Mass Lexical Comparison
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Mass comparison is a method developed by
Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. The method is rejected by most linguists , though not all. Some of the top-level relationships Greenberg named are now generally accepted, though they had already been posited by others (e.g.
Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
and Niger–Congo). Others are accepted by many though disputed by some prominent specialists (e.g.
Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. T ...
), others are predominantly rejected but have some defenders (e.g.
Eurasiatic Eurasiatic is a proposed language macrofamily that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia. The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's prop ...
), while others are almost universally rejected (e.g.
Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in t ...
and Amerind).


Methodology

The thesis of mass comparison is that a group of languages is related when they show numerous resemblances in vocabulary, including pronouns, and morphemes, forming an interlocking pattern common to the group. Unlike the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
, mass comparison does not require any regular or systematic correspondences between the languages compared; all that is required is an impressionistic feeling of similarity. Greenberg does not establish a clear standard for determining relatedness; he does not set a standard for what he considers a "resemblance" or how many resemblances are needed to prove relationship. Mass comparison is done by setting up a table of basic vocabulary items and their forms in the languages to be compared for resemblances. The table can also include common morphemes. The following table was used by to illustrate the technique. It shows the forms of six items of basic vocabulary in nine different languages, identified by letters. According to Greenberg, basic relationships can be determined without any experience in the case of languages that are fairly closely related, though knowledge of probable paths of sound change acquired through
typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...
allows one to go farther faster. For instance, the path ''p'' > ''f'' is extremely frequent, but the path ''f'' > ''p'' is much less so, enabling one to hypothesize that ''fi'' : ''pi'' and ''fik'' : ''pix'' are indeed related and go back to protoforms *''pi'' and *''pik/x''. Similarly, while knowledge that ''k'' > ''x'' is extremely frequent, ''x'' > ''k'' much less so enables one to choose *''pik'' over *''pix''. Thus, according to Greenberg (2005:318), phonological considerations come into play from the very beginning, even though mass comparison does not attempt to produce reconstructions of protolanguages as these belong to a later phase of study. The tables used in actual mass comparison involve much larger numbers of items and languages. The items included may be either lexical, such as 'hand', 'sky', and 'go', or morphological, such as
PLURAL The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
and
MASCULINE Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors con ...
. For Greenberg, the results achieved through mass comparison approached certainty : "The presence of fundamental vocabulary resemblances and resemblances in items with grammatical function, particularly if recurrent through a number of languages, is a sure indication of genetic relationship."


Relation to the comparative method

As a tool for identifying genetic relationships between languages, mass comparison is an alternative to the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
. Proponents of mass comparison, such as Greenberg, claim that the comparative method is unnecessary to identify genetic relationships; furthermore, they claim that it can only be used once relationships are identified using mass comparison, making mass comparison the "first step" in determining relationships (1957:44). This contrasts with mainstream
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
, which relies on the comparative method to aid in identifying genetic relationships; specifically, it involves comparing data from two or more languages. If sets of recurrent sound correspondences are found, the languages are most likely related; if further investigation confirms the potential relationship, reconstructed ancestral forms can be set up using the collated sound correspondences. However, Greenberg did not entirely disavow the comparative method; he stated that "once we have a well-established stock I go about comparing and reconstructing just like anyone else, as can be seen in my various contributions to historical linguistics" (1990, quoted in Ruhlen 1994:285) and accused mainstream linguists of spreading "the strange and widely disseminated notion that I seek to replace the comparative method with a new and strange invention of my own" (2002:2). Earlier in his career, before he fully developed mass comparison, he even stated that his methodology did not "conflict in any fashion with the traditional comparative method" (1957:44). However, Greenberg sees the comparative method as playing no role in determining relationships, significantly reducing its importance compared to traditional methods of linguistic comparison. In effect, his approach of mass comparison sidelined the comparative method with a "new and strange invention of his own". Reflecting the methodological
empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
also present in his typological work, he viewed facts as of greater weight than their interpretations, stating (1957:45): : construction of an original sound system has the status of an explanatory theory to account for etymologies already strong on other grounds. Between the *''vaida'' of Bopp and the *''γwoidxe'' of Sturtevant lie more than a hundred years of the intensive development of Indo-European phonological reconstruction. What has remained constant has been the validity of the etymologic relationship among Sanskrit ''veda'', Greek ''woida'', Gothic ''wita'', all meaning "I know", and many other unshakable etymologies both of root and of non-root morphemes recognized at the outset. And who will be bold enough to conjecture from what original the Indo-Europeanist one hundred years from now will derive these same forms?


