mother tongue newsletter 5 (march 1988)

7/27/2019 Mother Tongue Newsletter 5 (March 1988)

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THIRD NOTE. We a re a l s o l a t e in g e t t i n g ou t t h1s f i f t h c i r cu l a r . The reasons

a re p r imar i ly four : r esponses to computer ques t iona i re come back ever so

s lowly ; th e money ran out with th e di spa tch of MT4 so I ' ve been wai t ing fo r

con t r ibu t ions ; some t ime i s spen t n eg o t i a t i n g with people over publ i sh ing

th ings they w ri t e ; and being a co l l eg e professor does unfor tuna te ly take up

qui te ab i t of

t ime . SORRY! <Ok, I d idsneak some t ime

towork on Omotic.>

G O O D N E W S

KAREN EBERT <U/Marburg, BRD> i s going to a cons iderab le amount oft ro u b le and inconvenience <but SHE d i d n ' t say that> fo r t h e sake of our commo

goa l s . On her forthcoming t r i p to Nepal she w i l l s top o ff and t r y to f ind somKusunda people -- t h e re a r e s a i d to be very few l e f t -- and to check/conf i rm

th e publ i shed mate r i a l on th e Kusunda language and add to th e corpus . Almostimpor tan t as th e ga the r ing of new data i s th e f a c t t h a t Karen i s a S i n i t i c i s t

or Si n o -T i b e t an i s t , as wel l as a Chadic i s t ! No one who has l i s t ened to Kusundso fa r o r eva lua ted th e wri t t en mate r i a l -- so fa r as I know -- has been a

t r a in ed Sino-Tibe tan i s t . Her opin ion wil l then be most impor tan t . On e of mydeepes t f e a r s about Kusunda has a lways been t h a t , when good data a re ob t a i ne d

some ex p e r t wi l l f ind t h a t it r ea l l y i s Sino-Tibe tan , a l b e i t a d i s t i n c t branc

and thus take a l l th e fun o u t of it. I f anyone can help Karen in some way or

o t h e r , we w i l l ap p rec i a t e it very much. When Karen comes back, we w i l l p re sen

her with th e first ever IN SEARCH OF MOTHER award. With ca re fu l inves tments ajud ic ious manipula t ion of th e Japanese and BRD s tock markets we should i n c rea

th e award ' s funds which cu r ren t l y s t and a t 6 F r . f r an cs , 50 I t . l i r e , 2 Eth .b i r , 3 OM, and 1 Austr ian sh i l l i n g .

REBECCA CANN, DOUGLAS WALLACE and t h e i r co l leagues have begun toa t t r a c t s ig n i f i c an t publ i c i n t e r e s t in t h e i r hypotheses . Most impor tan t ly , fr

a North American p o in t of view, was th e head l ine t rea tment given th e search f

"Eve' ' in th e popular magazine, NEWSWEEK. I thought the d i scuss ion both qu1te

competent and i n t e r e s t i n g ; I recommend it to you-a l l Long Rangers , 1f you havnot a l ready seen it. In case everyone has no t been focused on t h e d i f f e r en ces

between Rebecca ' s and Douglas ' s c onc l u s i ons , or perhaps ·working hypotheses ·

a b e t t e r way to say it, Douglas favors an ASIAN l o ca t io n fo r "Eve" r a t h e r thath e Afr ican homeland p re fe r red by Rebecca. Both work with mitochondr la l DNA

(h e re i n a f t e r ca l l ed mDNA> and very s i mi l a r t echnolog ies and agree t h a t th e

o t he r i s no t n eces s a r i l y wrong. I s t h a t a f a i r way to pu t it, good co l l eagues

I t is q u i t e a h as s l e <= c ' e s t d i f f i c i l e > to g e t permiss ion to copy t

Newsweek a r t i c l e fo r t hose who d o n ' t have access to it. Perhaps some kind souin BRD, fo r example, would send a copy to Anna Belova, fo r example, so she

could read it and pass it around among th e Moscovi te Long Rangers . I f e i t h e rRebecca or Douglas have r e p r i n t s of th e a r t i c l e , they might be i n c l in ed to seone to Thomas Gamkre l idze , fo r example. J u s t a sugges t ion .

I t i s not to be denied t h a t th e conc lus ions reached by th e mDNAr e sea rch e r s a re i n t en s e l y co n t ro v e r s i a l . Those p a leo an th ro p o lo g i s t s whose wo

was in f a c t c r i t i c i z e d by Stephen Jay Gould <cf MT4> a re a t t ack in g t hose

conc lus ions s t ro n g ly <Cf Newsweek>. Mysel f , fo r example, does not know who i sr i g h t or who wi l l tu rn out to have th e most f r u i t f u l hypothes i s bu t th e mDNAre sea rch has ex c i t ed me and my hunch i s t h a t Rebecca and Douglas <re H O T ~ I

should a l so apologize in absen t i a to Wilson and Stoneking , Rebecca ' s

co-au thors , fo r neg lec t ing t h e i r p a r t in th e mDNA d i s co v e r i e s . I t was AlanWilson, of c ou r se , along wi th Vincent Sar i ch , who s t a r t ed much or most of th e



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amino acid research which f i r s t proposed a BIOLOGICAL CLOCK fo r measuringsepara t ion t imes among th e "h igher" Pr imates and grea t ly shor tened th e t imebetween th e common ances to r and us.

Fina l ly , it a l so seems impor tan t to mention one th ing t ha t Cann,Wilson and Stoneking ac tu a l l y sa i d . While th e common beginning da te of "Evea r r ived a t through mDNA c a l c u l a t i o n s , was 200,000 y ea r s ago <plus or minus

lOOK>, still th e es t imated da te of d isper sa l from A-frica was around 100,000years . Thus, I have co l l eagues who th ink t h a t th e mDNA da tes cance l th e fos s

"modern man • da tes and co l l eag u es who th ink t h a t the fos s i 1 da te s f a l s i f y th

mDNA da te s . Vet I f ind them to be compat ib le and t hus exc i t ing! <See below>

Mother Tongue and th e Long Range Comparison Club have rece ived som

very modest a t t e n t i o n in pub l ic , mostly as a consequence of Shevoroshk in ' s

popular i z ing e - f fo r t s in th e New York Times and th e Toronto Globe <this c o u r to-f Derek Nurse>. There a r e a l s o Del l Hymes' remarks in CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

<here inaf te r ca l l ed CA>. See TIDBITS. However, Roger Lewin of SCIENCENEWSLETTER has had long in te rv iews with proponents <myself included> andopponents o-f th e Mather Tongue endeavour and wi l l be publ i sh ing a long a r t i can th e whole s u b j ec t one of t he se weeks.

PLUS IMPORTANTE. MAS GRANDE. One American is t , ever so s l i gh t l y amua t f inding himsel f descr ibed as an 11 Amerind Border P a t ro l " , has jo ined th eClub. Terrence Kaufman h as been asked to pre sen t some of h is views in MotheTongue and may choose to do so . Lyle Campbell has of-fered to smoke th e pipe

peace, so to speak , and h as a l a t t e r to Long Rangers which you can read beloAlso Dr. Victo r Gol la who e d i t s a news le t t e r fo r the Socie ty fo r th e Study oth e Indigenous Languages o-f America <SSILA> has jo ined LRC Club and exp l i c id es i r e s swapping of views and news le t t e r s . <To g e t h is news le t t e r , wri t e himDep·t . of Anthropology, George washington Unive rs i ty , Washington, DC. 20052<USA>>. These a re most encouraging even t s , of co u r s e , because we may be able

ac tua l ly di scuss Amerind l i n g u i s t i c taxonomy in th e ra t iona l manner t h a t na

phi losophers of sc ience of ten imagine we do. L et us hope!

T I D B I T S

1. CHRISTY TURNER has suggested s t rong ly <recently> t ha t a Southeas t Asianhomeland fo r Homo sapiens sapiens i s t h e b e s t b e t . At l e a s t fo r Eve ' s t e e t h .our mother<s> go t h e r / t h e i r mDNA in Afr ica o r Asia , h e r / t h e i r t ee th in

Southeas t As ia , and h e r / t h e i r tangue(s) in • • • • XYZ • • • • But th e fos s i l Homo

sap iens sapiens seem -- a t t h i s moment in th e publ i ca t ion of r e s u l t s -- tofavor eas te rn A-frica with th e Levant a very c lo s e second. (115,000 to 110,00as a g a i n s t 92,000 years ago . ) I s it not t r u e t h a t Niah Cave in Borneo con ta

t h e o ld e s t f o s s i l Homo sap . sap . known fo r eas te rn o r southern Asia? And th e

da te does n a t exceed 41,000 BC? Will someone s top me i f I u t t e r fa l sehoods?

<Either Michael Day 's GUIDE TO FOSSIL MAN o r Gail Kennedy 's PALEOANTHROPOLOGcould be recommended to Long Rangers who want to look up some f o s s i l fac ts .>

2 . EARLY MODERN MAN OF LEVANT? Everyth ing i s con t rovers i a l , a t l e a s t fo r awhile , and one controvery i s now developing about th e DATES of th e archa ic H

sapiens , non-Neanderthal , found a t Qafzeh in I s r a e l . This i s because th e NewYork Times and Baston Globe announced t h a t th e da tes had been changed fromaround 40,000 ?? to 92,000. David Pilbeam was quoted in th e Times and Globesaying t h a t th e new da tes mad• a d i f f e ren ce i n t h e way N e a n d e r ~ h a l was r e l a t

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to modern people . However, th e news i tems were based on a recen t a r t i c l e in

NATURE, which I have not seen y e t , and one c r i t i c sa id t h a t th e NATURE a r t i c lwas misquoted. Some a rch eo l o g i s t s here a re saying t h a t th e assoc ia t ion betweeth e dated mat e r i a l s <burned f l in t> and th e human remains <indubi tably "archa i

modern> has NOT been demonstra ted. <No doubt any th ing sa id to be both archa i

and modern seems cxymcrcnic!>. Archeology na tu ra l ly and necessar i ly obsesses

about d a t e s and assoc ia t ions .On a hopefu l f i n a l note to th e above, Paul Zimansky suggested t h a t

Prof . 0 . Bar Yosef of I s rae l would be an au th o r i t a t i v e opinion on th e meri t s

th e new hypothes i s from a veteran I s r a e l i a r ch eo lo g i s t ' s viewpoint . Afte r If a i l ed t o f ind Bar Ycsef a t Harvard where he has been a v i s i t ing p ro fes so r <h

has re tu rned to I s rae l> , I was express ing my dismay to same s tuden t s , when onof them pointed cu t t h a t Bar Yosef himsel f was one of th e group of au thors wh

wrote th e o r i g i n a l a r t i c l e in NATURE! Well , wel l • • • • I th ink t h a t David Pilbeaand Bar Yosef <et al> a re going to win THIS deba te .

