Talk:Merritt Ruhlen

message: ::Actually, after reading Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons, I'm convinced that this article must be toned down to comply with WP policy. Arguably a number of unsourced assertions or characterisations border on libel. And even though the Trask quote is sourced, that doesn't necessarily exempt WP from libel charges.
::I will make a few edits; whoever else is interested in this article can discuss them.
::Note that in cases of possible libel, WP policy is to delete old as well as current revisions. Please do not quote possibly libellous material on the Talk page; just refer to it obliquely.
::I hope I'm not overreacting here.--Chris 13:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Libel? Certainly dubious application of WP policy

message: The final paragraph contains these apparently contradictory sentences:
:The results [of Cavalli-Sforza's genetic analysis] show a remarkable match-up with Ruhlen's proposed structure of the languages and language families of the world.
:Furthermore, critics point out that the correspondance between Ruhlen's linguistic classification and the genetic evidence is not really very good.
Obviously, someone needs to sort this out.--Chris 20:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I took it upon myself to sort it out.--Chris 14:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Well, which is it? 

message: I wonder if a little POV has crept into this article. For example:
:Another problem with mass comparison is that it does not provide any way to distinguish between similarities due to common descent and those due to borrowing. Ruhlen's only response to this is to assert, without evidence, that borrowing of so-called basic vocabulary is rare.
I find it hard to believe that Ruhlen has never advanced any evidence (however controverted) that borrowing of basic vocabulary is rare. Anyway, isn't that a rather widespread notion in linguistics? Forgive me for any ignorance - I make no claim to be a linguist, amateur or otherwise - but wasn't the Swadesh list about trying to isolate a core list of relative stable vocabulary?--Chris 20:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've toned this passage down.--Chris 14:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, "they" is a borrowing. Anything can be borrowed, but the probability decreases with the words inclusion in the Swadesh list, which is nothing but a world-wide statistical tendency. So, "they" is replaced much more easily than "I", of course. There are several independent statistical studies that show this tendency. I don't remember the precise sources, but google for Yakhontov, Dolgopolski, Blažek, etc. --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 10:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: As it is now, the article is less about Ruhlen than about mass lexical comparison. The arguments against the latter should be moved to that article. David Marjanović 22:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. We should move a lot of the stuff to the appropriate articles (Mass Comparison, etc.). --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cuts and Shortcuts

message: What follows is a preliminary suggestion. I have not made the links to other articles yet. I have prepared some schemes for upload. Do you all agree with the replacement of the current version by the following, at least as far as the text is concerned? Thanks for your opinions! --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since it was cluttering up the talk page, I decided to move your draft to my user subpage, User:Miskwito/Notes. Sorry if that was being too...uhh....forward, or whatever. You can move it back if you want, but feel free to edit it on my subpage. I'll try to help out if I can. --Miskwito 20:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, never mind. Anyway, thanks for telling me.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 20:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Preliminary Suggestion:

message: The basic problem with this article is that it advances arguments of its own, without attributing to sources. Hence, it violates WP:ATT, as we as arguably WP:BLP. I will blank all unsourced statements shortly.*Kutaka(-lu) 05:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't bother. See the "Preliminary Suggestion" above: the whole article will be replaced soon anyway. David Marjanović 22:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Argument

message: I just returned to this article and was really surprised to see that the new version seems to have supressed every single mention of criticism that was present in the old one. This page is definitely in need of a criticism section; agreed, we shouldn't go into much detail, but there are lots of criticism specifically directed against Ruhlen. Remember what Larry Trask said (and was censored and deleted from this article even though it was sourced):
"Ruhlen is not recognized by anybody in linguistics as a member of the profession. Every single linguist who is acquainted with his work regards him as a crackpot and a charlatan."
KelilanK 15:27, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See Chris' comment above.--Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 11:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further Criticism 

