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From: selvakum@valluvar.uwaterloo.ca (C.R. Selvakumar)
Subject: Re: Which family is Japanese in?
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Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 20:37:43 GMT
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In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.950913104321.13633A-100000@namaste.cc.columbia.edu>,
Peter D Banos  <pdb1@columbia.edu> wrote:
>On Tue, 12 Sep 1995, C.R. Selvakumar wrote:
>
>Latin is rare to begin with; there aren't many languages from that 
>period that are as well preserved. It was very valuable for the first 
>historical linguists to be able to cut their teeth on a language family 
>which is attested over such a time span as Romance. Indo-Aryan offers the 
>same advantages, with even greater time-depth. Most languages around the 
>world were only written down recently and so their histories must be 
>reconstructed, using techniques that have been tested on the better-attested 
>families.

     I believe Dravidian especially Tamil is another one of those 
     well attested languages having a continuous history of some
     2300 years or so. Unlike Sanskrit and Latin Tamil is spoken even
     today by some 60 million people.

>>     I think it would be possible to
>>     cite almost all known languages as examples of langauges which
>>     have borrowed or acquired words from foreign languages with which they
>>     have interacted,
>
>Again, it is rare that the words for "hand," "foot", "come," "go" are 
>borrowed.

     I fully understand your point but I still have some doubts.
     Most languages will have one or two words for such 'basic'
     things/concepts but if there are more words in a given
     language how are we to choose ? Should we choose the words
     currently in vogue ? Sure, the literary history 
     would give some pointers. But can we place such confidence on
     formally written words ? Suppose someone were to apply these
     techniques to modern written English ( or other languages), 
     would some consistent picture arise ? 
     For example the word paaNi ( hand ) occurs in Sanskrit but
     there seems to be too few words that are related to it.
     Is paaNi a true Sanskrit word ? 

>>     it might be far more difficult and rarer for one kind of language to
>>     transform into another kind ( for example a non_agglutinative, 
>>     SVO language using prepostions transforming into an agglutinative SOV 
>>     language using postpositions ) 
>
>If I am not mistaken, "agglutinativity" is not nowadays considered a 
>particularly useful concept in language-classification. At one time it 
>sounded 
>impressive, but it turns out that the difference between "agglutination" 
>and inflection is not all that clearly marked. 
>Someone please correct me if I am wrong about this.

   Yes, I'm aware of the shift in emphasis about 'agglutinativity' but
   still it serves as a loose description of a langauge, no ?

>
>>     I'm not placing too much importance on just word order alone ( I would
>>     include such things as postpositions etc.). Are there examples
>>     of languages transforming from a preposition-using language to
>>     a postposition-using language ? Please note plural in my question ! 
>
>Again the terms are not as clear as you might think. The postpositions 
>of modern North Indian languages are pretty clearly traceable to the 
>case-endings of Sanskrit. Case endings are a lot like postpositions; they 
>serve similar functions and are similarly located. So do you count 
>Sanskrit as a "postpositional" language because it has  case-endings? 

      What you say about north Indian languages could have been
      correct explanations but how can one be sure that they are not
      due to Dravidian which could very well have been one of the 
      substratum languages of the Indian sub-continent ? The post
      positions are so short I don't know whether these are such
      reliable derivations ( capable of rejecting the possibility of
      dravidian or munda language influence or retention)  - any thoughts
      on these ?
>It also has a few particles which can be pre- or post-posed, and which 
>are related to verb-prefixes, which in the earlier, Vedic language were 
>detachable and could move around the sentence in a pattern which I 
>_believe_ resembles the focus-system of Hungarian to some extent, but I 
>may be way off there. On the other hand Latin and Cl. Greek had nearly 
>the same case-ending system as Skt but also had  prepositions, especially 
>Greek. Then there's the Iranian family, which originally was much like 
>Vedic, depending on case-endings and detachable verb-prefixes and other 
>adverbial elements; modern Persian on the other hand is one of those rare 
>birds, a SOV language with _pre_positions. 
>

       Could Persian be influenced by Elamite ?

>And then there's Geez, which I mentioned in my last post: a Semitic, 
>mostly VSO, prepositional language with a maybe somewhat collateral 
>descendant, Amharic, which is SOV and uses mostly post-positions. Also 
>some _circumpositions._ (Hey, that's another feature it shares with Pushto!)
>
>AFAIK there is nothing to show that pre- vs. 
>post-positionalism is a basic, inherited feature of language.

     :-) Okay, is there something to show that it is NOT basic ?

     [ it sounds more basic than many other things to me ]


>Common sense is no substitute for close examination of masses of data. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Yes, I agree. it is only a starting point and views of that nature
     may often have to be discarded as we go along since better methods
     exist. 
>The history of science is littered with "obvious" notions, abstractions, 
>generalizations that failed to stand up under testing. Linguistics is no 
>exception... Selva, by all means ask 
             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>questions, pose objections - this is part of the process. Experts are 
>human, they make mistakes, they are quite capable of consciously or 
>unconsciously falsifying data or arguments to support some prejudice or 
>personal interest. In my honest opinion though, as an avid though not 
>officially "expert" reader of this sort of thing, the body of mainstream
>historical-linguistic thinking today stands up pretty well under the 
>weight of evidence.... 
>

       Thanks for the encouragement

       Many sincere thanks for sharing your valuable time and experise
       I'll probably ask more specific questions than such
       general ones. 

       Many thanks to Mark Rosenfelder, and Guy J and others who
       helped :-)


>							Peter D. Banos
>							pdb1@columbia.edu

       Selva