Criticism


Errors in application

The presence of frequent errors in Greenberg’s data has been pointed out by linguists such as
Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in ...
and
Alexander Vovin Alexander (Sasha) Vladimirovich Vovin (russian: Александр Владимирович Вовин; 27 January 1961 – 8 April 2022) was a Soviet-born Russian-American linguist and philologist, and director of studies at the School for Adv ...
, who see it as fatally undermining Greenberg’s attempt to demonstrate the reliability of mass comparison. Campbell notes in his discussion of Greenberg's Amerind proposal that "nearly every specialist finds extensive distortions and inaccuracies in Greenberg's data"; for example,
Willem Adelaar Willem F. H. Adelaar (born 1948 at The Hague) is a Dutch linguist specializing in Native American languages, specially those of the Andes. He is Professor of indigenous American Linguistics and Cultures at Leiden University. He has written broad ...
, a specialist in Andean languages, has stated that "the number of erroneous forms n Greenberg's data probably exceeds that of the correct forms". Some forms in Greenberg's data even appear to be attributed to the wrong language. Greenberg also neglects known sound changes that languages have undergone; once these are taken into account, many of the resemblances he points out vanish. Greenberg's data also contains errors of a more systematic sort: for instance, he groups unrelated languages together based on outdated classifications or because they have similar names. Greenberg also arbitrarily deems certain portions of a word to be affixes when affixes of the requisite phonological shape are unknown to make words cohere better with his data. Conversely, Greenberg frequently employs affixed forms in his data, failing to recognise actual morphemic boundaries; when affixes are removed, the words often no longer bear any resemblance to his "Amerind" reconstructions. Greenberg has responded to this criticism by claiming that "the method of multilateral comparison is so powerful that it will give reliable results even with the poorest of data. Incorrect material should merely have a randomizing effect”. This has hardly reassured critics of the method, who are far from convinced of the method's "power".


Borrowing

A prominent criticism of mass comparison is that it cannot distinguish borrowed forms from inherited ones, unlike comparative reconstruction, which is able to do so through regular sound correspondences. Undetected borrowings within Greenberg's data support this claim; for instance, he lists "
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s" of
Uwa The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...
''baxita'' "machete", even though it is a borrowing from
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
. admits that "in particular and infrequent instances the question of borrowing may be doubtful" when using mass comparison, but claims that basic vocabulary is unlikely to be borrowed compared to cultural vocabulary, stating that "where a mass of resemblances is due to borrowing, they will tend to appear in cultural vocabulary and to cluster in certain semantic areas which reflect the cultural nature of the contact." Mainstream linguists accept this premise, but claim that it does not suffice for distinguish borrowings from inherited vocabulary. According to him, any type of linguistic item may be borrowed "on occasion", but "fundamental vocabulary is proof against mass borrowing". However, languages can and do borrow basic vocabulary. For instance, in the words of Campbell,
Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...
has borrowed "from its
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
and Germanic neighbors various terms for basic kinship and body parts, including 'mother', 'daughter', 'sister', 'tooth', 'navel', 'neck', 'thigh', and 'fur'". Greenberg continues by stating that " rivational, inflectional, and pronominal morphemes and morph alternations are the least subject of all to borrowing"; he does incorporate morphological and
pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
correlations when performing mass comparison, but they are peripheral and few in number compared to his
lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexical ...
comparisons. Greenberg himself acknowledges the peripheral role they play in his data by saying that they are "not really necessary". Furthermore, the correlations he lists are neither exclusive to or universally found within the languages which he compares. Greenberg is correct in pointing out that borrowing of pronouns or morphology is rare, but it cannot be ruled out without recourse to a method more sophisticated than mass comparison. Greenberg continues by claiming that " current sound correspondences" do not suffice to detect borrowing, since "where loans are numerous, they often show such correspondences" . However, Greenberg misrepresents the practices of mainstream
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
here; few linguists advocate using sound correspondences to the exclusion of all other kinds of evidence. This additional evidence often helps separate borrowings from inherited vocabulary; for instance, Campbell mentions how " rtain sorts of patterned grammatical evidence (that which resists explanation from borrowing, accident, or
typology Typology is the study of types or the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. Typology is the act of finding, counting and classification facts with the help of eyes, other senses and logic. Ty ...
and
universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...
) can be important testimony, independent of the issue of sound correspondences". It may not always be possible to separate borrowed and inherited material, but any method has its limits; in the vast majority of cases, the difference can discerned.


