From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Is (historical) linguistics a science?
Summary: yes
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 23:51:25 GMT

Boy, you guys are really talking past each other.  However, I have the perhaps
absurd notion that I might be able to address some of the confusion.

In article <Jan.4.16.56.51.1993.22817@pilot.njin.net> hubey@pilot.njin.net 
(Mark Hubey) writes:
>Since abstractions are what linguistics is apparently about, then
>here it is:
>
>ML1: Construct a mathematical metric (or implicitly accept that
>it can be constructed) so that phonology of languages can be
>put in an n-dimensional space i.e. simply described by a set
>of numbers. What do the numbers mean ? Nothing. They're just
>numbers. We construct an n-dimensional space. We explicitly 
>define the computational algorithm which will always yield a
>number or a set of numbers for any given language. Every
>science starts my measuring quantities. There's no need to
>give any number that you get by any algorithm that is 
>unambiguously defined any meaning whatsoever.
>
>And there's no need to go for very precise mathematical 
>measures. Simply gathering lots of monolingual people
>from various places and then making them listen to prerecorded
>tapes of examples from various languages and asking them to
>rate them in terms of questions like ; "Which two sound 
>alike?", "Are these two sentences from the same language?",
>"Is this language closer to A or B?" will do.
[...]
>There's the paradigm. People who are discussing various aspects
>of 'genetic' or other relatedness are making verbal descriptions
>of such a construct. 

Only... no, that's not the paradigm; and no, people who are discussing
relatedness are not describing that.

If you really have read Kuhn, you know that workers in a paradigmatic science
have mastered a set of paradigms, and *assume* them in their discussions.
To know what they're talking about, to say nothing of criticizing them, 
you have to go master them yourself.

In the present case, that means learning how historical linguistics
really is done.  You are not going to get this through the net, any more
than you could pick up quantum mechanics from reading sci.physics.  
You get it by reading historical linguistics textbooks.  I would highly
recommend Theodora Bynon's _Historical Linguistics_; Hock's book covers
about the same ground somewhat more thoroughly.

Historical linguists do *not* ascribe relatedness to languages based
on either a fuzzy or a precise notion that their words kind of sound alike.

They ascribe relatedness based on whether the languages can be regularly
derived from a common parent language.  The reconstruction of proto-Indo-
European in the last century is the paradigm here.  There is nothing wimpy
or fuzzy about the "regularity" here; the sound changes which produce the 
divergences from the proto-language are supposed to operate *without
exception*.  Where exceptionless sound changes cannot be deduced to explain
a derivation, some other explanation must be found, such as borrowing or
analogical change.

The common practice of citing a few cognates to demonstrate relationships
(e.g. two vs. deux vs. dva) may be misleading, suggesting as it does that
linguists look at only a few words or for surface resemblances.  First,
reconstructions involve literally thousands of words.  Second, surface
resemblances are merely a pointer to relatedness, and a fallible one besides.
English and French and Russian are considered related *not* because
their words for "two" are similar according to some metric, but because
those words, and thousands of others, can be regularly derived from
proto-Indo-European.

I don't know if you caught the recent discussion of Mozeson's claim that
all languages derive from Hebrew; this is crackpottery precisely because it 
ignores this business of regularity.   With *irregular* rules you can derive 
anything from anything else.

Unfortunately most of what you say about the relatedness of languages and
about how scientific linguistics is is almost meaningless, since you don't
show an understanding of how historical linguistics actually operates.

>ML2: Construct or otherwise define-- algorithmically and or
>mathematically-- how you would go about computing sets of numbers
>so that syntax of a given language can be unambiguously and 
>distinctly defined. We already have a head start, thanks to people
>like Chomsky, Thue etc. Once you have this, you can compute 
>various 'distances` or `dimensions'.

One problem here is that Chomskian theory is not at all interested in how
closely languages are related; its goals are quite different.  Another is
that there are not, so far as I know, any good ways of deducing linguistic 
descent from syntax.  Related languages can have very different syntax 
(cf. Latin and French); unrelated languages can have rather similar syntax 
(cf. English and Chinese).

[Rich Alderson:]
>>Now, do you *really* mean "typology"?  Or do you mean corresponding 
>>paradigms, in the principled sense of a one-to-one correspondence for at 
>>least some subset of the paradigm, with divergences clearly motivatable 
>>from within the morphology of each language?  Because the answer if you 
>>mean "typology" is most likely "No," while if you mean the other, it's more 
>>likely "Yes."
>
>I'm not sure if the word paradigm here is used in the sense I understand
>what the word means. I understand it in the sense of Kuhn--as in
>scientific paradigms. Please elaborate.

Rich is using "paradigm" here in the sense of a set of morphologically 
related forms, such as the regular declension of a Latin adjective.
From the paradigms given in the back of your Latin grammar it's no great
step to the sense of "paradigm" as "a model for doing things", which is
the sense Kuhn borrows for his own purposes.

>Nope; a rhetorical question to point out some small inconsistencies
>and insufficiencies. And I don't really care about the linguists in
>the field; I have to answer to a higher authority. It's called
>logic. I have to be convinced of truth, even if it's self-evident 
>to others.

Again, if you're familiar with Kuhn, you'll see that appeals to Truth and
Logic do not sway scientific paradigms.  Only a period of crisis, leading
to replacement by a new paradigm which addresses the problems revealed by
the crisis, can do that..  Since historical linguistics isn't in a period of 
crisis, no historical linguist is going to lose sleep over your objections.