Talk:Amerind languages

message: Please, make footnotes (Inline citations) in order that the readers can verify the information. Otherwise this may well look as a presentation of the editor's/s' opinions rather than of facts.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 14:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Footnotes

message: More pieces of information should be included in the article, such as:
*Other people's contributions to the subject (such Merritt Ruhlen's Amerind Etymological Dictionary), as well as reviews thereof.
*Internal classification (according to Greenberg/Ruhlen)
*The evidence (real or alleged, but certainly commented) in favour of the hypothesis (and why that evidence is/isn't valid).
It doesn't matter whether Greenberg/Ruhlen's classification is valid or not. It should be a part of the description of the hypothesis. It is not enough to say that Amerind is a controversial family proposed by Greenberg and consisting of all language families in Americas but Na-Dené/Haida and Eskimo-Aleut. Being a reader of Wikipedia, I'd like to know why Greenberg thought the family existed.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 14:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: More Information

message: look at the history and you'll see that the (formerly) current highly POV version was due to a single user, Billposer.  the previous version is shorter and much more objective.  none of the added stuff by Billposer is relevant -- it's a lot of unsourced, disputed criticisms, and all relevant criticisms are already contained in the mass lexical comparison page. Benwing (talk) 03:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds as if Bill Poser were an expert in ALL of the languages grouped under Amerind. I doubt that. Certainly, the hypothesis is CONTROVERSIAL. It should be said why it is controversial, bbut we are here not to judge it. Only time and the linguistic community can do so. We need to cite both - those who agree with Amerind and those who don't. We need to say why there are still people who advocate it. And, which is important, we should reralize this is an article ABOUT Amerind, not AGAINST Amerind! Wikipedia is NOT an Encyclopaedia of critics and critiques, is it? If you say A, you should say B. Let me summarize that:
--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 10:33, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are partly right Petusek - but you forget one point. Currently the scientific consensus is not only against the validity of Amerind, it is very much against it. Wikipedia needs to show unequivocally that this is not a proposal that is believed by the general scientific community - not doing this would be giving undue weight to a fringe viewpoint (and yes Amerind apologetics are a fringe minority of the linguistic community, this is undisputable).·Maunus·ƛ· 10:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would not dispute the theory is controversial. I only demand more precise information - who claims what and why. That's all. This looks as if the arguments were taken out of thin air - both for and against Amerind. The article mentions few arguments. I'd like to list a few requests in the to-do box. If we say it is a fringe theory, why could we not use the inline citations to sources that document this? That's all I want, in fact. And I repeat: there is nothing about why Amerind was postulated, what lead to it: the pronoun pattern (which is considered less wide-spread now), the assumed boy/girld/child isogloss (be it highly disputed). You know, the article gives very little information on the actual Amerind hypothesis.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 11:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: One more thing. Amerind, as far as I know, is a higher-order grouping. It is not on the same level as Na-Dene or Eskimo-Aleut, thus the first sentence of the article is, at least, inaccurate. In fact, Amerind would not contradict the current division into many smaller families, as the hypothesis attempts at seeking bigger time-depth relationships. Whether successfully or not, that is another question. Simply, something has to be said about the theory. Why it has its followers and why the majority of linguists disagree with it, uhm? --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 11:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

text: I for one have no problem with this, as long as undue weight is not given to a favourable view of the hypothesis.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Good. I think we might use something from here. It is quite brief and if we add the inline citations (e.g. with the linguits claiming that the m/t pattern can be attributed to other than genetic sources), it will be fine, I guess.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 12:28, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Good. Mr. Poser seems to have put the references where they belong. Still, some more information could be added, including a few references.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 07:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Conspiracy theories are a sign of pseudoscience:  When people can't win on the merits of their argument, they attack the community instead.  I know Americanists, fans of Greenberg, who were very excited at the prospect of him solving their classification problems, only to be disappointed when his proposal turned out to be garbage.  That's the consensus view, though we put it more politely, and it's not for us to defend a hyphothesis against its reception in the reception section.  — kwami (talk) 23:50, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  reverting to less POV version 

message: It seems to me it would appropriate to put the hypothetical classification of this hypothetical phylum, with links to the pages for each family, where they are there.  I will begin working on this.
The classification, per "A Guide to the World's Languages Vol. 1" (Merrit Ruhlen, 1987) is as follows:
1. Northern Amerind
1.1  Almosan-Kersiouan
1.2  Penutian
1.3  Hokan
2. Central Amerind
2.1  Tanoan
2.2  Uto-Aztecan
2.3  Oto-Manguean
3. Chibchan-Paezan
3.1 Chibchan
3.2 Paezan
4. Andean
5. Equatorial-Tucanoan
5.1  Macro-Tucanoan
5.2  Equatorial
6. Ge-Pano-Carib
6.1  Macro-Carib
6.2  Ge-Pano
6.21 Macro-Panoan
6.22 Macro-Ge.
As I said, I will start working on this, and try to make sure I include as many of the latest research as I can find, with appropriate footnotes, etc.  But I wanted to post a heads-up on the discussion page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Listmeister (talk • contribs) 20:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification of the languages 

