Mother Tongue Newsletter 19 (Spring 1993)

7/28/2019 Mother Tongue Newsletter 19 (Spring 1993)

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R ENEWSLETTER OF THE

ASSOCIATION FOR THESTUDY OF LANGUAGE

IN PREIDSTORY

~ Q ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ O ~ G U E 19 (Spr ing 1993)



MOTHER TONGUE 19 (Spr ing 19.9 3)

NEWSLETTER OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE IN PREHISTORY

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CONTENTS

OBITUARIES: Stephen LiebeDISil, Bans Hukarovslty,

Tborltild Jacoi:Ben • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

SYMPOSIUM ON THE PACIFIC RIM:. WEST • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Paul Benedict on Austro-Thai, Austroasiat ic , an

Japanese

Robert Blust on Austronesian aud I t s External

Relations

George Grace on Austro-Thai, IDdo-Pacific, and

General e c - e n t on LoDg-Rsoge eo.par isonGeoff o•Grady on P a ~ ~ a - N y u n g a n and Austra l ian

Beinz-Jurgen Pilmow on .Dene-Caucasic and Na-Deo

Paul Sidwell on Japanese as an Altaic LaDguage

SOMETHING NEW OUT OF AFRICA: R c f J e ~ Blench Reports • • • • • • • • 3

SWISS BIOGENETICIST DISTURBED BY oUR NEGLECT

OF PBERCB: ii>RK. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3

.AIJdri Langaney Unleashes a Torrent of Reprints

ON AFROASIATIC, SEMITIC, AND INDO-EUROPEAN • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4Saul Levin Answers Fle11illg • s Crit iqueCarleton Hodge e c - e n t s on These Things 8lld

Applies His Ideas on Reconstruct ion to TheilMORE INTERESTING ETYMOLOGIES/PROPOSED COGNATIONS • • • • • • • • • • 5

Jobn Beugston

AN INQUIRY OR TBOUGIIT PAPER: Patr ick Ryan• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5

ARE WE LOOKING FOR THE GARDEN OF EDEN II i THE WRONG PLACES?

Alvah Hicks Suggests That South Allerica Not Be

DiSIIisseci• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •6

LA LOTTE BAJEDHiE: THE ~ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •6

World Archeological Congress 3: New Delhi , IDd

Decellber 1994. Major Theile: LaDguage,

Anthropology. aud Archeology• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 6

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS (Conferences aud Publications) •••••••• 6

LE'J."1'ERS PRCJ!1 H:m:BERS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 8O a t • • r a i t J of loaoocboaotta

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VER.Y BRIEF EDITORIAL • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •9

BUEF' EDITORIAL• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •97 Wtaaloovor tb l t r o o tloa toa , lA

ASL'IP BOSIRESS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 10



-1 -OBITUARIES

Well, good co l leagues , we have l o s t th ree more out s t and ing

scho la rs . Two of them were long rangers and also f r i ends . The

area of the world sometimes ca l led 'C ircum-Mediterranean ' hasbeen deprived of t he i r work, most espec ia l ly tha t pa r t of it

usua l ly ca l l ed the Near East .

Stephen J , Lieberman was f i r s t a Sumerologis t , secondly aSemi t ic i s t , and t h i rd l y an Afras ian is t . Many of you probably readh is ob i tua ry on Samuel Noah Kramer in MOTHER TONGUE and so couldsee fo r yourse lves how c l e a r h i s wri t ing was and how formidableh is scho la r sh ip . It i s i ron ic t ha t Stephen, who mentionedJacobsen 's work in the Kramer ob i tua ry and was himself Jacobsen 's

s tuden t , should have h is own ob i tua ry wri t t en by h is t eacher!

Hans Mukarovsky excel led in those v i r tue s fo r which Viennai s j u s t l y famous, warmth, kindness , and hosp i t a l i t y . Like many ofyou I wi l l never fo rge t h i s 'Re in i sch ' conference in Vienna wherean i n t e rna t iona l group of scho la r s worked hard but l e f t Wien

mutte r ing how much they enjoyed themselves and wondering i fsomehow they could ge t a pos i t ion in Vienna! His g re a t c i ty i s

also famous fo r i t s scho la r sh ip ; indeed only a few genera t ionsago f locks of Americans s tud ied medicine the re (o r in Germany).How many o th e r c i t i e s spawned the l i ke s of Freud and Carl Hempel?Hans s tudied Basque long and ha rd , f ina l ly r e j e c t i ng (bu tr e luc t a n t ly ) the o f t proposed connect ion with Caucasic . His veryso l i d e f f o r t to show a t rans-Saharan family t i e between Basqueand the Mande sub-phylum·of Niger-Congo was unsuccessful in i t st ime. We Afr icanis t s were unable to cope with t h i s new idea whatwith the Greenberg c l a s s i f i c a t i o n j u s t emerging showing NigerCongo as the most l i ke l y source of the Mande group. But the

Mukarovsky hypothes is was l e t down gen t ly and with respec t bymost of us . His idea t ha t Berber was also r e l a t e d to Basque hasbeen suppor ted by Vaclav Bia lek . Not remarkably he may u l t ima te ly

be proven c or r e c t in a l l these mat te rs because th e blood groups(Rh, MN) ind ica te o ld t i e s of some s o r t from Ibe r i a to Liber i a .