3. EARLY MODERN MAN IN CHINA? Lest th e Afr i can i s t s and Near Eas te rners run a wwith th e p r i ze fe r f ind ing Mama sap iens · heme, a new and s t rong claim fo r

equal ly old d a t e s has been made fo r e a s t Asia . Ruth Gruhn, as p a r t of Tidb i t

#10 (below> has repor ted t h a t " in China th e loca l t rans i t ion from a rch a i c Homsap iens to ana tomica l ly modern man was under way •• • by 100,000 years ago." Owould have to read th e pr imary a r t i c l e s to g e t a c l ea r e r p i c tu r e than th e onepresented here . They seem to be e i t h e r Wclpoff , A ., X. Wu, and A.G.Thcrne,wri t ing in F.H. Smith and F. Spencer , e d s . , THE ORIGINS OF MODERN HUMANS: AWORLD SURVEY OF THE FOSSIL EVIDENCE, 1984, pp.411-483, or X. Wu and M. Wu,wri t ing in Wu Rukang and J.W. Olson, e d s . , PALEOANTHROPOLOGY AND PALEOLITHICARCHAEOLOGY IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, 1985, pp. 91-106. There i sabsolutely no reason in genera l pr inc ip le t h a t prec ludes eas te rn o r

sou theas te rn Asia as THE homeland of modern man. Moreover, s i n ce it i s a l sovery c l ea r t h a t our penul t imate an ces t o r s , th e Homo e rec tus <pl .>, were foundin e a s t Asia , Sundaland , southwest Asia , Europe and Afr ica , then it i s still

poss ib le t h a t Home sap ien s developed independent ly in each of those p laces o r

in many of them or t h a t Homo sap ien s developed in tw o of them and spread ou ti n to the other reg ions , including INTO Afr ica .

I t i s probably impor tant to p o in t ou t and here fo r th e l i ngu i s t sp r imar i ly -- t h a t Afr ica is th e l i k e ly homeland of humans as d i s t i n c t from t .other apes because t h ree of th e four apes taxonomica l ly or gene t i ca l ly c lo sE

to us 1 i ve in Afr ica and because of a l l t h a t stunning f oss i 1 evidence of thf.'

A u s t ra lo p i th ec in es from eas t e rn A fr i ca . Gor i l l a s <beth Mt. and Lowland>, piymchimpanzees, chimpanzees, and orangutans a re th e four c lo s e s t r e l a t i v e s .

Je f f rey Schwartz a rgues <and r a t h e r wel l ) t h a t orangutan is j u s t as c l o s e to

us , o r even c lo s e r , than t he o the rs . But , but , t h a t genera l presuppos i t ion ofAfrican o r ig in s does not apply to th e SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENT of Homo sap iens .

Why? Because Homo sap ien s could have ar i sen from any number of Homo e rec tus

popula t ions found throughout most of th e Old World. I t i s a whole new ba l l

game! Homo e rec tus l ived fo r hundreds of mi l l en n ia in Sundaland , fo r exampleAnd where, pray tell, a re the f o s s i l s from INDIA? Or where i s th e

evidence o r arguments fo r human an t iqu i ty in INDIA? Pre t ty sparse s t u f f , y e t

f i g u re s t h a t Ind ia would have pa r t i c ipa t ed in developments which seem to spanth e o ld t r o p i c a l world . I t i s a f t e r a l l th e MIDDLE of th e zone of permanent along term human res idence! ! ! Nothing t he re bu t abdominal snowmen? Non credo!

Never the less , my i n tu i t ion urges me to b e t on Rebecca Cann 's theory .



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4. Two Long R a n g e r s ~ MARCELLO LAMBERTI and DAVID A P P L E Y A R D ~ have expressed bi

r ese rva t ions to me about my tendency to cons ider l i n g u i s t i c conclus ions inre l a t ion to archeo log ica l and bio -gene t i c da t a and/or conclus ions . Marcel lowrote me a long thoughtful l e t t e r , ages ago, fa r which e f f o r t na tu ra l ly he gono rep ly . I 'm asking fo r h is permiss ion to reproduce most or a l l of it in afu tu re i s s u e . His view i s th e au then t i c voice of autonomous l i ngu i s t i c s -- l e

us do l i ngu i s t i c s by i t s e l f and n o t g e t mixed up with archeologica l and- 4-

bio -gene t i c s t u f f . David has been i ~ r e s s e d with th e recen t book by ColinRenfrew which shows among a th e r t h in g s how d i f f i c u l t it i s to r e l a t e IEmovements to archeo log ica l c u l t u re s o f Europe. Seeing th e LRC Club a s

or ig ina l ly a group o f l i ngu i s t s , David would l i ke to see us s t ay t h a t way. Ii s important to pa in t au t t h a t n e i t h . r Marce l la nor David a re saying t h a tl i ngu i s t s c a n ' t "do th e j ab" ; r a t h e r t h a t our work ge t s confused i f it i s miwith t h a t of othe r d i sc i p l i n e s . <I would r a t h e r l e t t h e i r l e t t e r s speak fo r

t h e m se l v e s - l a t e r . )While th e i s sues they have r a i sed a re v i t a l l y impor tan t in the long

run , fo r the shor t run l e t me say tw o b r i e f and non-v i t a l th ings . F i r s t , as

sa id be fore , I c a l l myself a " four - f i e ld" type . For c red i b i l i t y in technica lmat te rs I am r e s t r i c t ed to l i n g u i s t i c s and ethnology. I f I t r i ed to publ i sh aana lys i s of Lucy's anatomy o r th e burned f l i n t s a t Qafzeh, everyone would lauhe a r t i l y . But I am al lowed to DISCUSS th e h i s t o r i c a l and global impor t ofvar ious archeologica l and fos s i l conc lus ions , as wel l as a s p ro to - IE . WE ALLARE. Old fashioned anthropology i s a he l luva lo t of fun! Try it some t ime!

Second, i f one looks a t th e o r i g i n a l mail ing list in th e l e t t e r toAharon Dolgapolsky, one can de tec t the presence of 9 archeo log is t s and 4b io lo g i ca l s , n a t to mention 10 s oc i a l / c u l tu r a l an th ropo log i s t s & h i s to r i a ns .The LRC Club i s no anc ien t co l l ec t i v i t y b u t it has always been c a t h o l i c .

5 . APROPOS OF INDO-EUROPEAN. I formally s o l i c i t a b r i e f commentary or reviewColi·n Renfrew's book, mentioned above. He i s no t th e only one address ing thes

problems. DAVID ANTHONY had a superb a r t i c l e on IE and south Russian fos s i l

cu l tu res r ecen t ly in CA, vol .27:291-304. In th e *CA t rea tment many importantpeople , espec ia l ly MARIJA GIMBUTAS (U/Cal> and So v i e t expe r t D. YA. TELEGIN<Kiev>, expressed t he i r views. I t would seem t h a t th e quest ion of IE o r i g i n s

f a r from being a murky mat te r , i s almast '"down to a gna t ' s eye lash" .

6. CA r ecen t ly ran a spac ia l baak review with *CA Treatment of Greenberg 's

LANGUAGE IN THE AMERICAS. The rev iewers included Del l Hymes, Wallace Chafe, aIves Goddard. Greenberg had a long presen ta t ion a t th e beginning of th e revieand a f i na l r e b u t t a l a t th e end. That i s s tandard procedure a t CA, except t hin t h i s case th e or ig ina l presen ta t ion was a review by th e au thor r a t h e r than

an o r ig in a l a r t i c l e . You a l l a re urged to read it <CA, Dec. 1987, v a l . 28:

647-668>, pa r t i c u l a r ly those who do n a t f ee l inc l ined to read th e book. LongRangers a re inv i ted to submit <to MT> t he i r own reviews of Greenberg 's book,grac ious ly r e s t r i c t ed to a page o r two. But , p lease , do n ot fo rge t to mentionwhether you want your comments publ ished or to be kept pr iva te !

7. SIDNEY LAMB had a comment on LANGUAGE IN THE AMERICAS, along with ERIC HAa well-known IE scho la r . The p a i r of them took d iamet r ica l ly opposed views onthe sub jec t of Greenberg 's taxonomy. <His book had not ac tua l ly come ou t y et

but pre -pub l ica t ion c i r c u l a t i ons d id occur.> Read it i n C A , v a l . 28:101-2 .

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8 . ALEXANDER MILITARIEV has wri t t en t h r i c e , twice recen t ly . They a re de l igh t fl e t t e r s and ought to be publ i shed , bu t he has not given me permission. He a lscor rec t s h is name - - I am NOT to c a l l him Yuri . My apo log ies - - I seem to beaddic ted to nomina l i s t i c d i s in fo rma t io n . I have d is to r ted or misspel led

p r ac t i c a l l y every Russ ian ' s name and some of th e Germans· t o o , as o th e r peop

have poin ted out . <Now i s my chance to apolog ize t o WernerV y c ~ i c h l . > . B u t it'

s imply t h a t I d o n ' t know Russ ian codes of address and re fe rence ; when do youca l l him "S i r Robert" and when do you c a l l him "Bob"?

The Long Rangers of Muscovy want some help , some se r ious help . They

have had t h e i r appe t i t e s whetted by an O l iv e t t i computer and S t a ro s t i n hass ta r ted churning out new and exc i t ing th ings on th e one they g e t to share . T

want an IBM PC XT because it has th e hard disk and megabytes of memory. <I 'dl ike to have one t oo , fo r t h a t matter .> Can we help them? That involves a

number of pieces of in fo rmat ion , which I hope a re not MISinformat ion , about t

computer bus iness of today i n the USA. F i r s t , I do not know i f my governmentwil l permit us American Long Rangers to send an IBM PC XT to Moscow or evenPrague. That involves l ega l ques t ions fo r which I have no answer ye t . Secondwhile it might be poss ib le t h a t IBM i t s e l f , t h a t lovab le o ld megacorporat ionwould give th e Muscovites a computer FREE

ofcharge , it i s equal ly poss ib le

t h a t th e US government would not permi t them to do t h a t . Third , i f it werepermi t t ed bu t no t f r e e , we could t r y to r a i s e th e money. Or someone could.

