>least didn't share enough of them for the words to have turned up in a
>reconstruction of proto-Altaic. Admittedly this is a somewhat
>far-fetched notion, yet mr Chong ought to be allowed to pursue it in
>the absence of flamage.

I never flamed Mr. Chong or any other contributors to this thread.  I
merely suggested that the methodology apparently underlying this attempt
was deeply flawed and seemed to ignore much previous work.  If Mr. Chong
has posted something to the effect of "I'm familiar with the work of the
following linguists, but I think it falls short" or if he had presented
more proof than a mere word-list I would have reacted much differently 

[disclaimer deleted]


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