message: I have seen an article in the New York Times. DNA testing has confirmed that there were three migrations to the Americas. Fifteen thousand years ago, there was a large migration that would give rise to the majority of Native American tribes. This was followed by two smaller migrations. One would give rise to the Eskimo. The other would give rise to the Apache and the Navajo. This is evidence that Joseph Greenberg was right. Please check http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/science/earliest-americans-arrived-in-3-waves-not-1-dna-study-finds.html?partner=rss&emc=rss for more info.
173.57.39.131 (talk) 21:58, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give a single example in recorded history of a wave of migration where they weren't all speaking the same language?  There were several invasions of Europe in the middle ages, but even the largest one (the Mongols) had a common language among the invaders (Mongolian).  The Amerind hypothesis does not rely on the genetic evidence, but I think the genetic evidence is a pretty solid support.  Listmeister (talk) 13:04, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The Amerindian "invasion" was most likely not a single historical event like the Mongol one. It was probably much more similar to the migration period in Europe stretching over many thousand years, with many hundreds of languages involved. There is no genetic evidence suggesting that all of the "Amerind" people necessarily arrived in one group just because they are fairly genetically homgeneous (relative to the later arriving Dene and Eskimo). ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 13:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, no.  Scholarly consensus is clear here.  There's a common ancestor languge family.  I linked to the Wikipedia page on Genetic History of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas to make things clear for people who still believe the "splitters".  This is a jargon dispute; nobody seriously believes that there were two totally independent families of languages brought across during a genetic bottleneck.  It's frankly ridiculous and it's not OR to say that.  74.79.153.74 (talk) 02:58, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Scholarly consensus is the consensus by experts, which in the case of language relationships are linguists, and it is clear that the scholarly consensus is against the hypothesis of common ancestry – as far as it can be demonstrated with linguistic evidence, anyway, the only evidence that counts here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:32, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  JOSEPH GREENBERG WAS RIGHT! 

message: I undid a removal of the classification scheme.  We need to discuss this first.  The list of languages and the classification thereof is the Amerind hypothesis.  The article has little real content without it.   Maunus's edit note says "removing excessive list which breaks the article - this list should have its on article if it is to be included at all" (sic) well, the note itself suggested two alternatives before deleting content: rearrange the article, or put the list in its own article.  But there was no indication of why it should not be included. Listmeister (talk) 19:50, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes there was. The HUGE embedded list makes the article unreadable. Per WP:MOS embedded lists of that length should be avoided. And no, the hypothesis is not just a list of languages. At least one would hope there was more to it than that, although in this case perhaps there isn't. Please remove the list again since it is not helping the reader at all - if you think it is useful put it in a separate list article and link to it from the article.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:03, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Can someone else weigh in here?  I don't want to get into a reversion war (I did say "discuss this first.)  The article is not unreadable.  The list is its own section, and does not interfere with the sections around it at all.  If you had just moved it to the bottom of the article, I would not have a problem with that.  I read the MOS, it says, "material within an embedded list should relate to the article topic without going into unnecessary detail".  It does relate to the topic, and does not go into unnecessary detail.  As for the whole "helpful to the reader" comments, why would anyone want to read about Amerind languages if he didn't want to know what the Amerind languages are?  Listmeister (talk) 20:27, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The list was placed between sections, specifically before the extremely important criticism section, and it also cannot go between the body of text and the references. Yes it goes into unnecessary detail. The same infiormation can be given in a single sentence "the original Amerind proposal contained all Indigenous American languages except the Athabascan and Eskimo-Aleut languages and Tlingit and Haida"·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:32, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: So why didn't you just move the criticism section ahead of the classification section, instead of removing all the content? I have done so.  You have a point, the article is more readable, and we didn't have to delete the classification.Listmeister (talk) 20:43, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: IF someone should have discussed, it was you when you inserted it the first time .·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It was the discussed under the "Classification of the Languages" section of the talk page.  Not only did no one object, but others have contributed to the list since it was first put in. Listmeister (talk) 20:43, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't just go removing the classification scheme 