Thorki ld Jacobsen was America ' s o ther g rea t Sumerologis t . Hewas not a long ranger or ASLIPer. Nobody ever asked him to jo inus . (Also t rue of Kramer. ASLIP i s not famous fo r i t s sys temat ic

r e c r u i t i n g . ) Jacobsen was sometimes spoken of with awe, as ascho la r with such high s tandards t ha t fe w gradua te s tudents a tHarvard ach ieved the doc to ra te under him. In f a c t t he re were onlyth ree , Stephen J . Lieberman being one of them.

We lack space enough to do adequate ob i tua r i e s with fu l l

b ib l iog raph ies on these t h ree s t e r l i ng fe l lows . We do no obi tuaryof Thork i ld Jacobsen but we have borrowed heav i ly from h is own

obi tuary of Stephen J . Lieberman. Th e Univers i ty of Pennsylvaniain the person o f the chairman of the Department of Asian andMiddle Eas te rn Studies w i l l fu rn i sh b ib l iog raph ies of Stephen 'swork to i n t e re s t ed scho la rs . His widow, Ms. J oe l l e Wallach,wishes to s e l l h is g re a t l i b ra ry . I f i n t e r e s t e d in buying th e

whole l i b ra ry (20-30,000 books + many j ou rna l s + some ra re

books) , con tac t he r . Ms. J oe l l e Wallach, 761 Raymond Avenue, S t.

Paul , Minnesota 55114, USA. I f you wish to phone her , and yourinqu i ry i s s e r ious , c a l l Hal t 412-683-5558 to g e t her phone # .



- ~ -STEPHEN J . LIEBERMAN

Stephen was a Minnesotan, another of those gi f t ed h i s to r i ca ll i ngu i s t s from tha t s t a t e . Born in March 1943, he died from ahear t a t t ack shor t ly before h is f i f t i e t h bi r thday in March 1993.Entering the Univers i ty of Minnesota a b i t too ea r ly to

experience the raucous 1960s as an undergraduate, he s tud ied

l i ngu i s t i c s and Greek. As the high t ide of Chomskyite theory was

sweeping l i ngu i s t i c s in those days, Stephen apparent ly was notswept a long . After gradua t ing cum l aude , he s tud ied fo r a year a t

Hebrew Univers i ty in Jerusalem before en te r ing Harvard fo r h isgraduate s tudies . He put down h is roots in the anc ien t Near Eastand received h is PhD in Near Easte rn Languages and Li te ra tures

from Harvard in the ea r ly ' 70s .

Jacobsen be l ieved t ha t Stephen was insp i red to take upAssyr iology by the l ec tu res of Tom Jones a t U/Minnesota . Jacobsensa id t ha t Stephen was "one of the most l ea rned and or ig ina l

scholars of h is genera t ion ." I t was a widely shared opinion.

Stephen won many honors , being e lec ted a Fellow in MesopotamianCiv i l i z a t i on of the Baghdad Center Committee of the AmericanSchools of Orien ta l Research (1970-71); being a Fellow of the

Nat ional Endowment fo r the Humanities (1975-76) ; be ing Visi t ingFellow a t Prince ton Univers i ty (1979-81) & John Simon GuggenheimMemorial Foundation Fellow (1979-80) ; then Inaugura l Fel low, the

Foundation fo r Mesopotamian Studies (1980-82). He rece ived gran ts

fo r t r a ve l or research from the American Council of LearnedSoc ie t ie s , the American Phi losop hica l Soc ie ty , the Univers i tyMuseum of the Univers i ty of P e n n s y l v a n i ~ . New York Univers i ty ' s

Art and Science Research Fund, and an Ins t i t u t iona l Grant fromthe Nat ional Science Foundation (USA).

He he ld pos i t ions of A s s ' t . Professor and Assoc. Professor

of Hebrew a t New York Univers i ty before jo in ing the SumerianDic t ionary Pro jec t in Phi ladelphia in 1976. Assoc. Prof , then

Professor a t Dropsie College (1982-86) . He held v i s i t i ngprofes so r sh ips a t the Jewish Theological Seminary of America(1983-84) and a t the Univers i ty of Cal i fo rn ia a t Los Angeles(1989-90) . From 1981 u n t i l h is death he served once again on theSumerian Dic t ionary Pro jec t as a Research Assoc ia te .

