From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis tribe?
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 93 20:51:15 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.071434.27930@jyu.fi>, ryyti@jyu (Jarmo Ryyti) writes:
>Rich Alderson (alderson@cisco.com) wrote:
>>Linguists generally do *not* agree on the existence of Ural-Altaic:  This was
>>posited on *typological* grounds in the 19th century, when typology was
>>assumed to recapitulate ontogeny, or something like that.  The basis of the
>>claim of relationship was that both families show widespread vowel harmony.
>>
>>If there is anything to the Nostratic hypothesis, Uralic and Altaic may be
>>co-equal branches of the super-family, but I doubt that they are any more
>>*demonstrably* closely related than Uralic and Indo-European.
>
>In Turkey, it is wide spread belief however that the finns and turks are
>relatives. Still 1970's in turkish teachers seminars war red a book
>named: A land of white lilies written by a russian. In the book
>Finland was used as an example how a country and its people can come out
>of "darkeness" by learning to read and write. The same book was used
>as far as I know in Officiers Schools in Turkey too.
> 
>That book was used during decades in Turkey and therefore many educated turks
>from elderly generation share the belief of kinship between the turks and the
>finns. I do not see it as a bad thing at all, the opposite.  The same with
>koreans, I think it is a nice thing. And knowing the achievements of the
>koreans and the turks in a modern society I think the finns are in a good
>company.

It may be a wide-spread belief, but that does not constitute proof.

In the nineteenth century, one accepted methodology for positing relationship
among languages was morphological typology--the famous "inflecting" versus
"agglutinating" versus "isolating" spectrum.  However, it was shown *during the
nineteenth century* that this is *not* a reasonable methodology.

However, once something is published, it seems as if it is never eraseable from
the public mind.  No matter how many times it is stated that one cannot draw
the sorts of conclusions from typology with which we are dealing here, the
public will continue to believe whatever is most pleasing to believe.

Please note that I am not denying the *possibility* of Uralic and Altaic being
related.  I have never denied the possibility.  Rather, I maintain that such a
relationship has not been *demonstrated*, using accepted methodologies.

You appear to be the only person dragging race into the question.

Both Korean and Japanese have been claimed as Altaic languages; they also have
been convincingly compared to each other, so if either can be connected to the
Altaic languages, both can.  But this has nothing to do with whether *Uralic*
and Altaic can be connected.

Beliefs are wonderful things, but are orthogonal to scientific investigation.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
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