Chance resemblances

Cross-linguistically, chance resemblances between unrelated lexical items are common, due to the large amount of
lexemes A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken ...
present across the world's languages; for instance, English and Spanish are demonstrably unrelated, despite their similar phonological shape. This means that many of the resemblances found through mass comparison finds are likely to be coincidental. Greenberg worsens this issue by reconstructing a common ancestor when only a small proportion of the languages he compares actually display a match for any given lexical item, effectively allowing him to cherry-pick similar-looking lexical items from a wide array of languages. Though they are less susceptible to borrowing, pronouns and morphology also typically display a restricted subset of a language's
phonemic inventory In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
, making cross-linguistic chance resemblances more likely. Greenberg also allows for a wide semantic latitude when comparing items; while widely-accepted linguistic comparisons do allow for a degree of semantic latitude, what he allows for is incommensurably greater; for instance, one of his comparisons involves words for "night", "excrement", and "grass".


Sound symbolism and onomatopoeia

Proponents of mass comparison often neglect to exclude classes of words that are usually considered to be unreliable for proving linguistic relationships. For instance, Greenberg made no attempt to exclude
onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
words from his data. Onomatopoeic words are often excluded from linguistic comparison, as similar-sounding onomatopoeic words can easily evolve in parallel. Though it is impossible to make a definite judgement as to whether a word is onomatopoeic, certain
semantic field In linguistics, a semantic field is a lexical set of words grouped semantically (by meaning) that refers to a specific subject.Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, ''Words, Meaning, and Vocabulary'', Continuum, 2000, p14. The term is also used in ...
s, such as "blow" and "suck", show a cross-linguistic tendency to be onomatopoeic; making such a judgement may require deep analysis of a type that mass comparison makes difficult. Similarly, Greenberg neglected to exclude items affected by
sound symbolism In linguistics, sound symbolism is the resemblance between sound and meaning. It is a form of linguistic iconicity. For example, the English word ''ding'' may sound similar to the actual sound of a bell. Linguistic sound may be perceived as simil ...
, which often distorts the original shape of lexical items, from his data. Finally, "nursery words", such as "mama" and "papa" lack evidential value in linguistic comparison, as they are usually thought to derive from the sounds
infants An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...
make when beginning to acquire languages. Advocates of mass comparison often avoid taking sufficient care to exclude nursery words; one,
Merritt Ruhlen Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...
has even attempted to downplay the problems inherent in using them in linguistic comparison. The fact that many of
indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
have pronouns that begin with
nasal stops In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
, which Greenberg sees as evidence of common ancestry, may ultimately also be linked to early speech development; Algonquian specialist
Ives Goddard Robert Hale Ives Goddard III (born 1941) is a linguist and a curator emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He is widely considered the leading expert on the Algonqui ...
notes that "A gesture equivalent to that used to articulate the sound ''n'' is the single most important voluntary muscular activity of a nursing infant".


Statistical computations


Methodological underpinnings


Disputed legacy of the comparative method

The conflict over mass comparison can be seen as a dispute over the legacy of the comparative method, developed in the 19th century, primarily by Danish and German linguists, in the study of
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
.