message: The reason Lumpers tend to like the Amerind theory and Splitters tend to reject it is a fundamental assumption by the Lumpers that "Any Theory is Better than No Theory" while the fundamental assumption by the Splitters seems to be "A Wrong Theory is Worse Than No Theory."  Applied to the American Languages, a Lumper will ask, "Are these languages related to each other, or did they arise independently? Best we can figure, there are four independent sources of languages in the Americas (the Na-Dene, the Eskimo, the recently introduced European, and the Amerind).  Great, we have a theory.  Let's see if we can refine the theory.  Maybe we'll find a fourth grouping or be able to connect two of the three together, maybe someone will come up with a better theory, but we have to start somewhere."  From a Lumper perspective, the Splitters have not even tried to come up with a better theory.  They just seem to be saying say "we have 150 independent language families, and we can never ever know the relationship between them.  Ever.  Oh sure, maybe we'll get lucky, and discover a link here and there, but on a continental scale, forget it."  This attitude is as frustrating to Lumpers as I'm sure the "start somewhere even if it's wrong" approach is to splitters.  My point is, Amerind is a Lumper Theory, made by Lumpers (Greenberg and Ruhlen, mainly) for other Lumpers.  Let's acknowledge this fundamental division in approach to historical linguistics, and move on from that starting point.           Listmeister (talk) 14:47, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not the case that lumpers live in another world than splitters. Science is one. Amerind is not scientifically supported. Those lumpers who do science instead of speculation know this. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:36, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

text: The classification of the vast majority of Native American languages in one group is heavily scientifically supported, because we have external evidence -- genetic, biological, archaeological.  I just went ahead and linked it, since it's already elsewhere on Wikipedia.  Amerind is not *linguistically* supported, but that's not the same thing.  Let's acknowledge this fundamental difference in approach between people who recognize that there are sciences other than historical reconstruction linguistics, and those who can't look outside their department.  74.79.153.74 (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Claims about language relatedness can only be proved with linguistic evidence. It is well-known that non-linguistic evidence is often at variance with known linguistic relationships, which is understandable, not least because language shifts are so commonplace. Interdisciplinary research requires competence about issues like these. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:14, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lumpers vs. Splitters 

message: Substituted at 07:35, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hallo – I have zero subject-matter expertise here, and no longer retain any illusions re Wikipedia's neutrality. But the term "cherry-picked" reads as critical or judgmental, and, as justified as the criticism may be, I thought it might be better to go with a more neutral heading. I don't have a dog in the race, just wanted to explain myself. Eric talk 13:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The table header is factual, and is intended to be critical. Omitting the "cherry-picked" part would be tantamount to misinforming the reader, who might gain the impression that the similarities are universal throughout the Americas and therefore significant, lending support the Amerind hypothesis, but the table is deceptive as a result of the cherry-picking fallacy being applied. WP:NPOV does not mean we're supposed to phrase everything "nicely" and uncritically, quite the opposite. If our sources are generally critical or negative, we need to report this criticism. (Experienced Wikipedians should know that in Wikipedia, "neutral" doesn't mean WP:FALSEBALANCE.). Also, the title had been stable for one and and half years – until yet other pro-Greenberg POV warrior came along and changed it because they felt it sounded "too negative". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:15, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I will delete the table. It's OR. The "source" just contains raw data, but not in support or in the context of the Amerind hypothesis. The only thing we can cite here is Greenberg's primary exposition of what he considered "evidence", or preferredly a secondary source that discusses Greenberg's material (and with a likelyhood of 95% will also refer Greenberg's data as "cherry-picked"). –Austronesier (talk) 14:30, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't exactly describe such a compilation of obvious (if meaningless) similarities as original research. It's a useful illustration of the pitfalls of superficial and statistically uninformed comparison. , what do you think? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The languages and pronominal similarities are from Zamponi, as cited in the text, if I recall correctly. He does the statistics but doesn't present the forms. It's the illustrative forms that WP provides from primary sources, but not the choice of languages and pronouns. I don't see that as an OR violation, but won't object if consensus goes against me. I've restored the table during the discussion here. — kwami (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: WALS has a chapter on n-m pronouns which gives some examples, maybe we could cite that and use their examples? Erinius (talk) 04:34, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Since Zamponi is cited, we should build a small table based on his article then. Combing through datasets in a DYI fashion and then citing the data sources is OR. It takes some amount of inspection whether n and m are really the person-marking elements in pronouns or person-affixes, and not just other functional components mistaken as person markers (a mistake that Greenberg repeatedly did; the WALS chapter does a better job, but then, alas, doesn't discuss Greenberg's hypothesis at all). And doing OR only to say that Greenberg's conclusion drawn from these resemblances is shite, that's again OR. Let's stick to the relevant literature by Campbell, Nichols and others that explicitly presents and evaluates the material in the context of Greenberg's failed macro-classification. –Austronesier (talk) 11:05, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronoun table header