From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Proof of relationship (was Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis
Date: 2 Jan 93 23:28:38 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1i39avINN5e2@pith.uoregon.edu> delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey) writes:


> It is most definitely not syntax.  Morphology is very useful, but
> not in the way that you seem to mean.  What you need is not similar
> morphological patterns, but cognate morphemes arranged in paradigms
> (e.g. the verb endings of different Indo-European languages).

We are back to square one. Instead of looking for cognates in
words we're looking for cognates of word-parts. Are we not ?

Should we expect this in two languages if we cannot find
word cognates?


> Yes, it's very difficult, and therefore very difficult to prove
> relationships at this level.  (Conservative historical linguists
> tend to say "impossible" rather than "very difficult", but that is
> a controversial point).

Aye, there's the rub. It hinges on what is proof. Suppose you
use method Ma to find the maximum of a function A. Then you
use the method Ma to find the maximum of function B. It doesn't
work. Does it mean that you've proven that function B does not
have a maximum or that your method is insufficient?

Say function A is a parabola. Method Ma works. Say function B
is a piecewise linear 'tent' function (described by y=x
and y= - x + 2). It certainly has a maximum but you won't be
able to find it by taking the derivative and setting it 
equal to zero.

Have you proven that function B does not have a maximum?

The question involves whether the use of the same method
that worked on IE languages (separation or spread which
started about 6,000 years ago), will work to prove or
disprove that two languages which might have started
divergence 12,000 years ago.

> No.  First of all, morphological typology can also spread from
> one language to another, so similarity doesn't prove common
> inheritance.  

What then is inheritance. It's a term borrowed from biology
and mammals have two parents. If a language borrowed morphology
from two languages, is it not a descendant of both ?

How do you judge ancestry ?


>More importantly, there is a smaller range of 
> logically possible typological patterns than of possible words,
> so coincidence between unrelated languages is more likely.  The
> gross example is word order--from time to time people try to 
> construct arguments for relationship based on common word order
> patterns, but since there is only a handful of logically possible
> types-- SOV, SVO, VOS, VSO, OSV, OVS, and a one or two variations
> on free word order--you would expect the pattern of any given
> language to be shared with a number of unrelated languages.

Yep, there's the rub again. Would we not expect all of these
word orders to be spread all over the world ? If not, then is
there a natural direction of evolution so that some die off
and others absorb them ? What then happens to parenthood
of languages ?  What are the statistical measures which we can
use to 'disprove' relatedness? Is lack of proof equivalent to
disproving ? Would we not also expect the pattern of any given
language to be shared by related languages? Do we always assume
unrelatedness until proven, which would always heavily bias
toward what you assume since no criteria other than word
cognates is acceptable ?


> Possibilities of morphological structure aren't nearly so limited,
> but they're far more limited than possibilities for individiual
> words and morphemes.

Quite true, of course. There's a limited number ofes that
can be produced by the human vocal tract too. Are patterns of
these also useless? Has anyone made a comprehensive statistical
study based on any mathematical metrics ? 
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey