Talk:Comparative method

message: There are all sorts of comparative methods in all sorts of fields, aren't there?  So, shouldn't this article live at comparative method in linguistics or something more specific?  I really have no idea what's appropriate, actually, but this does seem to be too broad of a name. --LMS
:Fair enough. I'll keep the article here for the time being, but if comparativists from other fields object it will be redirected. -- Piotr Gasiorowski
::as soon as somebody wants to write an article about another sort of comparative method, he or she will move this article to comparative method (linguistics). problem solved. 
::However, you should consider merging this article with historical linguistics, since the subject treated is exactly the same-- Dbachmann 11:48, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Name and place for article

message: There was a missing form --- the Hawaiian for "enter". I supplied that word, ulu, which means "enter" as in "inspire", i.e., "enter one's soul". See Pukui and Elbert's Hawaiian Dictionary (1986:368-369, 436). I also made the font appearance consistent (IPA) for all Polynesian forms in the table. Then removed the unnecessary italics which created a bad visual effect in the table. It will look better yet if it switches the x and y axes, providing vertical visual comparison of the cognate forms.  Agent X 23:30, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, to establish previously unknown kinships, the method uses the oldest known form of a language; so including colloquial Samoan (presumably a descendant of the formal variety) would not help illustrate the method, although it does show that [dental] > [velar] really happens and so can be used in reconstruction of other language histories. —Tamfang (talk) 21:18, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Table of Polynesian cognates

message: Right, this is already an excelent article, so: well done to everybody who's contributed so far.  However, my bid to get it the Featured Article status it deserves has come unstuck over inline citations.  These are particularly needed for the examples of the method being applied to various languages.  I'm prepared to try to provide these for the IE examples, but I don't have access to the resourced to to find references for Algonquin languages, Polynesian languages, Finnish, Pirahã, Dravidian languages or the Uto-Aztecan tree.
Can anybody out there help?  sjcollier 21:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I (aka Whimemsz) don't have most of the books I used with me at the moment, unfortunately, since I'm away from home for a few weeks. I think I can remember which work each example came from, but I obviously don't know the page numbers, and won't for about two more weeks. Should I just wait until then to add the in-text citations, or should I put in the references to the books themselves, with no page numbers, and then go back and add those when I know them? Take care --Red Newt 09:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  And again, fantastic work on this article.  Page references are always nice, but are by no means vital; so if you add what you can now (providing you're confident you're citing the right source...) and put the page numbers in whenever it becomes possible, that'd be fantastic.  I've already added what I can from books I have available, and Agent X has kindly offered to contribute references to the Polynesian stuff.  I've also littered the article with hideous  tags, which aren't ideal but at least make it clear what still remains to be done.  Cheers, sjcollier 20:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, thanks! --Red Newt 23:20, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's great.  I think we're getting there.  sjcollier 23:51, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

text: That'd be good.  I think Monocrat has a reasonable point about maybe a minor restructuring of the Criticism section - maybe a bit mroe of a general introduction? - though I personally don't think the subsubsections are too objectionable.  I'm in a bit of a similar situation to you with books at the moment: I'm deprived of good library access for the summer vacation.  Will see what I can do about a history section, though.  May try to obtain a copy of Fox.  Cheers, sjcollier 00:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Evidently, Panini mentioned Grassman's Law in his grammar of Sanskrit. That's the claim the page on Grassmann's law makes, anyway. I checked, and the user who added it is Opus33. On his talk page, he says he only edits on Sundays, though, so we might have to wait for then to get a reference. --Red Newt 03:56, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  Will keep trying to track down something before then if I can.  Sadly, I fear there is no hope of me obtaining a copy of Fox any time soon, so I'l try to find an alternative source on the history of the method. In response to suggestions from Agent X, I've added a bit on sub-groups to Genetically related languages and a paragraph on areal diffusion to the Criticisms; feel free to improve on them. sjcollier 11:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Fully citated.  I wish I'd though to check Campbell 2004 for the Finnish/Gothic citation earlier, though.  Must be about FA standard now...  sjcollier 17:54, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: w00tilicious. I added a section on Dixon's Punctuated-Equilibrium model (I don't know how well-written it is); all that's left, I guess, is a section on the history of the method. Great work! --Red Newt 21:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  The Punctuated-Equilibrium section is great.  I've tweaked the lead a bit, and moved the citations (and sentence about glottochronology/MLC) to the Criticism intro - having only just found out that the MoS reccomends against citations in the lead.  As you say, a history section would be good at some point; can't see that it's absence should be a barrier to FA status, though.  Fingers crossed... sjcollier 10:17, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Okay, I've added everything I can; I think that's fairly comprehensive (on the C19th stuff at least).  Not sure that we need to add anything on the development of glottochronology or MLC; that really belongs in their respective articles (or a new lexicostatistics article).  Excellent work - it must be nearly there now.  sjcollier 21:15, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Featured Article Candidacy

message: Hello all. I've been drafting a significant revision to the article to try to address a few of the problems highlighted by Angr and others. What I've got so far is on my subpage, User:Miskwito/Notes (ignore the two links and the horizontal rules at the very top). Some of the changes I've made there are:
#Tried to make it clearer that the comparative method is reliable and not distrusted. I renamed the "criticisms" section to "problems" "potential problems", which seems to have some precedent in other Wikipedia articles, and which in my opinion anyway is somewhat less harsh (perhaps Pfold's suggestion of "limitations" would be better?). I also did some rewordings of certain paragraphs and sentences to remove or clarify some of the more POV or inaccurate language, and also provided several quotes from Lyle Campbell and Hans Henrich Hock to further highlight the reliability and strengths of the method.
#I removed the section on "creoles", which isn't really a challenge to the comparative method at all. I also removed the section on the punctuated-equilibrium model, which as has been pointed out by others above, isn't well-accepted.
#I changed the citation format from inline to using <ref> tags, which I think cleans up the article a bit (and following Angr's suggestion).
#I removed the Dravidian example Angr mentioned, which was irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
#Altered the mention of "non-trivial" changes somewhat, and removed the hypothetical one of b:ŋ.
#Made it clearer that the reconstructed phoneme inventory in the section on "examin[ing] the reconstructed system typologically" is hypothetical, and not necessarily an actual reconstruction of any real proto-language.
#Removed the "Such dramatic asymmetries in the growth[...etc.]" sentence Angr mentioned.
In my opinion, anyway, it's a good start toward addressing many of the weaknesses of the article. It's still got a long way to go, though. And I'm not sure there's any real way to fix the sense of being "taught" Angr brought up--short of pretty much rewriting the entire article with new wording. I also haven't addressed his points 4 or 7 yet, nor the point about the example used to illustrate "analogy". Maybe tomorrow. Or something. Anyway, since these are some significant changes, I wanted to check with all interested parties that they're okay, and that everyone agrees for the most part with the changes. If you need to view all of the changes at once, here you go: . Comments? Ideas? Criticism? --Miskwito 02:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That all makes good sense. Good work, that man. Dewrad 22:26, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Excellent revision, Miskwito, just go ahead and replace the earlier version with it. I have a few edits in mind I could make after that, e.g. I'd like to balance the "Subjectivity of the reconstruction" section by adding something on cases where reconstructions are confirmed by loanwords in another language family (such as Germanic > Finnic) - what do you think? And, I also think that "Limitiations" would be a better heading than "(Potential) problems". --AAikio 07:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me--the Germanic>Finnish loanwords are a good example of that. "Limitations" sounds good; I added potential because in that section, as the revised version now stands, the basic premise is that most aren't actually significant problems. But "limitations" for me does carry pretty much the same connotation. I'll go ahead and make the switch. --Miskwito 18:49, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed revision 

message: When clicking on the link for 'punctuated equilibrium' on the page on R. M. W. Dixon I got redirected here, yet there is no mention of that hypothesis here (well, ok, on this talk page there is). Is this some remnant of the section 'Criticism' that apparently once has existed, and where, apparently, Dixon's hypothesis was mentioned? -Stephan Schulz 80.186.191.43 21:17, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The section can be found in the page's history. Clicking this link should take you to the old Punctuated Equilibrium section. --Miskwito 23:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But should it really be linked here, when there's no mention of it on the main page? I was just wondering, I don't know the policy. -Stephan Schulz 137.163.18.151 09:14, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the link --Miskwito 23:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  'punctuated equilibrium' redirects to this page 

message: Dammit. I had a whole nice long thingy written here and one mistaken click later it was lost forever. Argh. So, this isn't as brilliant as the original version, but use your imaginations to picture how friggin' inspired my prose was:
I've been thinking lately about how we can improve the article further. One minor change that can be made is to get a better example of analogical change. The current example is useful because it demonstrates how individual words can undergo irregular changes due to the shape of some related word, but that's not exactly the same as analogical change brought about by paradigm shapes and structures and what have you. But I don't think we should get rid of what's there now. I can also go through the article and just make sure all the references are formatted correctly.
For the more significant change, I've been trying to decide how we might address Angr's concern about the prose style of the article (it reading more like a textbook than an encyclopedia article). In part, I think this is due to the use of "we" a lot, which shouldn't be terribly hard to fix. In part, though, I think it's due to the types of examples used and how those examples are presented: it's kind of like the article guides the reader through a process of learning how to use the method, which I guess isn't exactly the same as simply presenting the methods linguists use and saying "these are the methods." But I'm having trouble figuring out how we'd be able to change that while still retaining the current examples (which I think are useful and nice, for the most part; there's also the point about switching between different languages to illustrate each point, rather than, say, sticking with Polynesian languages, but I'm too lazy to worry about that now).
So, I think the questions are: (1) is there really a problem with the prose that needs to be fixed (or, if not a "problem", is there a way the prose can be improved)? (2) if yes, how do we improve the prose? As I said above, for starters, just getting rid of the "we"s might do a lot. If it still seems "textbooky", perhaps we'd want to get the League of Copyeditors involved? I'm not sure...
What do others think? Agree? Disagree? Other thoughts or ideas? --Miskwito 09:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A...anyone? --Miskwito 05:47, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Further improvements

message: These sections should not be in this section as they can be used in connection with other than the comparative method.  A better home would be Historical Linguistics.
Adresia 20:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tree/Wave Model Sections

message: I'm going to give the reasons I reverted your recent edit here, Adresia, so we can discuss it on the talk page...and, you know, stuff:
#"in social science" is out of place, I don't know why you added it there or what it's supposed to tell people
#There's no need to add terms like "qualitative" in the lead, which is supposed to provide a very basic, easily-understandable summary for lay readers. "Qualitative" doesn't really add any valuable information there, it just makes the writing slightly denser, I think.
#Same goes for the mention that "the latter may consist of grammatical, morphological or lexical characters", and adding "lexical" after "cognate lists" and all that; those terms aren't really necessary in the lead (although I do think greater mention of the comparative method's use in areas besides phonology would be helpful for the article, but I'm not sure the lead is the place for it. I'm kind of ambivalent on this, though).
#"The basis of the method is the Neogrammarian Hypothesis that "sound laws have no exceptions" and the tree model of language development." Again, unnecessary addition of information; if I was someone unfamiliar with historical linguistics already, seeing this sentence randomly at the end of the first paragraph of the lead would confuse the heck out of me.
#Changing "mainstream" to "traditional" is inaccurate--the linguists who reject the comparative method and/or use methods like mass lexical comparison are definitely considered fringe and outside the mainstream. "Traditional" kind of makes it sound like the people with these new methods are more progressive, while the "traditional" linguists are conservative and refusing to yield to new, better ideas. Probably not what you intended, and I don't know if readers would actually consciously think that, but... Hm, in any case, "mainstream" is a bit of a loaded term as well; maybe we can try to change it, but I don't think "traditional" is a good solution.
#"Modern historical linguistic methods are based both on the comparative method and the lexicostatistic method, but use statistical hypothesis testing." This is a very clumsy sentence now, and if I'm reading it correctly, fairly inaccurate. Most historical linguists don't use lexicostatistics for anything other than presenting its results as a reeally general guess. They don't generally treat it as something reliable or on par with the comparative method.
#I don't know that either of "Application" or "Details of the Method" are better than the other, although I think "application" describes the content of that section more accurately. I'm ambivalent about this too, though.
#This isn't a real problem at all, but "sound" in "Establish sound correspondence sets" isn't really necessary either, I don't think.
#Adding "problems with" to the headings is both unnecessary (because of the larger heading "limitations") and misleading (see the discussions above).
#"but still relies on judgement by linguists" totally contradicts the previous phrase, claiming that "the identification of systematic sound correspondences between known languages is fairly objective". The correspondence sets themselves generally are objective, once you find them--if there are enough examples of the correspondence; it's just the reconstruction of those sets that's really subject to the biases and opinions of the researchers.
#The "Method is non quantitative" section doesn't explain what "quantitative" or "qualitative" really mean in this context, it brings up examples without explaining them (the lay reader will be asking "what the heck is 'Italo-Celtic'?"), and it inaccurately suggests that lexicostatistics "compliments" the comparative method--to my knowledge, that's not the view adopted by most historical linguists, who, if they use it at all, use lexicostatistics just to give them a broad guess about when the protolanguage was spoken, and get them started on possible segmentation of the family tree (actually proving subgrouping requires a number of shared innovations, phonological and/or morphosyntactical). Finally, the point that the reconstructions are subjective is already addressed elsewhere.
So, those are my reasons. I'm interested in your responses, though, and in what others think. Take care, --Miskwito 23:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thought of a couple. milagro is metathesized from miraculum; roble (from robur) was not metathesized, so there has to be a vowel before the r for it to metathesize. -phma 22:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: My reversion of Adresia's edits

message: Is the whole emphasis of the initial definition of the comparative method given here not wrong?
Surely the comparative method is used to show how languages which are related have developed from a common ancestor, and alone is not proof that they are? Regular sound correspondences in lexical material, no matter how extensive, can be shown by borrowings; in extreme cases the entire lexicon of a language can be replaced. Genealogical linguistic relatedness is proved, not by lexical comparisons, but by the inheritance of shared paradigms and irregularities which are so unusual that they could only be accounted for by relatedness. Comparison is what happens after relatedness has been proved (or is so obvious to be beyond doubt). I think this distinction is an important one, given the prevailing tendency for tenuous linguistic relationships to be alleged on the basis of a bunch of lexical resemblances with apparently regular sound correspondences gathered by supposedly following the comparative method.
See Johanna Nichols (1996): "The Comparative Method as Heuristic" in Mark Durie and Malcolm Ross (eds.) "The Comparative Method Reviewed: Regularity and Irregularity in Language Change", Oxford University Press
Bofoc Tagar 12:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparative method as heuristic

message: I'm gonna revert this anonymous addition:
: They state that it is extremely unlikely, or maybe even impossible, for a language to have a voiced aspirated (breathy voice) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series (though this latter position has been shown to be erroneous).
Shown how? Is there a living language with such a phonology? —Tamfang (talk) 05:25, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. One of them, (the Bario dialect of) Kelabit is even mentioned on Glottalic theory. Also, some Kwa languages are said to have such a system by Steward. Curiously, some Kwa languages have a four-way system with all possible combinations of voice and aspiration, but Mbato has lost the unvoiced aspirates of all series. Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  the problem of PIE aspirates 

message: ", with alternative lexicostatistical methods such as glottochronology generally considered to be unreliable as there are cases when lexicostatistics does not work at all. Potential problems with the comparative method have also arisen as a result of a number of advances in linguistic thought, in large part due to some of the "basic assumptions" of the comparative method. However, as Campbell (2004:146-7) observes, "What textbooks call the 'basic assumptions' of the comparative method might better be viewed as the consequences of how we reconstruct and of our views of sound change."
I do apologize but I had to take this out. I doesn't mean anything, basically. Not enough information is given to properly interpret the abstracts. For example, what cases are you talking about? We don't know, I'm sure, and you aren't telling us. And now we have some weasel words, "generally considered", but what does unreliable mean? How so? And what do you mean, lexicostatistics does not work? The next sentences are totally disordered and that quote by Campbell gives us zero assistance. This is zero-grade explanation; nothing is presented, nothing is explained. You think you are reading something but you can't figure out what. You know, I don't know of any other language that allows you to do that, to say something without saying anything. I'm going to start calling English the null language. If I want to be diplomatic I speak French but if I really want to say nothing I switch to English. That way you can't be criticised for something you said because you haven't said it.Dave (talk) 03:32, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Gobbledeygook

message: The box says "Altaic languages", but only Turkish is mentioned.
1782 and 1786 are both mentioned for Jones.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.19.146 (talk) 09:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I'll look into it shortly and report backDave (talk) 10:53, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural used 