Position of Greenberg's detractors

Since the development of
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
in the 19th century, a linguist who claims that two languages are related, whether or not there exists historical evidence, is expected to back up that claim by presenting general rules that describe the differences between their lexicons, morphologies, and grammars. The procedure is described in detail in the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
article. For instance, one could demonstrate that
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
is related to
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
by showing that many words of the former can be mapped to corresponding words of the latter by a relatively small set of replacement rules—such as the correspondence of initial ''es-'' and ''s-'', final ''-os'' and ''-i'', etc. Many similar correspondences exist between the grammars of the two languages. Since those systematic correspondences are extremely unlikely to be random coincidences, the most likely explanation by far is that the two languages have evolved from a single ancestral tongue (
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, in this case). All pre-historical language groupings that are widely accepted today—such as the
Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
,
Uralic The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, Algonquian, and
Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...
families—have been established this way.


Response of Greenberg's defenders

The actual development of the comparative method was a more gradual process than Greenberg's detractors suppose. It has three decisive moments. The first was
Rasmus Rask Rasmus Kristian Rask (; born Rasmus Christian Nielsen Rasch; 22 November 1787 – 14 November 1832) was a Danish linguist and philologist. He wrote several grammars and worked on comparative phonology and morphology. Rask traveled extensively to ...
's observation in 1818 of a possible regular sound change in Germanic consonants. The second was
Jacob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of th ...
's extension of this observation into a general principle (
Grimm's law Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Grim ...
) in 1822. The third was
Karl Verner Karl Adolph Verner (; 7 March 1846 – 5 November 1896) was a Danish linguist. He is remembered today for Verner's law, which he published in 1876. Biography Verner's interest in languages was stimulated by reading about the work of Rasmus Chris ...
's resolution of an irregularity in this sound change (
Verner's law Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law was ...
) in 1875. Only in 1861 did
August Schleicher August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...
, for the first time, present systematic reconstructions of Indo-European proto-forms (Lehmann 1993:26). Schleicher, however, viewed these reconstructions as extremely tentative (1874:8). He never claimed that they proved the existence of the Indo-European family, which he accepted as a given from previous research—primarily that of
Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of Mai ...
, his great predecessor in Indo-European studies.
Karl Brugmann Karl Brugmann (16 March 1849 – 29 June 1919) was a German linguist. He is noted for his work in Indo-European linguistics. Biography He was educated at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. He taught at the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Le ...
, who succeeded Schleicher as the leading authority on Indo-European, and the other
Neogrammarian The Neogrammarians (German: ''Junggrammatiker'', 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change ...
s of the late 19th century, distilled the work of these scholars into the famous (if often disputed) principle that "every sound change, insofar as it occurs automatically, takes place according to laws that admit of no exception" (Brugmann 1878). The Neogrammarians did not, however, regard regular sound correspondences or comparative reconstructions as relevant to the proof of genetic relationship between languages. In fact, they made almost no statements on how languages are to be classified (Greenberg 2005:158). The only Neogrammarian to deal with this question was
Berthold Delbrück Berthold Gustav Gottlieb Delbrück (; 26 July 1842 – 3 January 1922) was a German linguist who devoted himself to the study of the comparative syntax of the Indo-European languages. Early life Delbrück was born in Putbus. He studied at the uni ...
, Brugmann's collaborator on the ''
Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen ''Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen'' (German for ''"Outline of the comparative grammar of the Indo-Germanic languages"'') is a major work of historical linguistics by Karl Brugmann and Berthold Delbrück, publish ...
'' (Greenberg 2005:158-159, 288). According to Delbrück (1904:121-122, quoted in Greenberg 2005:159), Bopp had claimed to prove the existence of Indo-European in the following way: :The proof was produced by juxtaposing words and forms of similar meanings. When one considers that in these languages the formation of the inflectional forms of the verb, noun and pronoun agrees in essentials and likewise that an extraordinary number of inflected words agree in their lexical parts, the assumption of chance agreement must appear absurd. Furthermore, Delbrück took the position later enunciated by Greenberg on the priority of etymologies to sound laws (1884:47, quoted in Greenberg 2005:288): "obvious etymologies are the material from which sound laws are drawn." The opinion that sound correspondences or, in another version of the opinion, reconstruction of a proto-language are necessary to show relationship between languages thus dates from the 20th, not the 19th century, and was never a position of the Neogrammarians. Indo-European was recognized by scholars such as William Jones (1786) and Franz Bopp (1816) long before the development of the comparative method. Furthermore, Indo-European was not the first language family to be recognized by students of language. Semitic had been recognized by European scholars in the 17th century,
Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...
in the 18th. Dravidian was recognized in the mid-19th century by
Robert Caldwell Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a missionary for London Missionary Society. He arrived in India at age 24, studied the local language to spread the word of Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a tex ...
(1856), well before the publication of Schleicher's comparative reconstructions. Finally, the supposition that all of the language families generally accepted by linguists today have been established by the comparative method is untrue. For example, although
Eskimo–Aleut The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...
has long been accepted as a valid family, "Proto-Eskimo–Aleut has not yet been reconstructed" (Bomhard 2008:209). Other families were accepted for decades before comparative reconstructions of them were put forward, for example
Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
and
Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
. Many languages are generally accepted as belonging to a language family even though no comparative reconstruction exists, often because the languages are only attested in fragmentary form, such as the
Anatolian Anatolian or anatolica may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the region Anatolia * Anatolians, ancient Indo-European peoples who spoke the Anatolian languages * Anatolian High School, a type of Turkish educational institution * Anatol ...
language Lydian (Greenberg 2005:161). Conversely, detailed comparative reconstructions exist for some language families which nonetheless remain controversial, such as
Altaic Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are c ...
and
Nostratic Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian languages, Kartvelian ...
(however, a specification is needed here: Nostratic is a proposed proto-proto-language, while Altaic is a "simple" proto-language - with Altaic languages widely accepted as typologically related. Detractors of both proposals simply claim that the data collected to show by comparativism the existence of both families is scarce, wrong and non sufficient. Keep in mind that regular phonological correspondences need thousands of lexicon lists to be prepared and compared before being established. These lists are lacking for both the proposed families. Furthermore, other specific problems affect "comparative" lists of both proposals, like the late attestation for Altaic languages, or the comparison of not certain proto-forms, like proto-Kartvelian, for Nostratic.). R.L. Trask, Historical Linguistics (1996), chapters 8 to 13 for an intensive lookout on language comparison.Claudia A. Ciancaglini
"How to prove genetic relationships among languages: the cases of Japanese and Corean"
2005, "La Sapienza" University, Rome