Four th , it might be eas i e r o r pre fe r rab le to t r y to g e t an IBM c lone in Europa l so c lones tend to be cheaper . Are t he re no t O l iv e t t i c lones of th e XT?

F i f t h , IBM PC XT i s no l onger " s t a t e of th e a r t " o r so I hear . Thatbecause IBM i s now marketing th e IBM F'S/2 ( in var ious models>. Americansi n t e re s t ed in IBM PC s a re now th ink ing about buying th e PS/2 ins tead of th e

model. However, j u s t because o f its obso lesence , th e XTs probably wil l

ge t cheaper . I t i s still an exce l l en t machine and many many pieces of sof twa

are designed to be- compat ib le with it. <"Not compat ib le" means t h a t th e

sof tware , a spec i f i c f loppy di sk , wil l no t work a t a l l on th e machine.> Si x t h

i f Alexander were permi t t ed to buy an American computer by my government andh i s , then I would a lso l i k e t o c a l l h i s a t ten t ion to th e Macintosh I I becausit has graph ics and a hyper-card and some compat ib le sof tware which wil l permany a lphabet inc lud ing C y r i l l i c on " fon ts" <sets of ch a rac t e r s> . The Mac I I

would probably cause a b r i g h t fe l low l i k e S t a ro s t i n to go bananas <= becomeex c i t ed , o r d i s t u rb ed , to t he pa in t of madness>.

F in a l l y , next i s s u e -- MT6 -- wil l be th e computer i s sue . There inStan ley Cushingham, Joe P ia , Keating Willcox , and othe rs wil l give some

informat ion and opinions about o p t io n s t h a t people have . Stan ley wil l a lso bgiv ing a paper and hold ing demonst ra t ions on some new sof tware and fon t s -- a

t h i s a t th e Afr ican Languages conference a t Boston Univers i ty in Apr i l . In Mwe wil l t ry to give th e r e s u l t s of th e Computer Ques t ionnai re . That i s , i f m

of you BOTHER to send back your ques t ionna i res . Heaven 's sake! it i s no t verymuch work to help out t h a t much! For t h a t i s sue I hereby SOLICIT sugges t ions

fo r helping our f r i e n d s in Moscow.

I want to s t r e s s t h a t th e LRC Club i s not involved in i n t e rna t iona l

p o l i t i c s , nor i d eo lo g ica l s t rugg le s ; noth ing of t h a t kind . We a re no t eveni n t e re s t ed in Armenian nat iona l i sm or th e I r i sh Republican Army. The LRC Clubdoes no t l i v e in t h i s cen tury ; its a t ten t ion i s f ixed f i rmly on our COMMONANCESTORS. I suppose they were lucky no t to l i v e in t h i s bloody cen tury .

This i s no t to say , however, t h a t none of us have p o l i t i c a l o r

s o c i a l p as s io n s . Indeed we do have them! Some of us have powerful and emotionviews on a l l th e t op ic s mentioned above. We could prov ide a debat ing soc ie ty

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with deba te rs fo r many years of vigorous ac t i v i t y . That i s p r ec i s e ly th e rea

why th e LRC Club d o es n ' t do p o l i t i c s in MOTHER TONGUE ; it would des t roy us!

9. More on FOSSIL AMERIND DATES. J.M. ADOVASIO and R.C.CARLISLE, both of th e

Univers i ty of Pi t t sburgh , have a s t rong l e t t e r in SCIENCE <val. 239, Februar12, 1988, p.713•714>. They argue th e case fo r t h e i r Meadowcroft Rockshel terda te s being accura te and d ispu te po in t s made by t h e i r c r i t i c s -- a l l t h i s in

fu l l archeo log ica l t echn i ca l i t i e s which nowadays read more l i ke phys ics thananthropology. Their penul t imate conclus ion i s worth c i t i n g . " I f th e s ix deepda te s unequivocal ly assoc ia ted with c u l t u ra l mater ia l .re averaged , then humwere de f in i t e ly pre sen t ·at t h i s s i t e <and., by impl i ca t ion , throughout much aperhaps a l l o f th e Americas> samatima between approximately 13,955 and 14,55years ago. •• Well , I read t h a t as 12,250 BC and t ake it as bas ica l ly confi rmith e "s tandard" da te o f 11,000 BC mare o r l e s s , desp i t e th e au thors ' c l e a rsuggest ion t h a t they have broken t h a t da te . The reason i s NOT t h a t I t h ink 1years a re t r i v i a l but r a t h e r t h a t some ve rs ions of th e s tandard da te havealways ranged back to 12,000 BC. The 250 yea rs a re not enough to f a l s i f y sucrobus t hypo thes i s as t h e s tandard da te .

The pe r s i s t e n t y e t "unacceptable" e a r l y da tes in South America,repor ted in MT3 and MT4, cont inue in t h e i r l imbo. They a re always at tacked ot echnica l grounds -- and again t h i s i s v i t a l l y impor tan t to archeo log is t s -

ye t I wonder whether the t echn ica l s t anda rds d o n ' t g e t higher whenever th es tandard da te i s t h rea t ened . Granted t h a t t h a t i s a nas ty though t , still th eh i s to ry of sc ience sugges ts t h a t it could happen. Another p o s s i b i l i t y i s t h a<a> the re a re indeed human retRAins <cu l tu ra l , not ske le ta l> found around 30,BC in South America b ut <b> they belong to l a t e descendants of Homo e re c t u s ,shor t ly to be disp laced by Homo sap iens sap iens <Amerindensis>. Such apos s ib i l i t y f l i e s in th e face of everything we know about th e peopl ing of th

Americas, so I mention it only as a log ica l p o s s i b i l i t y .

10. HOWEVER, a vigorous COUNTERATTACK by an th ropo log i s t and Americanis t <?>,RUTH GRUHN <U/Alberta>, was mounted r ecen t ly <CA, va l . 28:363-4> aga ins t

Greenberg, Turner , and Zegura f a r say ing <CA, v a l . 27:477-97> t h a t Amerindsonly been in th e New World 12,000 years . Sounding de f in i t e ly offended, Gruhn

wanted to know Nhy e i the r the Braz i l i an s t u d i e s publ ished by Guidon <cf MT-4o r Dil lehay · s Chilean d iscover ies <cf MT-3> had been dec la red to beincompetent . When one br ings in French pa leo l i th i c : s p e c i a l i s t s to look a t o nexcava t ions , and these exper t s do enjoy g r ea t pre s t i ge , then haw dare G r e e n be t a l dec la re th e 32,000 d a t e s to be un.cceptable? Chr i s ty 6 . Turner I I repl

f a r th e t r i a vary b r i e f l y and p o l i t e l y . A key p a in t was t h a t he and Greenberand Zegura had decided to wai t "an th e judgment of th e archeologica l communfa r a dec is ion about th e an t iqu i ty of these s i t e s . " They were not in th e

bus iness of deciding whether th e new South American da tes were t enab le or no

11. On SEMITIC MATTERS. In t roducing th e new INSTITUTE OF SEMITIC STUDIES a tPrinceton Univers i ty . The d i r e c t o r i s Dr. EPHRAIM ISAAC whose i n c r ed ib l e enehas brought it to f r u i t i o n . The I n s t i t u t e fundamental ly aims a t es tab l i sh ingmajor l i b ra ry , a d i g i t a l and microfi lm database fo r Semit ic languages andc i v i l i za t i ons . I t wi l l be a resource fo r Long Rangers who want to correspondwith , o r t a lk to , some expe r t Semi t i c i s t s othe r than th e ones they a l readyknow. The I n s t i t u t e i s th e only one o f its kind in th e USA. I t a l so suppor ts

new j o u r n a l , of which 1110re below. The address i s : Dr. Ephraim I saac , I n s t i t uof Semitic:. Stud ie s 9 P.O.Bax 1374, Pr ince ton , New Je r sey 08542, USA.



- 7 -

11·. JOURNAL OF AFROASIATIC LANGUAGES <JAAL> has been es tab l i shed by th ' :

In s t i t u t e of Semit ic Stud ies ; v a l . I , number I , has j u s t come au t . J ~ A L sE d i t o r i a l Board i s f u l l of Long Rangers. Robert Hetzron_ < U I ~ a l 1 ~ a r n 1 a , San taBarbara> i s Edi to r . "JAAL br ings forward co n t r i b u t i o n s 1n l1ngu1st1cs of a l lt y p e s - - h i s to r i c a l , comparat ive, t h eo r e t i c a l , and a t h e r •• " a l so "welcomesnot ices of i n t e r e s t to our r ead e r s , book announcements , r e a c t 1 o n s _ t ~ a r t 1 c l e sin JAAL or to re levan t i s sues ra i sed anywhere, and addenda to a r t 1 c ~ e s . JAALin tends to prov ide , from t ime to t ime , a forum fo r deba tes on spec i f i c i s s u e s ,

and i n v i t e s sugges t ions ." I t cas t s US$20. Write Hetzron, U/C, SB, CA 93106 •

.J 0 H N B E N G T S 0 N on SHEVOROSHKIN's LETTER

. ....- - -- -

Dear Mother Tongue:

--61? Madison St. NE #1Minneapolis, MN 55413 U.S.A.16 December 19R?

I was very pleased to find the l a tes t issue (Circular 4) inthe mail recently. I can only c o ~ m e n d edi tor Hal Fleming, andeveryone else who has contributed, for what is becoming quite asubstant ial and engaging l i t t l e journal.

