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: Wed, 6 Jan 93 19:36:01 GMT

In article <Jan.4.16.54.01.1993.22727@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot (Hubey) writes:
>In article <1993Jan4.205115.8521@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:

>>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.

>Would you please explain the basis for the original confidence in the
>methodology and then the later loss of confidence ? What makes it unreasonable
>as a measure.
>
>I'm not claiming Uralic and Altaic belong together. It's just a question of
>why the method was abandoned and what method replaced it and why?

The methodology was as follows.  Please, EVERYONE, note that *I* *do* *not*
hold the opinions stated below.  This is an historical exercise only.  Anyone
who flames me for the content of the following statements will be ...

<Here beginneth the lesson:>

The most primitive language of which we know is Chinese.  It is an isolating
language.  Therefore, the most primitive language type is isolating.  It is
most primitive, as we know, because it has such a limited inventory of sounds.

The next most primitive language is Turkish.  It is agglutinating.  Obviously,
it must have grown from an isolating language, since those are most primitive,
by the process of concatenating isolated words into units which express greater
concepts.  It shows more development in the inventory of sounds, as well.

The most highly developed people in the world are western Europeans, who speak
inflected languages.  Obviously, these had to develop from an agglutinating
language, since that is more primitive.  The endings are the remains of weaken-
ings due to phonological developments in the old, fuller, agglutinating ones,
to be expected because the more energetic Europeans don't have the time to
pronounce all those syllables.

Now, on this basis, we can hypothesize that the agglutinating languages closest
to Europe must be related to each other.  Thus, since Finnish and Hungarian on
the one hand, and Turkish on the other, are agglutinating, and in addition show
the phonological process know as vowel harmony, they must be members of a
single family.

Hard to find recongizable cognates?  Well, after all, these primitive peoples
must change their languages faster than the more highly developed Europeans,
and so the methods we use for examining our own languages aren't really so
applicable to them.  But we *know* that they must be related.  To think other-
wise violates our primary assumptions.

<Here endeth the lesson.>

The method was abandoned because it made demonstrably wrong predictions about
relationships among languages.  (And I will define "relationship" in my
response to your long message requesting same.  Take it as a primitive for
now.)

It was replaced by the use of the comparative method--used successfully by
investigators not only in Indo-European languages, but Semitic and Austro-
Asiatic langauges as well.
-- 
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_
Newsgroups: sci.lang