message: Lyle is an established author mentioned in the article. However, the article does not reference any of his published works. Instead we are told of an unpublished debunking passage located in preview form on Lyle's site. That isn't there now; the link is dead. Moreover, the putative forthcoming work is not on Google (maybe I missed it). It seems clear, if there really was such a passage Lyle does not want us to use it. However, there is more. All these claims made for Jones are false, he never said any such things and as far as I can see no one ever thought he did. If Lyle said all those things they certainly were misplaced. I doubt it. However, we can't now verify just what Lyle said. So, I'm taking out the better part of that passage. I will say, the linguists of that time all drew conclusions that later turned out to be manifestly wrong. Anyone reading Jones can see that. No one takes Jones or the others like him seriously as linguists. If we're trying to "debunk" Jones we have created a straw man to belabor. He happened to be the first known of the time to mention a group to which he did not even give name. No one has claimed he invented the proto-language. See Tree model. It is more important to get information right than to get something on WP. More work.Dave (talk) 11:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Lyle Campbell

message: Someone worked pretty hard on this article and there is much good material. It got a C, and now I'm making quite a few changes - not on the technical material, mind you, but on the writing. You should have had more English composition. But anyway I think I owe it to you to explain why I am making these writing changes, and this turns out to be some suggestions on your writing. I do see some consistency of style. As a linguist or student linguist you know all about social registers. An article such as this takes formal English, but the register keeps changing to informal or conversational English. Never do that, it attracts attention to yourself and inserts your presence into the material. The writing should be transparent; one does not see the writer or his style at all, only the material. Stick with one register, formal English, throughout. Second, a lot of this is patois. Patois is a device used by one ignoramus to impress another. Save it for your girlfriend. In patois one tries and fails to use the technical terms correctly and half the time it is mainly clear that the speaker has no idea what he talking about. It can sound impressive, however. Don't try to impress us, it means you have a low opinion of us, that we can accept slick talk in place of the real thing. Whenever I see the slick I stop reading. The third thing I noticed is that decisions on what to say next depend less on strict logical order than on the purple passages. You are trying to "write good." Don't. First have something good to say and then organize it well. You will find that you won't have much trouble saying it. Don't try to look smart or be entertaining. We don't read this material for entertainment, although I must say WP can be a pretty good laugh. And finally, you aren't using natural language. If you read the Egyptian Book of the Dead you will see a goodly number a repetitious formulae as though the author think if he does not say things in the correct formula someone will go to hell for it. Don't keep repeating the subject over and over in successive sentences; use pronouns. You don't have to summarize the whole article in every paragraph; you can assume the reader has read the previous. These are my comments, take them as you will. If you really want to know how to write linguistics start studying the writing of the introductory textbooks referenced so frequently in this article. Of course, they had the advantage of a team of editors. As far as I can see they are written really well. That's their job. No reply necessary. You can just start reworking some of the awful linguistics articles I have had to read, many of which you no doubt worked on.Dave (talk) 00:24, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: For whom is your invective intended?  This article has had 538 edits so far: 138 by you, 83 by Sjcollier, no more than 21 by any other single account – so no wonder if there's some inconsistency in register. —Tamfang (talk) 03:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's an interesting theory, Tamfang - I don't know for whom - don't care - totally non-personal. I thought I saw a uniform bad style. It isn't invective, it is a tart critique. Some people don't take us too seriously and need to be jogged a little. The tartness comes from having to deal with the authors of bad articles who would rather conduct edit wars than allow one word to be changed. If the shoe fits wear it, if not, don't. But, maybe the perception of an overriding style is off. Maybe it is the accumulation factor. So, if it does not apply, forget it, but the suggestions are intended for anyone writing these C or D articles.Dave (talk) 13:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: The writing of the article