A continuation of earlier methods?

Greenberg claimed that he was at bottom merely continuing the simple but effective method of language classification that had resulted in the discovery of numerous language families prior to the elaboration of the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
(1955:1-2, 2005:75) and that had continued to do so thereafter, as in the classification of Hittite as Indo-European in 1917 (Greenberg 2005:160-161). This method consists in essentially two things: resemblances in basic vocabulary and resemblances in inflectional morphemes. If mass comparison differs from it in any obvious way, it would seem to be in the theoretization of an approach that had previously been applied in a relatively ad hoc manner and in the following additions: *The explicit preference for basic vocabulary over cultural vocabulary. *The explicit emphasis on comparison of multiple languages rather than bilateral comparisons. *The very large number of languages simultaneously compared (up to several hundred). *The introduction of typologically based paths of sound change. The positions of Greenberg and his critics therefore appear to provide a starkly contrasted alternative: *According to Greenberg, the identification of sound correspondences and the reconstruction of protolanguages arise from genetic classification. *According to Greenberg's critics, genetic classification arises from the identification of sound correspondences or (others state) the reconstruction of protolanguages.


Time limits of the comparative method

Besides systematic changes, languages are also subject to random mutations (such as borrowings from other languages, irregular inflections, compounding, and abbreviation) that affect one word at a time, or small subsets of words. For example, Spanish ''perro'' (dog), which does not come from Latin, cannot be rule-mapped to its Italian equivalent ''cane'' (the Spanish word ''can'' is the Latin-derived equivalent but is much less used in everyday conversations, being reserved for more formal purposes). As those sporadic changes accumulate, they will increasingly obscure the systematic ones—just as enough dirt and scratches on a photograph will eventually make the face unrecognisable. On this point, Greenberg and his critics agree, as over against the Moscow school, but they draw contrasting conclusions: *Greenberg's critics argue that the
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
has an inherent limit of 6,000 – 10,000 years (depending on the author), and that beyond this too many irregularities of sound change have accumulated for the method to function. Since according to them the identification of regular sound correspondences is necessary to establish genetic relationship, they conclude that genetic relationships older than 10,000 years (or less) cannot be determined. In consequence, it is not possible to go much beyond those genetic classifications that have already been arrived at (e.g. Ringe 1992:1). *Greenberg argued that cognates often remain recognizable even when recurrent sound changes have been overlaid by idiosyncratic ones or interrupted by analogy, citing the cases of English ''brother'' (2002:4), which is easily recognizable as a cognate of German ''Bruder'' even though it violates Verner's law, and Latin ''quattuor'' (1957:45), easily recognizable as a reflex of Proto-Indo-European *' even though the changes ''e'' > ''a'' and ''t'' > ''tt'' violate the usual sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Latin. (In the case of ''brother'', the sound changes are actually known, but intricate, and are only decipherable because the language is heavily documented from an early date. In the case of ''quattuor'', the changes are genuinely irregular, and the form of the word can only be explained through means other than regular sound change, such as the operation of
analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
.) *In contrast, the "Moscow school" of linguists, perhaps best known for its advocacy of the Nostratic hypothesis (though active in many other areas), has confidence in the traceability of regular sound changes at very great time depths, and believes that reconstructed proto-languages can be pyramided on top of each other so as to attain still earlier proto-languages, without violating the principles of the standard comparative method.


Toward a resolution of the conflict?

In spite of the apparently intractable nature of the conflict between Greenberg and his critics, a few linguists have begun to argue for its resolution.
Edward Vajda Edward J. Vajda (Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, September 10, 1958 as Edward M. Johnson; changed his name in 1981) is a historical linguist at Western Washington University. He is known for his work on the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language fam ...
, noted for his recent proposal of Dené–Yeniseian, attempts to stake out a position that is sympathetic to both Greenberg's approach and that of its critics, such as Lyle Campbell and
Johanna Nichols Johanna Nichols (born 1945, Iowa City, Iowa) is an American linguist and professor emerita in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of C ...
.
George Starostin Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin (russian: Гео́ргий Серге́евич Ста́ростин; born 4 July 1976) is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1953–2005), and his ...
, a member of the Moscow school, argues that Greenberg's work, while perhaps not going beyond
inspection An inspection is, most generally, an organized examination or formal evaluation exercise. In engineering activities inspection involves the measurements, tests, and gauges applied to certain characteristics in regard to an object or activity. ...
, presents interesting sets of forms that call for further scrutiny by comparative reconstruction, specifically with regard to the proposed Khoisan and Amerind families.


See also

*
Comparative method (linguistics) In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...
*
Comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness ...
*
Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics The Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics (also called the Nostratic School) is a school of linguistics based in Moscow, Russia that is known for its work in . Formerly based at Moscow State University, it is currently centered at the (Institut ...
*
Swadesh list The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatedness ...