Firs t , I have some comments on the discussion by my friendand colleague, Vitaly Shevoroshkin. (We agree on so much; but i twould be surprising i f we did not have some differences, i f onlyin style and emphasis, between the •soviet• and U.S. schools.)For example, I think we a l l agree with the importance of the pr inciple or •regular phonological change', as Vitaly s t resses in hisl e t t e r (Circular 4: pp. 19-20). I am a l l for •sound correspondences• and reconstruction, but they must be placed in the propersequence of operat ions. My posit ion i s probably somewhere betweenthat of Vitaly and that or Joseph Greenberg, so that while I thinksound correspondences are or value, and may sometimes provide the

'precision• Vitaly speaks of, they are dif f icu l t to apply to remotecomparisons, and even in •lower level ' groups they may be tota l ly

violated (see Greenberg 1 9 ~ ? : chapter 1, and ~ u h l e n 19R7: 120-124,224-227). For example, the Indo-European etymology •spleen• showsthe'correspondences• or Indic ~ - : Lithuanian bl- : S l a v i c ~ - :Latin 1-, yet we do not re ject the etymology. (There are s imilaranomalies in the words for •na i l • , •navel• and •tongue•: Mail let1937: 172, 406-407.)

So we ~ n u · ' 3 t recognize the importance of regular phonologicalchange, tempered with the cautions or Greenberg and Ruhlen. Forexample, when I was assembling the global etymology "ARM 11 (1 ) ( inBengtson 198?), I was cognizant of the general correspondence of:

-

Niger-Congo •b-= Nostrat ic •b- (in Bombard's as well as I l l i c Svityc• and Dolgopolsky•s versions of Nostratic: subsumes the t radi t ional IE *bh-) = Burushaski b- = Sino-Caucasian •b- (a t tested in

Tibeto-Burman-and Yeniseian, in this case) = Austronesian *b- =Amerind · ~ - ( p r e s e r v e d , e .g . , in Macro-Panoan; in some other groups

has apparently merged with *p- and/or *p')

This provisional correspondence has been observed in other e t y ~ ologies as well. But i f we sometimes find the •wrong' correspondencewe do not throw out the candidate i f it looks l ike ly in other respects: we can make a note or query the entry. We may l a ter find thatassimilation, dissimilat ion, accentuat ion, or some other factor canexplain the apparent anomaly.

Also, some or us (myself included) feel more comfortable withassembling the lexical material , an d le t t ing those who are bet terqualif ied in phonology (such as Vitaly) take care of the deta i ls ofreconstruction and sound laws.



The second point i s prompted by the l as t sentence in Vitaly•sl e t te r : "· •• without trying to establish sound correspondences . .will force us to stay on Trosbetti•s level ." Something similar wasstated in a l e t t e r to ae trom Claude Boisson (Dec 3, 1987): "I s tar t ed reading your paper (Bengtson 1987) with a sceptical turn of mind,a l l the more so since you mentioned Trombetti and Swadesh." Now, Ido not mind healthy skepticism, the kind that demands suff icient evi

dence for a hypothesis, yet i s open to accepting the hypothesis i f~ n a t evidence is convincing. I am oaly suggesting that we give duehonor and credit to our predecessors andpioneers In long-range comparative l inguist ics , and pre-eminently Trombetti and Swadesn. Thisis far from saying that they were r ight about everything, but they didgo ahead and attempt what most others feared to, and blazed t ra i l s ,

some ot which are yet to be tul ly explored.Some have been content to dismiss Trombetti and Swadesh, simply

because they espoused, or were open to , theories ot remote relat ionship and monogenesis. However, we must acknowledge that there is

nothing inherently •scient i f ic ' about espousing the idea of pluralorigins of language, or the •spl i t ter• mentality (as discussed by HalFleming on p. 24 of Circular 4). To paraphrase Sydney Lamb, it is

just as bad to keep too many languages apart , as to put too many languages together!Also, we may disagree with certain details in the work of our

pioneer •Long Rangers• (such as Swadesh•s g l o t t o c h r o n o l o ~ y ) , withoutthrowing away the res t ot their contributions.

We should be thankful tor the reports on the Stanford Conferenceby Hal Fleming and Allan Bombard (pp. 21-24). One was l ively and provocative. while the other was factual and restrained. My own feelingabout the fanatic Amerind •spli t ters• i s a kind or pity, since theyhad an opportunity to welcome a breakthrough in their field, but instead they are ultimately going to be remembered as the Simon Newcombsor Amerindian l inguist ics. (Newcomb was the astronomer who declaredairplane f l ight ' impossible•.)

I am pleased to report that I have received two fine packagesfrom fellow Long Rangers: tram Vitaly Shevoroshkin, his new paper for.Y.!:.·-ill· JahrbUcher enti t led "On Macrofamilies" (which i s his surveyof the se•en great macro-families or -phyla: Nostratic, Dena-Caucasian,Amerind, Austric, Indo-Pacific, Australian, and Khoisan; and of possible relat ionships among the phyla); and from Merritt Ruhlen, someof his "Materials tor a Global Etymological Dictionary"; and a printat an ar t ic le , "The Firs t Americans Are Getting Younger" (Science val.238: 1230-1232), in which Greenberg and Ruhlen•s Amerind work is cited.These papers are OB the cutting edge of long-range comparative l inguist ics , so I assume Mother Tongue has received copies and will publishparts in a t•ture issue.

REF:

- - - - - - -

best wishes, John D. Bengtson

Bengtson, J.D. 1987. " P a l e o l e x i c o l o : ~ y : a tool toward languageorigins". forthcoming in G l ~ s . , g e n e t i c s I I ( L a n ~ S u a ~ e Origins

Greenberg, J.H. 1987. Languar;e in the Americas. Stanford.Maillet, A. 1937. Introduction s-1a-i tude des langues indoeuro-

P,enes. Paris . 8th ad. - -- - - -Ruhlen, M. 1987. AGuide ~ !h! World's Lanrauages. I . Stanford.

Swadesh, t1. 1971. ~ O r i g i n .!ru! Diversification .Qi L a n g u a ~ t e . N.Y.

Trombetti, A. 1905. L • u n i t ~ d•origine ~ l inguaggio. Bologna.

· ~ 7 · . . ·':;-:•, .:



h , - t - a J ~ k5 .t VO'f'OS t1 l'\\

-Cf- DISCUSSION

•The Ancient Near East and the Proble• of Indo-Europeans• Thediscussion of this topic was presented in several articles published in•vestnik drevner istorii• ("oscow) in 1980-1984, na•ely, a long articleby T. Gaakrelidze and V. Ivanov in VDI 3, 1980 and VDI 21 1981; an evenlonger article giving the reaction of I. D'fakonov in VDI 3 and 4, 1982(see also L. Lelekov's paper in VDI 3, 1 9 8 ~ a n d Ba•krtlidze and Ivanov:• ans

~ n VDI 2, 1984). Gaakrelidze and Ivanov's •ain idea was that the terr1toryfor•ation of the Indo-European proto-language was located in the 4th •· B.C.the eKtreae southeastern part of Atia "inor, and the Northern part of MesopoD'Yakonov prefers to locate the proto-language in the Balkan-Karpathian regi

In principlt, 8&1krtl1dzt and Ivanov'• argu11nta (b&ttd an bath lingultand archaelogical data) tee• to be rathtr atrangs we a11u1e that their bookon the prablea, written several year• ago but apparently st i l l nat publithed

...

----------....... .--------------will provide 1uch additional confir1atory evidence. Nevertheless, severaldetails in D'fakonov't ditcuttion tet l to be well-founded. lndttd, i t i tunclear why IE t t ' 1 and tk ' (traditionally• td, tg) should becoae, in warborrowed by Kartvelian, Kartv. td and tg, and not t t ' and tk ' . It ••••• t

the whole reconstruction of tiE tp ' t t ' tk' by &aakrtlidze and Ivanov, intof the traditional IE tb td tg, i t illusory (though (tp t t tk light bt posthe respective Nostratic proto·phone1es had eKactly this shapea accordinglwe would have IE tph tth tkh [traditionally tp t t tkl fro• Nostr. tp' t t 'tq ' / tk ' , cf. Altaica and IE tb td tg [traditional tbh tdh tghl fro• Nastr.

· tb td *VI nate that the vast aaJarity of foreign wards with b, d, g, barrawinto IE showed exactly IE traditional tbh tdh tgh, i .e. tb[Hl, td[Hl, tg[Hafter Gaakrelidze and Ivanov). -Along other details we strongly apposeGaakrtlidze and Ivanov's caaparison of Hitt. Cistaaa·)hura- tistaaa- • 'ea'ear-ring' with 6earg. q'ura 'ear'1 Hitt. -hura-, 11 well as the verb hurast t ls to 1ean 'pierce' CIE tXwer- < Nostr. ttqurV, cf. Kart. tqwr, '1ake hHS txwr ·c. .ktl holt ' 11 in Arab. xurr 'hole's Drav. tu r 'pierce, uke hoHong. tur 'holt ' etc). 'V. s.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

V.·"· l l l i ~ - S v i t y ~ Opyt sravnenih n o s t r a t i ~ n k i x hzykov.Sravnitel'nyf slovar' (p • q) . CA Coaparilon of Nostratic Languagu.Ca1parative Dictionary ( tp- tq)J. -·"oscow CNauk&) 1984, 136 pp.

This is the first issue of the third valu1e af the NostraticDictionary by the late l l l i ~ - S v i t y ~ . The first volu1e was published i1971 [Introductory a r t i ~ l e a , co1parative tables, dictionary tb - tK'l,the.second.·.in 1976 [dsctionary tl - tj l . l l l i ~ · S v i t y ~ coaparesHa1sto-Se11tsc (•Afro-Asiatic), Indo-European Kartvelian (all threeWest-Nostratic>, Uralic, Dravidian, Alt&ic (the latter three- EaatNostratic) ~ a n g u a g e s and reconstructs Noatratic proto-for••· Editor v

Dybo w r o ~ e sn the fareward to the third volu1e that I l l i ~ · S v i t y ~ · s worhat r e ~ e s v e d 10 fa r very high appraiaal fro• the world's linQuittsincludsng t ~ o s e who the1selves worked in the field of caaparisons of

d i f f e r ~ n t l s ~ g u i s t i c fa•ilies <B. Collinder, N. Poppe, K. "•nges). tvIvanov s.r•vsews of val. 1 and 2 ~ a p p e a ~ l i n ~ • a r w a ~ y 1988 in Englitranslation in the collection Typology, Relationship and Ti11, Ann ArbKaro1al. Dybo ~ o e s not ltntion H. Birnbau1'1 very positivi characttriof Nottratic theory in his work an rtcanstructian published •• JIEB"onQraph 2 (1977). ·

Dybo alto 1entions two critical works on Nostratics• part of B.Serebrtnnikov's article an Uralic [translated in the above collection]

• ~ e a a ~ k s by tht Dravidologiat "· Andronov. Dyba shows that thiac :nhcua 11 bued tither on 1ilconceptians f :

Covt' boT1owt p.t



UNPUBLISHED "ATERlALS

Prata-North-C&ucuiln Roots Caver 2,000l, by S, Nikahev·ands. Starastin, This is tht result of rtctnt reconstruction of tht NorthCausi&n proto-language by s. Starastin and S. Nikolatv. Tht l ist wasca•piltd by Nikol1tv who provided an English tr&ntlltian far tach ••1ninA ftw ytart ago, studtnts of tht Linguittics Dtpart•tnt 1t tht Univtrsi"ichig1n, undtr tht guidanct of J.C. Catford, co•piltd, an tht basis ofl is t , 1 r tvtr t t l is t ( i . t . , •Englith to North-Caucasian•) on cards inalphabttic ordtr of English. Wt await tht full tvidtnct upon which thitProto-North-Caucasian rtconstructian is bastd btfort wt can praptrlyIVAlU ih i t .