message: *Goddard, Ives (1994a). "A New Look for Algonquian." Paper presented at the Comparative Linguistics Workship, University of Pittsburgh, April 9.
*Goddard, Ives (1994b). "The West-to-East Cline in Algonquian Dialectology." Actes du Vingt-Cinquième Congrès des Algonquibustes, ed. William Cowan: 187-211. Ottawa: Carleton University.
*Holm, John (1989). Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Comrie, Bernard (ed.) (1990). The World's Major Languages. New York: Oxford University Press.
*Dixon, R. M. W. (1997). The Rise and Fall of Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
*Pedersen, Holger (1962). The Discovery of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
*Picard, Marc (1984). "On the Naturalness of Algonquian ." International Journal of American Linguistics 50:424-37.
This article has a large number of references; however, not too large for the topic. There is no need on the other hand to swell the Bibliography beyond what is used. I put these unused items here. Many articles have "Additional reading" sections. I like those. Many of these refs are very specific rather than general. I'm not sure those belong there. If anyone wants to create an additional reading section with these I would not disagree with that. I did not do it myself because the refs need a lot of work to get them into WP formats, and some of them require tedious Internet lookups. If you want to do the work, go right ahead, I will not object. Note also if anyone puts more notes in and wants to use these items, they would go back in the references section, properly formatted.Dave (talk) 13:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: References not used

message: I just completed a major edit on this article, which I hope will remove some of the obstacles to improving its grade and make it more useful in the matrix of other articles. The article is middling long (not really long). Try as I might I found I could not reduce the size below 53 kB. My edits are mainly formatting and English-language. I followed the policy of not removing referenced information. I did insist on following the references so I removed some unreferenced paragraphs that were written badly or made no sense, as I have explained above. If anyone really wants to cut down, I would suggest some sections have too many examples. Maybe there are too many tree diagrams. You use YOUR judgement whether you want to add or subtract, merge or split. I got this to the point where I view it as satisfactory so I may not be back at least for a while. You can always reach me on my discussion page and I will discuss almost anything but I have to warn you I will not bicker. If you really have to change something, do it, and see what the reaction is. It's not my article, it's yours. Bye now.Dave (talk) 13:50, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit completion

message: The two external links are really to private sites. I don't think they are appropriate, but the previous editors had them, so I am going to leave them. I am insisting on cite web, however, according to WP policy. We aren't interested in editorial interpretation of the link. Cite web puts it in as it is, telling us who and what. Now the link to UT publishes material copyrighted I am sure by Kathleen Hubbard. I do not know at all if they have permission to publish it. It is a document on the classics department web site and that has been made public. What their use of it is and whether we can link to it I do not know. You legal persons now can decide. The other one is Professor Matthew Gordon's linguistic course aid. Is this an encyclopedic source? You decide. I presume he does not mind the whole world taking his course as he has made the site public. There is some interesting information in there, but, the thing is, its nature is didactic not encyclopedic. I believe both links are strictly transitory. In a few months, a year perhaps, someone will be having to remove the links as dead. Are they worth the trouble? You decide.Dave (talk) 00:57, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: External links

message: The language Piraha has been subject to a number of dubious claims of uniqueness by Daniel Everett. "Piraha Exceptionality: a Reassessment", Language, 85.2, 355-404.  The claim that its pronouns are borrowed from Nheengatu is not transparent.  Thomason and Everett argue their case based upon a complex phonemic analysis. Our claim is that the basic Piraha pronouns are nearly identical to those of Nheengatu and Tenharim. Superficially, however, the Pirah~a pronounsdon't look much like the Tup i-Guaran i pronouns; so this proposal will not be convincing without some additional information about the phonology of Piraha that shows how the phonetic realizations of the Tup i-Guaran i forms align with the Pirah~a phonemic system. "Pronoun borrowing" Sarah G. Thomason & Daniel L. Everett University of Michigan & University of Manchester  The claim should be attributed rather than presented as fact.μηδείς (talk) 16:40, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Dubious Piraha Claims

message: What is the point of having the pronoun table on the "comparative method" page? The resemblance of the Baltic-Finnic pronoun "sinä" and Turkic "sen" is obviously coincidental: the change of t -> s before "i" is a Baltic-Finnic innovation. All other Uralic languages have a "t" in that position (*tun, *tinä). Actually Finnish has the verbal 2nd person suffix "-t", and also the plural form "te" shows the original "t".
Compare also the following inflections (nominative sg - essive sg - essive pl):
vesi - vetenä - vesinä (water)
käsi - kätenä - käsinä (hand)
kuusi - kuutena - kuusina (six)
--Muhaha (talk) 13:39, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The table should also include Proto-Uralic and Proto-Altaic (and PIE) reconstructions, and regarding the gender thing (he/se), PIE didn't have "she", but only animate and inanimate. --88.114.40.114 (talk) 19:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Just remove the table altogether. There is no reason why the article should include this much controversial data. We cant selectively remove the ones we dont like either without committing OR.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 10:33, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: If nobody opposes, I'll remove it.  Kernaazti (talk) 08:15, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Uralic and Altaic pronoun table - false cognate 