message: :::It is very convenient to call oneself "anonymous". Anyway, your edits violated the rules, again. Let me explain why I had to undo them:
:::1.	You changed the original neutral statement "Some of his ideas are considered controversial." to "His ideas about the classification of the world's languages are not accepted by the linguistic community." Why?
:::*A) It was an unsourced statement - do YOU represent the whole linguistic community? Certainly not. Have you published a statistical survey analysing this? Definitely not. If you had added a reference supporting this libelous assertion of yours, I'd have kept it.
:::*B) Many of the classifications presented in his "Guide" are completely uncontroversial. This quite clearly contradicts your claim.
:::2.	In the section on Multilateral Comparison, you wrote: "This notion is rejected by the vast majority of historical linguists as lacking rigor or falsifiability." And, again, this was an unsourced statement. You did not include proper (in-line) citations.
:::3.	Previously, I hadn't undone the following sentence: "This has served to convince nonlinguists of the validity of Ruhlen's classifications, yet linguists agree that genetic relatedness cannot be used to adduce linguistic relatedness." I must have forgotten.
:::*A) In fact, Ruhlen belongs to those linguists, agreeing DNA traces can only serve as indirect clues.
:::*B) The first part of the sentence (about convincing nonlinguists) was both wrong and offensive. It is NOT Cavalli-Sforza's survey that has convinced a number of linguists.
:::*C) Actually, the sentence is totally redundant, as the cons of the tree had already been mentioned (and properly sourced!): "This tree has been criticized by some linguists and anthropologists on several grounds: that it makes selective use of languages and populations (omitting the very numerous Sino-Tibetan speakers of northern China, for example); that it assumes the truth of such linguistic groups as Austric and Amerind that are controversial; and that several of the population groups listed are defined not by their genes but by their languages, making the correlation irrelevant to a comparison of genetic and linguistic branching and tautological as well."
:::4.	You have changed the neutral "Ruhlen has supported and adduced more evidence for one of Greenberg’s most controversial hypotheses..." to Ruhlen is one of the very few advocates within linguistics for one of Greenberg’s most controversial hypotheses...
:::*A) Another unsourced statement. Why don't you include any references? Why don't you make a brief list (either of the other very few advocates, or of the most important anti-Amerind representatives)? Can you define "very few"?
:::*B) The original sentence states quite clearly that this hypothesis of Greenberg's belongs to the most controversial ones.
:::5.	You added: "It should be stressed, however, that Greenberg and Ruhlen's views on the languages of the Americas have failed to find acceptance among the vast majority of linguists working with these languages, and Ruhlen remains a marginal figure within linguistics."
:::*A) Again, another unsourced statement.
:::*B) Offensive. YOU are not a speaker of a the vast majority, are you?
:::6.	The following paragraph was problematic as well: "Americanist William Poser has made the following summary of Ruhlen's methodology: Although Ruhlen's claims about Proto-World are the most dramatic and controversial, the most problematic aspect of his work is his classification of the world's languages. In order to subgroup a set of related languages, in this case, all of the world's languages, it is necessary to have an objective method for determining that some languages are more closely related to each other than others. The standard way of doing this makes use of the comparative method; the major alternative is one or another form of lexicostatistics. Ruhlen does not use any of these methods, and "mass comparison" provides no alternative. Ruhlen presents no arguments at all for his proposals. Consequently, his statements about the classification of the world's languages are considered to have no scientific foundation. Neither Ruhlen nor anyone else has offered any rebuttal to this point."
:::*A) It was irrelevant to the section (i.e. Amerind languages!)
:::*B) Poser is wrong anyway.  In fact, Ruhlen has repeatedly presented strong arguments in the articles that are cited.
:::*C) Relying on one author only is rather unreliable ;-)
:::7.	"This genetic grouping is not accepted by linguists specializing in the languages in question." is another statement that is unsourced and redundant.
:::8.	"Ruhlen remains a marginal figure within linguistics." What is the source of this allegation??? A friend of mine (a linguist himself) told me a few hours ago: "I get the feeling that this writer only talks to linguists who agree with him/her, and naturally is unaware of the linguists who either agree (broadly) with Ruhlen, partially agree, or don't care."
:::9.	You say that "Nowhere in this article is there any indication that Ruhlen's views on historical linguistics anywhere near as 'controversial' as they really are, much less the fact that they are shared by less than 1% of all actual historical linguists."
:::*A) The figure of "1%" is certainly questionable.
:::*B) According to the guidelines "Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous." No source of the 1% figure is given. (Nor, I'm afraid, can it be.) My advice is that you add the citation needed tag yourself to warn the reader that what you have written cannot be verified yet. --Pet'usek [petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom] 16:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undone Again 

message: According to Kusunda language the recent discovery of fluent Kusunda speakers enabled scientists to confirm that the language is an isolate. --Eleassar my talk 12:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kusunda: update request 

message: Reading this article, the reader might easily think that Ruhlen is an academic like any other. The problem is, of course, that in the opinion of virtually every linguist, Ruhlen is a bogus linguist advocating an extreme fringe theory of pseudo-science. His contribution to linguistics, at least in the opinion of 998 out of 1000 experts of that field, is comparable to a geographer claiming that the earth is flat. For a geographer, few laymen would ever believe that, but comparative linguistics is a field where it is easier to be fooled (I'm not claiming Ruhlen is trying to fool anyone, it is entirely possible that he believes in what he is doing). Even though it may be hard to correct, due to the fact that the opinion that most of his colleagues hold of him would be libellous, having an article like this, focusing almost exclusively on his life work without mentioning the obvious fact that this work is bogus is quite clearly POV.Jeppiz (talk) 01:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I fully agree with these comments, and I think the answer is negatory. This is how academia works: relentless self-promotors, often with the help of prominent friends, carve out a niche for themselves. Their nonsense is forgotten in a generation of course, but it is a form of careerism. The snag is that the interested layman often cannot tell the difference, and also that science journalists gravitate towards "interesting" figures.88.110.122.195 (talk) 09:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  And then the self-promoters with "interesting" theories will inspire the next generation in their field (linguistics in this case), and then that next generation will re-examine his theories and keep what works and throw away what doesn't.  Ruhlen's impact will be decided by the generation after him, not his contemporaries.Listmeister (talk) 18:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: POV, but can anything be done about it?