I I I

Proto-Hokan Roots tavtr 3SOJ, by D. L t K ~ i n t r [with aasistance afNikalatvl. This i t 1 prtliainary liata thouQh tht reconstruction ofconsonant• has bttn caapltttd by Ltllintr 1 tht rtcanstructian of vawtllwill requirt soat a a r ~ work. Thou;h thtrt art only a ftw proto-HokanC•PH) roots which art identical to their prata-Penutian CPP> counttrpar(Itt btlaw>, the systta of PH consonant• is alaost identical with thatPP (tp' tph tp tbJ t t ' tth t t *dl tq ' tqh tqJ tk ' tkh tk tand carrtspanlabiavtlarslJ t ! ' •!1 tc ' tch I C J ~ f t kh · ~ , ttc,) . Thtstablest warda Cauch 11 tht first and the stcond pronoun> of PH artidtntical with those of PP which confiras the thtais of rt•ott gtntticrtlatianship of bath Hokan and P1nuti1n <they bath btlong to •Aatrind•)

Fro• Tubatulabal to Uto-Azttc&nl Final Consonants and Consonant Clust

Internal rtcanstruction of Tubatulabal aarphophant•ict and ca•pawith Luisefto, Serrano, Hopi, Southern Paiute, and Nahuatl yield abundntw tvidence of consonant cluatera and final consonant• in tht protolCas had bttn propaatd by Sapir and Wharf), Saat af tht resulting profollow. I givt htrt proto•Tubatul&b&l farat, but far the aast part thshould also work far prota•Uta•Azttcan.

thp&t - t t

tp i kkat - t ttwip-tttt&p-tttkut-utUn•ti•tkapai-U

. •taCpun-u tC•k?l

'piftan nut' ,

'atone Cknift) ' ,.or tilt.'' t in tw '• t

' f i r t • 1

'rock' 1

' l tQ' 1

'r&bbit',

tklttC

tttwaCtpittCtukaC

Ytrbs

•t i t •

'go out' ,'arrivt ' 1

'Q iv t ' 1



-II S. Starostin. PraeniseYakaYa rekonstrukciYa i vneKnie tv'azieniseYskix Yazykov tRecanatruction of Prota-Veniseian and ExternalRelations of Venis1i1n Lan;ua;1sl. K1tskiY Sbornik - &tudia K1tica,L1nin;rad <Nauka Publithlrs), 1982, pp. 144-237.

In th1 late sixti11, Y. Toporov published aev1ral papers on the ca•parison of Ytnistian languages <livinga Ket, Vug; d11d1 Arin, Asan, Kott, Puapoand reconstruction of proto-Venittilnl oth1r linguists joined hi• later.Starostin's paptr represents a part of a collective work (with Y. Toporovand G. Verner) on Yeniseian. The first part of the paper <pp. 144-196)represents reconstruction of proto-Yeniseian phonologya i t is illustratadby a long l is t of cognate 11t1, tach htldtd by a rtconstructed proto-Yenistword. . .

In the stcond part of this paptr, Starostin cotparts his prato-Yeniselrtconstructions with those of proto-North-Caucasian (as presanted by S.

Starostin and s. Nikolaev in 197o-78) and proto-Sino-Jibatan b111d on rtvisTibeto-Bur••n r1conatructions originally proposed by P. Banadict in 1982,and on Starostin's own r1constructions of Old Chin111 pres1nttd in hit Ph.Dthesit in 1978. At 1 retult , th1 r11ota ganttic rtlationship between Y1niNorth-Caucasian and Sino-Tibttan is r1gard1d 11 prov1n. Th1 •aero-familythus establithld is na•ed Sino-Caucasian (after S. Nikolaev "added" Na-Dento this tacro-fatily, they bagan to u11 tha tera •Dint-Caucasian•). In •ancases, Starostin co1pares Sino-Caucasian cognates with proto-Nostratic rooas reconstructed by Y. l l l i ~ - S v i t y ~ in th1 tixtiea. Starostin do11 not

specify where we eay deal with borrowings, and where with ancient geneticrelations between both •acro-faeilils <thil kind of relation has been recediscusted by Y. Dybo, Y. Ivanov, S. Nikolaev 1t •1.)

v.s.

__, - - . -. or on .. hodically incorr1cf·-poTntt of departure <An1n111ts that I l l i ~ · S v i t y ~ has ignored tote ' linguiatic facts'a under' facts' A ~ d r o n a ~ understands here some very shaky hypatheaes discarded•o•t D r ~ v 1 d o l o g 1 1 t s 11 incorr1ct. [Dolgopolsky itmediately found Andronweak po1nts also when he read Andronov's retarks in Ann Arbor in Septea1983t stated his opinion in 1011 notes which ~ app1an;in the abovcolhchon]) .

r25 lntrl·e s compiled on the basi

The itsue in question contain•

11terial in tht lat t author's archives (entritl 354-378).

K.K., Y.S.

------------------------------



- :. ;..··

v. Sluv oro.r" Jc..·,. '- M A ~ ~ r ~ ~ l . , : r i o ~THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN • ANN ARBOR /HI ' l i l d ~DBPAllT'WBNT OP SLAVIC LANGUAGBS AND LlTB&ATU&ES

( e , ~ , , . ], 'II

~ ~ ~I



Dr. Pat r i ck Senne t t

2905 Burdick Road, RR6J a n e s v i l l e , Wisconsin 53545

Dear P&t,

- I t : ,

Jan. at 1988

Great God Almighty! so to speak. I have been complete ly a t & loss fo

words - - th e ap p ro p r i a t e words - - with which to answer your l e t t e r . However,a f t e r prolonged discuss ions with my wise wife and smar t kids , I .•.• still

don ' t know what th e r i g h t t h i n ; to do i s . And so I have decided to l e t you m

the dec is ion . This a f f ec t s your l i f e much more than it does mine. Therefore ,you are the most appropr ia te person to t ake charge o f t h i s mat ter .

But I am going to ; i v a you soma warnings f i r s t . And t h i s i s a FORMALl e t t e r .

In th a l a s t paragraph of your recan t l e t t e r of Dec.23, 1987 <mybirthday> you sa id "Hal , you wil l do with t h i s what you see f i t ; even i f youdecide not to pub l i c i se it, I would be i n t e re s t ed in any perscna l respcnses ."

Throughout much of th e l e t t e r , &s you made c l e a r , you were near ly e x p l i c i t inrequest ing t h a t ycur l e t t e r be publ ished in fu l l in th e next i s sue of MotherTongue. But it was l i k e a rad io s t a t i o ~ fading in and out of o n e ' s hear ing .

App&rently, your message w&s to publ ish your l e t t e r but t h e re was a s t rong

undercur ren t of misgiving, or hope t h a t I might not ac tua l ly publ i sh it. So w

must m&ke it &11 more e x p l i c i t .

Do you d e f in i t e ly and unambiguously want me to publ ish your l e t t e r oDec. 23rd in Mother Tongue? Since I wil l simply zerox it, lacking any s e c r e t aas I do, than it wil l a l l appear . Do you e x p l i c i t l y wish me to zerox it a l l ?

I f I do publ ish it, t h i s l e t t e r wil l precede yours . I t wil l befol lowed by a presen t ly unwri t ten l e t t e r from you, ; r an t ing me th e permiss ionto publ i sh your l e t t e r . This sounds t e r r i b ly formal and l e ga l i s t i c - - and it

i s . But my concern i s not pr imar i ly l e g a l i s t i c . I t i s MORAL, something to memuch more s e r i o u s t h a t l ega l i sm. As they say in th e bureaucrac ies of Americapro tec t your r ea r , cover your ass . One way to do t h a t moral ly i s to t r y noth u r t your f r i en d s or l e t THEM do th ings t h a t wil l h u r t themselves . So you ha

to give me permiss ion to help you do something which may h u r t you. Does t h a tsound l i ke a ra t iona l i za t ion . or cop-out? Well , it i s not because your r eq u es

puts me i n to a rea l mor&l dilemma.

Why? Because I have to respec t your r i g h t to speak, to say th ings tha re deeply impor tant to you. I c l ea r ly and without k idding unders tand th e

dimensions of your presen t cogn i t ive map of th e world and th e meaning of it

you. I once shared t h a t map and shared t h a t pass ion . Also it i s our common wt h a t Mother Tongue be a t ru ly f ree and open veh ic le of scho lar ly communicat ioabout human p reh i s t o ry . Vas, it i s t rue th a t I am loa the to publ ish 11 personas tu f f 11 because of vio la t ions of ind iv idual pr ivacy and poss ib le h u r t fwal ing

And, yes , I r e fu s e to do anything p o l i t i c a l , desp i t e my own pass ions . Thisi n t e rna t iona l Club would be to rn ap a r t by p o l i t i c s and/or s o c i a l ideology! B

o t h e r w i s e - - Fre ihe i t ! <I t ' s l i k e Aharon 's joke which begins: "In Englandeverything i s permi t ted , except t h a t which i s forbidden.">

I bel i eve t h a t you wil l exper ience pain as a r e s u l t of my publ i sh ing

your hypothesis . But you a re a highly i n t e l l i g e n t and mature person and ani n t e rna t iona l ly - re spec ted h i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t . Now you must t e l l me what to

do.