message: The history section of the Indo-European studies article gives a different impression of the origin of historical linguistics than this article does, mostly pushing the method much further back in time. Even in that article, there is no mention of Yehuda Ibn Quraysh, who sometime in the 9th or 10th century thourhg comparison of the phonology and morphology of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic recognized that Semitic languages had a common origin and "are subject to the same linguistic laws". This reference states that the Indo-European studies in the 1640s by Van Boxhorn and Elichmann were "significantly more accurate"  (and more comprehensive) than those 140 years later by William Jones, "who erroneously believed that Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese were part of Indo-European while Hindi was not, which suggests that his method was seriously flawed." The reference also mentions that 67 years before Jones, William Wotton had already attempted to reconstruct an Indo-European proto-language. 
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how narrow the concept of the "comparative method" is, in which case the difference of which with earlier methods could perhaps be made more explicit in the text. At the very least, the overcredited Jones' overexposed quote, which as far as I can tell told nothing new, can be removed from the origin section. Afasmit (talk) 00:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Reading the source material for Ibn Quraysh it's obvious he is only restating the stereotypical religious based "all languages evolved from Hebrew" doctrine: "The reason for this similarity and the cause of this intermixture was their close neighboring in the land and their genealogical closeness, since Terah the father of Abraham was Syrian, and Laban was Syrian. Ishmael and Kedar were Arabized from the Time of Division, the time of the confounding [of tongues] at Babel, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (peace be upon them) retained the Holy Tongue from the original Adam."  In other words, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob retained God's tongue, not that Hebrew and Arabic evolved from some third tongue that was neither.  This whole section needs to be reverted to the status quo ante. μηδείς (talk) 02:48, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin and development of the method

message: It is stated that latin word for "tongue" is "dingua", but as far as I can tell, it should be "lingua". Even so, linguistic is not absolutely my field of expertise, so I wanted to signal the thing instead of changing it. Anyway, yes, your are linguistic not dinguistic, so I'll be quite surprise if that is right.
87.0.49.19 (talk) 22:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mistake 

message: Jones' work is highly cited and should be available, but Blench does not provide any reference for his claim that Jones believed that Chinese, Japanese and Egyptian "were" Indo-European.  Given Jones' remarks about the detailed parallels between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, and the fact that Jones didn't use the term Indo-European, it seems likely something else is going on here - perhaps a surmise on his part that the three tongues were related at some remove?  In any case, we need a source in Jones for this, not an unsupported vague criticism in Blench. μηδείς (talk) 02:35, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have restored the status quo ante.  What is unique about Jones is his positing of some no-longer existent independent source, Blench's unsourced cavils notwithstanding.  Ibn Quraysh does not posit the origin of Hebrew and Arabic in some common and no longer spoken proto-tongue, but attributes Hebrew to the Patriarchs with other's being Arabicized away from God's original Hebrew.  The same naive pre-scientific mythological view holds for the Romans.  They believed their tongue was a debased form of Greek, not that it and Greek both evolved from some distinct third (proto-) language no longer spoken. μηδείς (talk) 02:59, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Thanks.  Perhaps you can provide a link to the incriminating remarks in the Third Speech to the Asiatick Society?  Blench, whom I have read at length, largely admire, and whose website I have long had bookmarked, didn't provide a link or even identify the text.  I understand your personal opinion of Jones differs from that of Scholars such as Winfred Lehmann.  Have you written any works we can cite as reliable sources?   The fact remains, whatever Jones' wider errors, which would be relevant in an article on him, and not on the development of the Comparative Method, that his supposition of some common source which no longer exists was an essential observation cited by later scholars.  μηδείς (talk) 16:29, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Thanks, I read the material you linked to at Google.  It was very, shall we say, interesting!  Not the most sober, skeptical or empirical of minds, was he?  Of course Copernicus and Newton had their own screwball ideas as well, and the comments on race are, strictly, divisible from those on grammar.  I think adding something like, "While, as Blench comments (Blench ref), Jones held all sorts of ideas that would be dismissed as crackpot today (Link to Jones), his observation that (blockquote) is widely quoted by modern students of the comparative method.  μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