message: This article does a fine job of making a nutjob look respectable. That he is a kook is not just my opinion, but also the public (and published) position of virtually any mainstream linguist you can find who has ever dignified his writings with a response. Looking at the history of the page, it seems like Ruhlen's acolytes have been trying to keep out the more damaging information (such as the fact that he's widely regarded as a kook) in an attempt to make him look like a plain old academic. Calling his theories controversial is like saying World War II was a bit of a misunderstanding. The linguistics WikiProject should take a good long look at this thing. Szfski (talk) 21:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be pointed out that Ruhlen is not so much an "isolated kook" as a pioneer in the extremely controversial field of Paleolinguistics.  For instance, the linguists who call him a nut will tend to say that many American Indian languages are isolates.  Ruhlen comes along and says, "Waitaminnit, is it likely that all of these American languages arose completely independently, as the term isolate implies?  No, perhaps we can find some family relationships if we look hard enough." (I'm paraphrasing).  Now, that method of looking really hard via mass comparisons seems stupid to most linguists, but it is the basic tool of Paleolinguistics.  It may be a World War II category conflict like Szfski says, but it's not the whole world against this one guy.  Listmeister (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  WTF? Can we say POV 

message: I am a management consultant unacquainted with lingusitics. However the gist of Ruhlen's method seems to make sense: compile a list of the words that change least; identify the more durable grammatical features of languages; and then see how all languages in a region stack up against those parameters. An admitted layman, for the life of me I can't see what's wrong with this approach. Could someone summarise or provide a link to an article that explains what is the mainstream view of this issue and why Ruhlen's approach would be so thoroughly repudiated?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.173.43.159 (talk) 21:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The "however" starting the second sentence is false. If you mean what you say by the first sentences, then you should not continue to advance your own views. I am no expert on quantum mechanics, but I don't go around demanding a brief repudiation of every crackpot in the field. This is because I appreciate it takes considerable study to start to understand what the issues are.88.110.122.195 (talk) 09:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Mr .159 asks a good question.  I minored in linguistics (at SIL), and have read all that I could find about historical linguistics, and I haven't yet run across a convincing argument against Ruhlen's methods.  The arguments they give, as I understand them, are (1) That the data is badly documented. Well, the data is the data, and lack of accurate well documented data on the lesser known languages affects all branches of linguistics, not just historical. You work with what you got.  (2) The glosses (English words corresponding to the words that are hypothetical cognates) used in etymologies are a bit widespread semantically.  Here, I think they have a point.  Ruhlen's etymologies would be more convincing if he had fewer examples and only used the etymologies that were most solid in terms of semantic range.  (3) There is no reconstruction of earlier forms of the languages.  Well, Ruhlen argues, you have to group the languages genetically first before you can do reconstructions.     Listmeister (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you should leave this to the actual experts, who have enough experience to know all the pitfalls of the comparative method, and of less stringent methods (to put it mildly) as Ruhlen uses them. (1) Garbage in, garbage out. Ruhlen simply uses poor data which no expert on the language or family in question would use (except with heavy care and qualification, and without building huge theories on it), or which no expert would use because it is of very poor quality or wrong or wrongly analysed, and better data is available, or better analyses are available. Ruhlen appears not to communicate with the experts or ignores their advice, that's why they keep finding tons of mistakes, nay, howlers in his work. (2) "A bit widespread semantically" is an understatement. See Zompist and Language Log. Ruhlen acts like a complete amateur, combing through dictionaries without actually understanding the languages in question deeply, and without consulting experts or heeding their advice, so he keeps stumbling over irrelevant resemblances. When your method is already this loose in other ways, allowing large semantic differences, you make finding spurious resemblances super-easy and all languages suddenly look related. A method that can link any conceivable language to any other is worthless. For example, if using your method, Klingon and Sindarin turn out Amerind or Nostratic as well, something is wrong. That's what you call the control group in medicine. (3) Never reconstructing anything is the quintessential flaw in Ruhlen's method, because it not only makes finding spurious cognates even easier than it already is, it introduces complete arbitrariness. You cannot be sure that languages you relate by his method are truly related. As Bill Poser points out, simply amassing lexical resemblances was not how the Indo-European languages were shown to be related. You need systematic correspondences, and not only in lexicon, but first and foremost in grammar, especially where borrowing and accidental similarity can be ruled out with high probability. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  WHAT'S THE MAINSTREAM VIEW 

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thread_title:  External links modified