Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Judging from media attention, the “hottest” current topic in linguistics (shared perhaps with endangered languages) is distant genetic relationship. Proposed remote language families such as Amerind, Nostratic, and Proto-World have been featured in Atlantic Monthly, Nature, Science, Scientific American, U.S. News , and television documentaries, and yet these same proposals have been roundly rejected by the majority of practicing historical linguistics. This has led to charges that these spurnings “are clumsy and dishonest attempts to discredit deep reconstructions,” “stem from ignorance,” and “very few [antagonist linguists] have ever bothered to examine the evidence first-hand … To really screw up classification you almost have to have a Ph.D. in historical linguistics” (Shevoroshkin 1989a: 7, 1989b: 4; Ruhlen 1994: viii). In spite of such sharp differences of opinion, all agree that a successful demonstration of linguistic kinship depends on adequate methods – the disagreement is on what these are – and hence methodology assumes the central role in considerations of possible remote relationships. This being the case, the purpose of this chapter is to survey the various methodological principles, criteria, and rules of thumb relevant to distant genetic relationship and thus hopefully to provide guidelines for both initiating and testing proposals of distant linguistic kinship. ... log in or subscribe to read full text