References


Bibliography


Works cited

* Baxter, William H. and Alexis Manaster Ramer. 1999
"Beyond lumping and splitting: Probabilistic issues in historical linguistics."
* Bomhard, Allan R. 2008. ''Reconstructing Proto-Nostratic: Comparative Phonology, Morphology, and Vocabulary'', 2 volumes. Leiden: Brill. * Bopp, Franz. 1816. ''Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache.'' Frankfurt-am-Main: Andreäischen Buchhandlung. * Brugmann, Karl. 1878. Preface to the first issue of ''Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen.'' Leipzig: S. Hirzel. (The preface is signed Hermann Osthoff and Karl Brugmann but was written by Brugmann alone.) * Brugmann, Karl and Berthold Delbrück. 1886-1893. ''Grundriß der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen'', 5 volumes (some multi-part, for a total of 8 volumes). Strassburg: Trübner. * Caldwell, Robert. 1856. ''A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. '' London: Harrison. * * * Delbrück, Berthold. 1884. ''Einleitung in das Sprachstudium'', 2d edition. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. * Delbrück, Berthold. 1904. ''Einleitung in das Studium der indogermanischer Sprachen'', 4th and renamed edition of ''Einleitung in das Sprachstudium'', 1880. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. * * (Photo-offset reprint of eight articles published in the ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'' from 1949 to 1954, with minor corrections.) * * Greenberg, Joseph H. 1960. "The general classification of Central and South American languages." In ''Selected Papers of the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 1956,'' edited by Anthony F.C. Wallace, 791-94. Philadelphia, publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press. (Reprinted in Greenberg 2005, 59-64.) * (Heavily revised version of Greenberg 1955.)(From the same publisher: second, revised edition, 1966; third edition, 1970. All three editions simultaneously published at The Hague by Mouton & Co.) * Greenberg, Joseph H. 1971. "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." ''Current Trends in Linguistics, Volume 8: Linguistics in Oceania'', edited by Thomas F. Sebeok, 807-871. The Hague: Mouton. (Reprinted in Greenberg 2005.) * * * * * * * Laakso, Johanna. 2003
"Linguistic shadow-boxing."
Review of ''The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics'' by Angela Marcantonio. * Lehmann, Winfred P. 1993. ''Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics.'' London: Routledge * Ringe, Donald. 1992. "On calculating the factor of chance in language comparison." ''American Philosophical Society, Transactions'' 82.1, 1-110. * Ringe, Donald. 1993. "A reply to Professor Greenberg." ''American Philosophical Society, Proceedings'' 137, 91-109. * Ringe, Donald A., Jr. 1995. "'Nostratic' and the factor of chance." ''Diachronica'' 12.1, 55-74. * Ringe, Donald A., Jr. 1996. "The mathematics of 'Amerind'." ''Diachronica'' 13, 135-54. * * Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994. ''On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy.'' Stanford: Stanford University Press. * Schleicher, August. 1861-1862. ''Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen'', 2 volumes. Weimar: H. Boehlau. * Schleicher, August. 1874.
A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin Languages
', translated from the third German edition by Herbert Bendall. London: Trübner and Co. (An abridgement of the German original.)


Further reading

Anti-Greenbergian * Clifton, John. 2002

* Hock, Hans Henrich and Brian D. Joseph. 1996. ''Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics.'' Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Kessler, Brett. 2003
Review of ''Time Depth in Historical Linguistics''.
''Diachronica'' 20, 373-377. * Kessler, Brett and A. Lehtonen. 2006.
Multilateral comparison and significance testing of the Indo-Uralic question
" In ''Phylogenetic Methods and the Prehistory of Languages'', edited by Peter Foster and Colin Renfrew. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. (Also
Unofficial prepublication draft
(2004).) * Matisoff, James. 1990.
On megalocomparison
" ''Language'' 66, 109-20. * Poser, William J. and Lyle Campbell. 1992
"Indo-European Practice and Historical Methodology."
''Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society'', 214-236. Greenbergian * Greenberg, Joseph H. 1990. "The American Indian language controversy." ''Review of Archaeology'' 11, 5-14. * Newman, Paul. 1995. ''On Being Right: Greenberg's African Linguistic Classification and the Methodological Principles Which Underlie It.'' Bloomington: Institute for the Study of Nigerian Languages and Cultures, African Studies Program, Indiana University. * Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994. ''The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue.'' New York: John Wiley and Sons.


External links



by Mark Rosenfelder (2002) {{DEFAULTSORT:Mass Comparison Historical linguistics Comparative linguistics Paleolinguistics