-/If_.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

DBPARTMENT OF AFRICAN LANGUAGESAND UTIRATURE

866 Van Hise Hall1220 Unden DriveMadison, Wisconsin 53706T e ~ : 608/262-2487

Dr. Harold Fleaing

Mother Toneweg9 Hiih StreetRoclcportMuaachuaetta 01966

Dear Kala

Janua.ry 1'+, 1988

I t waa a thri l l to M to read your l e t t e r of Ja.nua.r,y 8. I understand yourposition, and appreciate your concern, and aa MOST honored. that you did not - as

one part of me feared you might - simply ro l l up my le t ter and discard i t . I thinkin a very real way it will take more nerve to print tha.t l e t te r than it did to writeit

- for reaaona you outline. And I thank you and. honor you.I am writing this aa a. short, forma.l, and., I t rust , sane le t ter . The ea.sy a.nd

informal s ty le possible in such a. newsletter lands i t se l f to a.n a.ppearance of incoherencor of flippancy. I may o c e a s i o ~ ~ & l l y be incoherent, even when t ry ing to -.rgue

foraally. I have been known to be f l i p p a n t ~ I am working on quitt in8. But I do notwant i t thought that there i s a111thinc of whia, or of hobbyhorse, in what I am nowsaying.

I understand your feeling that this lli6ht hurt me. I aa not sure tha.t you a.renot r ight - a.t the eaae t iae that I aa sure you are wrong. I worry about consequences

of so a of what I have been dDing. But tlum, how will I be hurt? ?ersona.Uy? MYexperience says tnat friends will reu.in friends whatwer they may think of theirfriends' ideas. 'ftlere ia the poaaibil i ty that one or t.wo ma.y not. be the friends IthoUght they were; tba.t

would hurt,but

i tis

bet ter to know. Frofessiona.lly? Asa. eomparativist in a world ot generalist generativist theoreticians, it is hard to

iu.gine being auch less respected by the general l inguistic world; a.nd we have a l l

seen that aaong coaparati"ista there is a genera.l agreement to a.llow, a.nd even admire,

our brntters ' expression o! what we teel are sl ight ly cra.ckpot idea.e. .But in any case,to quote I l:':adr&a ~ : ~ 1 (for those with a copy of the Apocrypha handy), whatever one

may teel a.bout the book's poaition in the canon, "Great is Truth, and. mighty above a.ll

things." Even it there were hurt in tbia, f ia t juat i ia,_,!'ll&t coellJ!l.

Yes, Hal, I wish ay view publiahed; any misgivinga sensed re t lect doubt a.s to your

reception as respo•ib le edi ine p&Z"t)r. And, that they may be •ax] mally clea.r, l e t

11e atate:I aa a scientist , with a long-da.onstrated coa i aent to careful examination of

a l l hypotheses

I believe, vholebeartedly, in an oanipotent and benign creator (ha.ving rea.chert tha.tconclusion once I waa challenged to e:xaaine the evidence fa.irly)

I hold tha.t scient ists - comparative linguists included despite the art is t ic

aspects ot our f ield - have a duty to exuine carefully evidence for a.ndagainst thoae hypotheses which follow trol l the twin prelllises that God i saDd that the Bible recoma valid data. OD Hia nature and. doings.

Hal, tbank you. I '11 write ap in .

•



ts--

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

DEPARTMENT OF AFRICAN LANGUAGESAND UTERATURE

866 Van Hise Hall1220 l inden DriveMadison, Wisconsin 53706

Telephone: 608/262-2487

( -"' .i<). .,.,.., .TO"'r"

b "'1/ 'fw' "'" ~ ' " ) ,JlN _..:--;;:; .,.

L, \ t ~ t ' ' \ ~ . , . · 7.

Dear Hal, •""

I t auat be close to exactly a year since I laat took typ i ter in hand to write you

as glorious leader of what wu not yet 'Mother Tongue' (Nyarurimi would be a nice, slighKikuyu-eeque, Bantu appellation which I aust sa y comes more naturally to 11e, and i f youwill us e a Kaaba-mad.e figurine on the cover•••• but given the eatn&sia of the newsletterin i ta present state, le t me enter the announced contest by suggsting one of th estone 'Venus' figurine& whose steatopygia used to get people aware of Bushmen a l l het upOf course, they have no clearly defined head. usually, hence no tongu•, but you can ' t hav

everything. I aa again reminded • f the old English pub sign advertising 'The SilentWoman'.) Well, the la.te&t issue coupled with events in my l i fe stimulates me to writeyou again, on several issues. And, despite the l ight tone of the above and probably the

l ight tone which wall be seen below, licensed by the general tone of such newsletters anthe specific tone of what I will cal l ours, please believe that on a l l substantive pointto come I u (deadly) serious. I f you put any or a l l of this in , feel free to edit , ofcourse, but do not feel you have to. Before we begin, a great Christmas to you; theenclosed sheet, received a couple yeartJ tack, states it better than we know how to say,and we have been sencliDg th• out in l iell of' carcla.

To works Ita, on 'Root Dating' a thia sounc:ls, u you have outlined 1t , much l ikemodified lexicostat is t ics I have done on accasion; in weighted s ta t i s t i ca l counts Iwill often include semantic skewing as a minus point equal to a serious formal skewing

(I hope by now even non•Bantuists are f&lli.liar with th e Guthria.n term 'skewed•). There

are of course serious problell& which remain, as you point out; se e also th e enclosed

paper on Hassler's 'Nuclear Vocabulary' and ay reinterpretation thereof, which seems tobe related. THE CRITICAL PROBLEM, in a l l of this a l.i.ngu&ts should not get involved in

dating (except, perhapl, in their personal l ives , but not as l inguis ts) . I coaplainedof this to Chris J!)lret once; he essentially responded that he understood my points,

but as official ly a historian he was forced to naae nl.llllbers or lose credibil i ty . laaintain that lillgfaista aboulcl date innovation& only relat ively, and t&en with extreaecaution.

It•, on the Stanford Conference; troa one who was not there. I t i s very sad thatAfrican affairs were represented only by the Afroasiatic section (though we can guess

why), and sadder that the aajori y of the Afroasia ic is ts were Chadicis ts and Cushit ic is

(I aa not faai l iar with Faber and Liee run and do not know the i r special t ies) .While soae of these people a.re t a a i l i d With Berber/Egyptian/Seal ic , I'm not surehow ta r I would trust their coMentary. At such a conference, we need Semitists, and

Niger-Congo special is ts i f not genuine BaDtuis;&. and while I have problelllS with a lo t

of work01\

so-called Kilo-Saharan, I have friends in that cup who could contribute.Why so many Australians and no real Africanists (prejudice against Chadicists, I fear -a t leas t in 1:beir capacity aa coapa.rativiats, not pemonally)? Mind you, I a ll notsorry I was not there. I aa - despite ay hypothesis, which I am not about to work on

a t this point, but which I believe in , that Basque has to be l inked to Niger-Kordofaniannot a true long xanger, though as I earl ier said more than willing to help out and evenbe convinc&i i f you can. I am no Comparative Bantu-thl.llllper, but I B ! ! : . L l ~ V E in regularcorrespondence, I cringe a t glottochronology and pseudoreconstructions, I f imlymaintain that comparative wom can reach back so fa r an d no further. Altaicieta andSOME 1ndo-E. etymologies bother me, I ua happiest with Bantuists, Semitiste, AlgonquianiMy sympathies are with the Alllericani&te of your report; good for 'Ulem. But le t us face

i t . A conference of this sor t i s m e a n i ~ a g l e s s . Comparative l inguists are now and a l w ~ s



-/7-

I do want to say that I believe the Bible to be a aessage to us from God, but thatnot every word of every translation of' every vers•on need be l i teral ly and simultaneouslaccurate record of fact; that I believe in th e power of God to have done exactly whatGenesis says, and in th e fal l ib i l i ty of scientis ts Ji;VEN wHEN AND IF ALL S C I ~ T I S T SAGREE - and tha t will be the day, fellow scientis ts l

. t " ~ n i ) - 6 1

Linguistically, I find it hard to accept multiple inventions of human langUAge; i · ·r 1<

.,.a;,teft- implies th e once existence of MOTHER TONGUE. But I find i t equally hard tofind any evidence tha t there was such a single ancestral language, and do not believe

that any creditable l inguist ic research can demonstrate i t s existence. So le t mequote one text and lay on you some hypotheses, which may be accepted, tested, o rrejected, as a l l long and short rangers reading theee words see f i t .

"Co to, l e t us go down, and there confound their 1-.ngy.a.ge, that they m&y not understanu

one another 's speech." So the Lord scajtere<! them abro111.d f N. t l ~ i l Ylc.? ~ 0 . ! ! . _ t : h ~ ~ ~of ....l.L w ~ a r t n : and t.ney lefT. o il T.O bUJ.J.d. t.ne Cl.ty . - Genesl.S l l : o- ' j

Item: l.T. l.S pretT.y g e n e r a ~ ~ y assumed the tower of Babel was a zi&gurat- some specifone part icular ziggurat !"in Babylon; I find tha t explanation a l i t t l e weak, becaU£.ethere are loads of Ziggurats a.rou.!'ld Mesopai...mJ.a t .u u no Canaa.u..L t-e visl. to r J.S rea uy

aDout to bell.eve was let ' t incomplet.e because of divine intervention.Item: it is easy to forget that this is ~ ~ B R the flood and Noah (please note that

Couln's m i t o c h o n ~ r i a l ancestress does not have to worry about being ~ v e , che is more

l ikely to be ' I u Shim, as we ma.y denote Noah's wife&); it is a.lso easy to ignore thedispersal tha t is indicated as accompanying the l inguistic diversification.

So , hypotheses:

A. I t is perfectly possible, assuming an omnipotent and benevolent God, that l inguisticdiversification and physical dispersal may have occurred a t this time ex&ctly as is

described..

B. Language families exis t which can be based on regular correspondence (e.g. Semitic,

Bantu, Herber, Algonquian); other langu.age groupings seem to be valid, but cannot

be s u p p o r ~ e d by regular correspondence (e.g. Ngger-Conso, Afro-Asiatic); non-corresponde

groupings often include a.s subgroups correspondent gxvups, and are linked generally bytypology and by a relatively small number of often highly skewed sha.red morphemes.