text: We could also use a link to the works of the Dutch Scythianists. μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  blench vs jones 

message: As pointed out by Bill Poser, the idea that the comparative method is mainly about comparing lexemes – regardless of how well they may conform to the claimed criteria of basic vocabulary – is a grave misunderstanding that seems impossible to root out, but it leads to all sorts of poor-quality research because it is usually overlooked that anything can be borrowed and even so-called basic vocabulary is prone to innovation, even if it isn't borrowed. The gold standard of the comparative method still remains the comparison of bound morphology and irregular paradigms in particular (not just general morphological type, of course; specific structural as well as material resemblances are needed), and truly rarely borrowed (usually functional) lexemes such as pronouns.
Basically, if you don't control for confounding factors such as borrowing and accident, you're doing it wrong. As Schrijver pointed out, the Latin borrowings in British Celtic are deeply embedded and present even in very basic vocabulary (both in British Celtic and in Old Irish I've often seen that what was long treated as ancient Indo-European heritage was eventually re-assessed as Latin borrowings, and likely archaic Germanic loans in Slavic and Baltic are often treated as cognates as well), and worse, there were even regular sound correspondences, giving them the appearance of true cognates. I suspect the same problem with other large-scale layers of borrowings such as Latin loans in Albanian, or Chinese loans in East Asian languages, which have misled scholars for decades and keep misleading Chinese scholars, who still treat Tai-Kadai languages as Sino-Tibetan. (Sure, Japanese has several layers of Chinese borrowings, but how do we know that the oldest layer of borrowings doesn't consist of real cognates? Ultimately only because Japanese morphology is so radically different.) What made Hübschmann recognise that Armenian wasn't Iranian had nothing to do with a lack of regular sound correspondences in the Iranian borrowings. The problem is compounded when the source of the borrowings is closely related. Another problem for long-range comparisons, especially in Eurasia, is the problem of Wanderwörter, which we know can travel truly surprising distances – there are widely accepted examples for that; for example, Persian nān "bread" (< Proto-Iranian *nagna-) has reached Tundra Nenets, Komi and Mansi.
So regular sound correspondence must be thrown out as an unfailing criterion too (of course, accepting that sound change is in principle regular, only disturbed by other factors such as analogy, still remains a vital precondition to any comparison, it just can't rule out borrowings entirely). Lexicon is just not reliable. As aptly pointed out in the article Trans–New Guinea languages (passage partly written by yours truly): The strongest lexical evidence for any language family is shared morphological paradigms, especially highly irregular or suppletive paradigms with bound morphology, because these are extremely resistant to borrowing. For example, if the only recorded German words were gut "good" and besser "better", that alone would be enough to demonstrate that in all probability German was related to English. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:36, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as some have observed this would mean that it is impossible to demonstrate relatedness between isolating languages - compounded if they have short CV roots. The fact is that there are differing standards of what is accepted as conclusive evidence of relationships between individual lingusts and between schools of linguists. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:26, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Easy enough: Only accept the strictest standards – as set by the Indo-Europeanist tradition – as conclusive (rather than tentative) evidence. As newer developments in Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Oto-Manguean and Niger-Congo show, even isolating languages are not completely devoid of morphology, and the problems can be overcome using a strict methodology. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lexical comparisons are less important than bound morphology 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The German - to - English Translation is very bad. The fact that it is still somewhat understandable is surely an indication of PIE roots for practically all the words :D?
I am a native German and (UK) English speaker, so should someone be kind enough to forward me the original text, I shall do my best to translate it with a minimum of idiom, but an emphasis on the sense of the words, rather than a literal transcription, which seems to have been the case here.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.14.214 (talk) 17:15, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation 

message: "The word, by regular sound changes from Proto-Slavic, should have been /nʲevʲatʲ/, but it is in fact /dʲevʲatʲ/." This is wrong; the /n/ had already changed to /d/ in Proto-Slavic and Proto-East Baltic, but remained /n/ in West Baltic. See *devętь. phma (talk) 08:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavic for nine