C. *DANGEROUS SPECULATION • I will try no other dating:

impressionistically andtrembltngly I estimate t iae depth f maximum time depth - for regularly corresponding

groupings a.s about 5-6 thousand yeara BP. This is based on S e m i t i c / I n d o - ~ primarily,and on estimates of relat ive differentia t ion in these and other language families

where regula.r correspondence works. I would hate to have to defend i t , it i s tlOTglottochonology based, anyone • s free to shoot a t i t ,

D. *INTERESTING COINCIDENCE: ay readings of accepted prehistory baffle me with innovatiol ike changes in f l in t industries an d the Neolithic revolution which seem to

appear over an unreasonably large portion of the globe in the twinkling of an eye. Looka t how long it took to get the Industr ia l revolution spread, when that also revolutioniztransport. Do we assl.mle relays of Paleolithic couriers jogging along with the l a t e s t

handax pattern? I t looks l ike relat ively l i t t l e local innovation or steady development

ofer time, jus t great leaps forward rapidly spread. And i f I read. it r ight , the

f i r s t ci t ies as opposed to villages (and the Babel story ma.y be taken to ref lect thes ta r t of urban l i fe ) date from about 5-6 thousand years B.f.

E. We know that l inguist ic change i s an on-going process. We do not understand i t . wecan be sure it is not t ruly random. We can be sure tha t it is not predictable. I t

allllost certainly i s not unifom in rate . Can we explain it in terms of randomsequencing of changes based on human-universal tendencies? I think not. I t does not

get explained logical ly nor sta t i s t ica l ly , it is more complex than economics. Iput it to you that we should not rule out divine intervention (Creationism) as a factoralong with randOdicity an d huaan universals (Bvolutionisa).

---- - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - ----------



UNIVERSITY OF PORT HARCOURT

Telegrams Uoiport Pharcourt

Telex 61183 Pbuni

FACULTY OF HUMANITIESDEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS a AFRICAN LANGUAGES

Professor Harold J'lemingl lo ther !ongue N'ewalet ter69 High St ree t

Backport, •-•· 01966U.S. A•

Dear Hal,

EAST-WEST ROAD

CHOBAr_ M. B. 53l:JP O l l HACOUaTNIGiAIA.

I WaiJ delighted to get llT (November 1987) today and I

l i ke the cover. Shouldn1

t you p ~ t the mailing address onthe insider cover? ( I used Ms. ~ i t z l e t t e r th is time.)Clear JIWDbers fo r the issues a1d pages would help references.

I would l i ke to get your readers 1 opinions on Worlds inColl ision, by Immanuel Vel.ikovsky. I read th is in my teensand c l a ~ J s i f i e d it men ta l ly in a kind of in te l lectual limboas 1fascinat ing but unproven •. I recently re...read it mdf e l t there was a strong caae that should be exaJDined. Heargues tha t within his tor ical time, sa well as before i t ,various world-wide catastrophes were caused by col l i s ions ornear-misses between Barth, other planets, ~ d comets. Thecataatrophes include drowning of huge land areaa by t ida l waves,

creat ion of mountains, hurricanes, f i re , reversal of Eastand West, sudden cl imatic changes, changes in the length ofthe day and the year, etc . - a l l renec ted in mythology inmany parts of the world, in the 8 ld Testament, etc .

I have the impression tha t catastrophic theories - aboutthe extinction of the dinosaurs, mammo t.hs, etc. - are nowmuch more widely accepted th e previousl)". Do our archaeolog is ts and sc ien t is ts think Vel.ikovsky could be r igh t to aconsiderable axtEll t? I f so, the extinction of Neandertal man,Java/Peking me11, etc . (as argued by Gould) could be due tosuch catastrophes. Again, i f the existence of Atlant is andi t s archipelago i s correct , there could have been a route

from U:rica or Europe direct ly to South Mnerica for theinhabitants of the 1 too ancient 1 s i tes you mention, independentof the B.ering :ttrai. ts .

O-bviously, basical ly different land formations a t ea r l ie rperiods would much affect our view of l ikely migrations byHomo spp. How about i t ? Velikovskv also wrote Ages in Chaos,'ilii"'ch I have not read. '

Yours sincerely,

J.:q WilliaJDaon.



P r o ~ e s s o r Lyle CampbellDep ' t . of Anthropologys .u .N.Y AlbanySocia l Science 263Albany, New York 12222

Dear Dr. C ~ p b e l l ,

Jan . 31 , 198869 High S t r e e tRockport ,Massachuse t t s 01966

Thank you fo r your l e t t e r of January 17 th . I t was good of you to w

and I apprec ia te your response .

Although th e agenda fo r our nex t newsle t t e r , Mother Tongue 5 , i sac tua l ly excess ive a l ready , still I wil l t r y to squeeze your l e t t e r in . I amtak ing th e l i b e r t y , most ly in my funct ion as e d i t o r , of giv ing Joe GreenbergMerr i t t Ruhlen a chance to respond to your l e t t e r . So t h e i r l e t t e r , i f any ,plus your l e t t e r p lus t h i s l a t t e r wil l appear in Mother Tongue 5 o r 6 . #6 w

be th e computer i s sue bu t it may be th e f i r s t chance we ge t . I t r u s t t h a t Ihave your permiss ion to reproduce your l e t t e r , given your sentence : "In f a cr ea l l y hope you miQht cons ider reproducing t h i s in your nex t Newsle t ter . "

These a re very se r i o u s mat ters and I t ry to maximize our news l e t t es t r e s s on hones ty , openness , freedom and to l e rance -- in p u r su i t of at r anscendenta l sc i en t i f i c and humanis t ic goa l , to wit , the discovery of ourances to r s . That goal has been so d i f ~ i c u l t to achieve or to s t r i v e fo rvigorously because the re have been so many people t e l l i n g us t h a t it couldbe a t t a ined or t h a t we should not t r y because only i d i o t s would "open up t hquest ion aQain." Yet one can wonder how such an i n t e r e s t i ng and impor tan t

ques t ion got shut o ff in th e f i r s t place! Who in he l l a re th e scho la r s of th

French Academia anyway to t e l l us we canno t look fo r our roo t s? I t i s aprofoundly l eg i t ima te pur s u i t which has bean s t i f l e d by severa l genera t i ons

sophomores and smal l -headed aaethadalagy f r eaks .

Your a t t i t u d e of f r i e nd l i ne s s and coopera t ion i s apprec i a t ed . Let bury the ha tche t , a s you American is t s a re wont to s a y , but not in each o the

heads -- Insha l l ah . I t has been only th e percep t ions of h o s t i l i t y towardsGreenberg and h is work t h a t have provoked u s , many of us, to respond 1n ktnAs you yourse l f may al ready know, Joe Greenberg i s th e or ig ina l "sof t - spoke

a.nd shy" person. There a re an awful l o t of l i n g u i s t s , Afr i can i s t s and c u l t uan th ropo log i s t s who l i ke him vary much. Try to t h ink of them as a swarm ofbees .

Oh, yes , by th e way. Since you ment1on some 32 Americanis t sources

which GreenberQ neglec ted to c i t e o r <possibly> even look a t in h is LIA, coyou be Qood enough to send me a list of them in rouQh o r casua l form (good

enough to f ind in a l ib ra ry>? For publ ica t ion in Mother Tongue? Then ourmembers, most of whom a re no t Amer1canis ts , can peruse some of your-p lura l

arguments and a t t i t u d e s towards l i nQui s t i c taxonomy and r econs t ruc t ion .

I have to t e l l you t ha t it wi l l come as no s u rp r i s e to Afr i can i s t s

Oceanis ts to hear about Joe Greenberg ' s shortcominQs as a b ib l iog rapher . Heneglec ted to mention many more than 32 in both A ~ r i c a a ~ d Oceania . Yet it m

prec ious little d i f f e rence in th e t r u th va lue of h is hypotheses . As they sayouth Americanese "Hey, h e ' s j u s t ne t i n to b ib l iog raph ies ! " . But it i s a l sot rue of MANY contemporary Afr i can i s t s . They neg lec t each o t h e r ' s work, or owork, shameTully. What can we de? Standards a re lower nowadays? Well , maybe

i s r ea l ly n o t so impor tant? Remember Van Gannep's famous problem?Since re ly ,l # ~ l c ~ - F ~



UNIVERSITY AT

ALBANYDepartment o f

518442

P r o f . T A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ S f l f £ftfh'fl YORK

Dept. of AnthrappalagyBaston Universi ty

236 Bay Sta te RoadBaston, MA 02215

Dear Dr. Fleming, ·

Jan. 17, 1988

I 'm sorry tha t we have not met or t a lked , but I have heardonly good r epor t s about you from s tudents and f r iends a t BostonUnivers i ty , which makes me be l ieve tha t it will be a l l r igh t fo r

me to write you. I guess ours i s a small d i sc ip l ine , s ince I ' ve

been sen t copies by four d i f fe ren t col leagues / f r iends of yourrepor t in !:!gt.b.JU:. ! s a ! l ~ 4, "THE STANFORD CONFERENCE: as seen byHal Fleming" <with comments about it from severa l o thers ) . Ihope you ' l l permit me to say something about your r epor t . ln

fac t , I rea l ly hope you might consider reproducing t h i s in yournext Newsle t ter .

You perceived it as an "ambush" on Prof . Greenberg, but the

American Indian par t i c ipan t s in the conference had the opposi tein ten t ions . We wanted very much to address th e goals of th econference, what American Indian his tor ica l l i ngu i s t i c prac t icehas t o o f fe r his tor ica l l i ngu i s t i c s in genera l , par t i cu la r lyrecons t ruc t ion . We did not want discuss ions of Greenberg's newbook to take up a l l our t ime, prevent ing us from at tending to th e

mission of the conference. This was appropr ia te , s ince Prof .Greenberg does not a t tempt recons t ruc t ion in h is book, r a the ronly c lass i f i ca t ion . For t h i s reason, we purposeful ly scheduledour topic of d i s t an t genet ic re la t ionship , of which discuss ion of

Greenberg was only par t , granted a la rge par t , as the absolutel a s t in or program, sa tha t it would not prevent us fromaddressing th e conference goals .

You took something I sa id as a "personal" and "vi le" a t t ack ,repor t ing it as ••something l ike 'Greenberg i s lucky t ha t hehad Stanford Univers i ty Press to publ ish h is Amerind book becauseno one else would have touched it!'" I 'm sorry you perceived it

t h i s way. The actual t ex t of what I said might be halpful inc lear ing up mispercept ions. I intended to present an argumentand then to ask a t e l l ing question based on th e argument. Thet ex t of my presenta t ion , in conteMt, was:

Several American Ind ian i s t s are charac te r ized as

being hos t i l e and unwil l ing to en ter ta in any proposalof d i s t an t genet ic r e la t ionsh ip . This i s , however, notthe case . Several proposals of remoter re la t ionships weresupported by authors in Campbell and Mithun 1979 <e.g.Campbell: Jicaque and Tequist la tecan, Paya andChibchan; Crawford: Yuchi with Atakapa and Tunica;Davis: Keresan and Uta-Aztecan; Jacobsen: branches of"Hokan"; Krauss: Eskimo-Aleut and Chukotan CChukchiKoryak-Kamchadal>; Langdon: Pomoan and Yuman; andThompson: Kutenai and Salishan>. While not a l l ofthese a re of equal s t rength , the a t t i t ude , contrary to

. . i

-r----.

b ,, m

Social Scien

Albany, Ne



t ha t a t t r ibu ted to us, has not b. . one ofto .ny "lumping" proposal in pr inc ip le , butone of rea l ism, a sober reques t fo r

support ing evidence.

re s i s tancer a t he r , i sreasonable

Greenberg 's enthusiasm fa r h is own technique a tthe expense of standard methods and to the tune of

naar l y t o t a l disrRQard fo r most rac:ent 11110rk in thef ie ld i s unfortunate. G's a t t i t ude seems to be t ha tthe Nark o f AMtrican Indi .n s p . c i a l i s t s i s withoutDeri t , since he disregards th e Nark of the l a s t twentyyears or so . That i s , a perusal of ~ I A ' s referencesrevea ls few from t h i s per iod; the only c i t a t ions fromthe 1980 's a re to G h ia. . f. or to nan- l inguis t i cworks·, save one reviaN o f LNA which . . . , t ions 6

favorably. t tast c i t ed · f raa th e 1970's a re not abautAmerican Indian languages, i . e . on th • phi losphy ofsc ience , en African or e ther nan-American lanQuaQes, oron ether .n thrapolQQical themes. The . r t i c l e s ofCampbell and Mithun <1979) a re l i s t ed , but it i s c lea r

from LIA and the Greenberg notebooks, t ha t these werenot u t i l i zed . Of the few American Indian l inQuis t icworks ci ted from the 1970 's ( less than ten) most t r ea tSouth America. Hew can G, with such an ambit ious task,afford to ignore the work o f the l a s t twenty years?Why would he ignore works essent i a l ly support ing<actually predating.) soma o f h is conclusions'? Mereimportantly, how ·can he disregard proposals which are

in conf l i c t with h is ONn? Jus t a few gaping absences,neQlected by LlA, area Berman 1983, Bright 1976, 1984,Campbell 1973, 1975, 1976, 197Ba, 197Bb, 1980, Campbelland Oltrogge 1980, Campbell and Kaufaan 1981, 1983,Constanta 1981, Galla 1984, Justesen a t a l . 1983,

Kaufman 1973, 1974a, 1974b, Klein and Stark 1983,Sherzer 1976, Shipley 1980, Sorensen 1973, SuArez 1974,1 ~ , 1979, 1983a, Whist ler 197'7. These absences area l l the more shocking, s ince same c r i t i c i z e methodssuch as G 's di rec t ly Ccf. Callaghan and Miller 1962,Campbell 1973, c . . pbe l l and KaufMAn 1981, 1983, Goddard197S, e t c . ) .

In l iQht of th i s d i s r e ~ a r d fo r the work in theAMtrican f i e ld , it i s ind . -d surpr i s ing t ha t apublisher of th e ca l i b re of Stanford Press agreed topublish LIA; it i s temptinG to specula te t h a t th i swould not have bean possib le i f th e book did nat bearG' s naaae. A scholar of l e s se r renown NOuld nat havebeen permit ted t o s l i gh t the canans of scholarship int h i s Nay.

As you see , I did not intend a personal a t tack; however, Ihold my opinion as s ta ted in th a t ex t tha t I am shocked by th i sneglec t of the scholarship of an en t i re f ie ld fo r the l a s tgeneration or sa . I rea l ly do f ind it d i f f i cu l t to understand

h o ~ ~ ~ t such a book in its cur ren t s t a t a could have b. . accepted fo rpubl ica t ion . Others share ay opinion.

Fina l ly , I 'a sorry you found • • t a be a "loud• and



"aggressive" e>:pert - - most know me to be sof t -spoken and shy.For t h i s very reason, I had none of the s ince of the home cour tadvantage you describe , being on "the exper t ' s own t u r f " . Quiteto the cont ra ry , I was a t Stanford , Greenberg ' s home cour t , and I

had th e sensat ion of walking into th e l i o n ' s den. I rea l ly mean

it when I say I wish Greenberg had come t o pa r t i c ipa te with us

he had been invi ted . I would have much prefe rred to say my

piece in h is hearing and then s a t down to ta lk about it. Ins p i t e of appearances, I ac tua l ly l ike him and h is non-American

Indian work very much.About the other matters you mention in your r epor t , I think

it would be fun some day to ta lk about them with you, though I

won't take up more t ime now. Meanwhile, s ince we are bothin te res ted in s imi la r th ings , I hope we can stand on f r iendly

te rms; cooperat ion i s l ess t ax ing t ha t quibbl ing , anyway.

I wish you a l l the bes t .

Sincerely,

;t,(/{1 ~ w d . i . C (~ ~ m p b e ~ f . -Professor of Linguis t ics ,

Anthropology, and Spanish



Dear Hal,

4335 Ceaano CourtPalo Alto, California 94306February 12, 1987

I w e l c ~ e your invitation to co""ent on ~ y l e CaMpbell's let ter

concerning hia preaentation at Stanford thia peat IUMMer. I have already

diacuaaed Ivea 6oddard'a perforMance at thia Meeting elaewhere ( ' ' I sAlgonquian A"erind?,' ' to appear in Senetis Classificatign gf Langyages,

ed. by Vitaly Shevoroahkin, University of Texaa Preu >.

Ca"Pbell goes to great length to excoriate 6reenberg for his disdainof ' 's tandard Methods'' and ' 'nearly total disregard for "oat recentwork,' ' which taken together vit iate, for CaMpbell and 6oddard at least ,§reenberg's t r i -part i te classif ication of New World languages. Ca"pbell'sasaertion that §reenberg uaes his own special ' ' techniquea' ' at the expense

of the standard "ethodology of coMparative l inguistica repeats an old

allegation that ia siMply false. Greenberg's ' ' techniques' ' are nothingMore than the coMparative "ethod i t se l f and certainly Greenberg has neverclaiMed otherwise. What distinguishes Greenberg's work is the breadthof the application, not the techniques theMaelvea. Until Ca"pbell spellsou t "ore clearly what he takes to be the differences between Greenberg's"ethodology, as elucidated in Chapter 1 of Langyago in the Americas, andthat of traditional coMparative l inguiatica, i t ia i"posaible to sayanything further on this topic.

The brunt of CaMpbell'• criticiaM is clearly directed at Greenberg's' ' shocking' ' disregard for the A"erindian l i terature, which would, or atleaat should, have prevented Stanford University Press fro" publishing the

book, had i t not been for Greenberg's fa"ous na"e. This is a ratherserious accusation, i"pugning as i t does both Greenberg and th e StanfordUniversity Press, and before "aking i t CaMpbell should have read the f i rs tparagraph of the section entitled ' 'A Note on Methods of Citation andNotation' ' (p. xv):

In preparing this work, I used a very large nu"ber of

sources, particularly for the coMparative vocabular1ea.~ i s t i n g a ll these aourcea in a general bibliographywould have added greatly to the length and cost of the

work. Hence only those sources actually referred to inthe text--which are far fewer than those eMployed in theresearch--are contained in the Referencea Cited at theback of the book.

In the Preface (p. ix) Greenberg eati"ates that the Co"parative A"erindian

Vocabularies upon which his book is based ''encoMpass well over 2,000

sources and contain perhaps a quarter "il l ion separate ent r ies . ' ' If thisconstitutes ' 'disregard for the work in the AMerican f ie ld ' ' the field hasyet to be regarded. But even if §reenberg had coMpletely overlooked the

thirty-odd sources Ca"pbell Mentions, does anyone seriously believe that

theae few sources would have Materially affected any aspect of the

classification 6raenberg proposed, Much leas th e central point of the book,

A"erind unity?

- - - ~ - - - - - - - ~ - - - - --



---------------------- -- ------ ------·-- ... ·= - - - - - -

The Most tel l ing point of the Goddard-CaMpbell presentation was aquestion froM Russell Schuh: How can i t be that Greenberg's taxonoMic workon African languages was so spectacularly successful, while that onAMerican Indian languages is without any Merit whetsover, since both wereproduced with the saMe Methods? Goddard end CaMpbell were unable to coMeup with any satisfactory explanation fo r this dileMMa, their suggestions

<Greenberg is an Africanist, he's not an AMerindianist; the AMericanl i terature is abysMal, the African Must have been better1 etc.> wererejected one by one by the audience unt i l they caMe to their finalresponse: ' 'wel l , Maybe New World languages are just harder to classifythan African languages.' ' This response was Met with silence, with goodreason.

What struck Me Moat in CaMpbell's presentation was his stateMent thathe and his colleagues had been looking forward to Greenberg's book, hadbeen hoping for the best, bu t had siMply been disappointed by a poor piece

of work. A year before Greenberg's book appeared, and w1thoui ever having

seen the evidence i t contained, CaMpbell had called for Greenberg's

classif icat ion to be ' 'shouted down'' <Cyrrent Anthropology 27 (1986):

488). I do not believe such inteMperate language is ever cailed for; we donot have to shout at those with whoM we disagree. But to condeMn soMeone'swork without even bothering to exaMine his evidence violates the ' 'canonsof scholarship, ' ' as I understand theM, and underMines whatever credibil i tyCaMpbell Might otherwise have had in the discussion of th e AMerind faMily.

Sincerely,

Merritt Ruhlen

2

mother tongue newsletter 5 (march 1988)

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