Of Stephen 's Sumerian work Jacobsen s ing led out h is

"met iculous s tudy THE SUMERIAN LOANWORDS IN OLD-BABYLONIANAKKADIAN (Harvard Semit ic Ser ies no.22, Missoula , 1977) which

cons t i t u t e s a ve r i t a b l e mine of mater ia l s fo r the s tudy ofSumerian phonet ics , mater i a l s t ha t are still to be worked up andmade use o f . Th e book also has a long, highly or ig ina l ana lys i s

of the nature of cuneiform wri t ing . " Jacobsen was also veryimpressed with Stephen ' s 1986 s tudy of the s tem-afformat ive of

the Semi t ic and Afro-Asia t ic verb. ( In BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS 43,pp. 577-628) . ( I thought t h a t was one of the bes t papers oncomparat ive Afroas ia t i c morphology t ha t I have ever seen . We

wanted to re -pub l i sh it in MOTHER TONGUE but c ou ldn ' t . HF)"He wi l l be so re ly missed by a l l who knew him." That was

Jacobsen 's l a s t comment. Indeed, he wi l l be missed! He was a veryf ine , warm man - - a r e a l Mensch - - and I l iked him very much. Ialso recommend h is l i b ra ry which has enough Juda ica and c l a s s i c a l

Near Easte rn mater i a l to suppor t a new depar tment somewhere.

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



OcrDelam derGcisteswisscDsc:baftn Fakultit dcr Univcrsitit W'ICn hat die traurige POicbt, vom

Todcdes

0. Univ.-Prof. Dr. phil. Hans Gunther Mukarovsky,

OrdeDtlic:hcr Univcrsititsprofcssor fiir Afrikanistik, W"arklic:bcr Ho&at,

GrOfiK d. mcx. OvAA. KmdK d. bclg. LO II., poln. VO m. Kl.,

KmdK d. sen. NOd. L, igypt. VO D. KL

am 29. November 1992 Mitteilung m macbcn.

Das Bcgribnis findct am Doancrstag, 10. Dczcmbcr 1992 um 13 Ubr aufdcm Hictzingcr Fricdhof, Aulbarungs

kapeDc 2, Kiiniglbcrg statt.

Einc Scclcnmcsscwird am Samstag, 12. Dczembcr 1992 um 8 Ubr in dcr Gcrsthofcr Kirchc St. Leopold,

1180 W'JCD, BischofFaber-Platz 8 gclcsen.

Die Fakultit vcrlicrt in Professor Mukarovsky cincn bcrvorragcndcn W'ISSCnscbaftlcr. Sic wird ibm stcts cin

chrcndcs AndcDkcn bcwabrcn.

Der Dckan :

0. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Herwig Friesingcr



IN KEIIORIAJ! HAllS G. JIUKAROVSXY, 1922-1992

The African Studies·enterprise has known Professor Bans Gunther Kutarovstyas a fine, creative scholar and a warm, understanding teacher. His untimelydemise on November 29, 1992, shortly after his seventieth birthday, removedfrom the European Africanist scene one of the very extraordinary students,

scholars and upholders of our field.

Hans Mukarovsky was horn in Vienna on October 2, 1922, and in 1940 enrolledin African Languages, Cultural Anthropology and Arabic at the University ofhis home town from which he received his doctorate with a dissertation onKissi grammar in 1949 (Die Sprache der Kisi in Liberia: A b r i ~ einer Grammatikmit Texten und Vokabular, bearbeitet nach Aufzeichnungen von Dora Earthy).

Five years later, Mukarovsky accepted an assignment to teach Africanlanguages, ini t ial ly Swahili, Rausa and Fulfulde, at the same university andestablished himself with a "doctorat d'Etat" thesis, Die Grundlagen des Fulund das Hauretanische, in 1963. At this period of time already, he had writtenextensively on subjects of debate as receding, in terms of historical insightand theoretical orientation, as suffixal conjugation in West African languagesand the sociopolitical trajectory of Katanga. By nature a peace-maker,Professor Mukarovsky stood fo r intradisciplinary, transdisciplinary and

intercultural cooperation and mutual appreciation. He was, furthermore, amongthe very foremost to draw open the doors of the Austrian post-bellum generalpublic to Africa in ascending cultural and political emancipation.

The year 1977 witnessed the publication of Mukarovsky's two-volume A studyin ¥estern Nigritic, the work by which be was perhaps best known in theEnglish-speaking moiety of African language research, as well as theestablishment of the "Institut fiir Afrikanistik der Universitat Wien" thedirectorship of which he exercised until 1991/92. Nande-Chadic common stock. Astudy of phonological and lexical evidence, much more than a topically refinedfollow up, appeared in 1987. (The editors of the Professor's Festschrift arefortunate to have received his conscious and kind acknowledgement of thatpublication in November last : cf. Komparative Afrikanistik: sprach-,geschichts- und literaturrissenschaftlicbe Aufsitze zu Ebren von Hans G.

Hukarovskya n l i ~ l i c h

seines 70. Geburtstages; Herausgegeben von E. Ebermann &al. Beitrige zur Afrikanistik Vienna, AfroPub 1992).The founding professor of the academic study of Africa in Vienna gave shape

to a toddling, yet academically independent discipline by ways of linguallyvivid and intellectually absorbing series of lectures and by virtue of histruly egalitarian principles of leadership. The magnamity of devotion tolanguage and man alike was typical of Hans Mukarovsky, as generations ofstudents and colleagues will testify.

Professor Mukarovsky's friendship and his scholarly stimulation will bemissed by a ll who were privileged to know him, whether personally or throughhis contributions to the Central European brand of African Studies,Africanistics. His memory is best honored by a constant awareness of a l lmethodological and substantive facets of our common body of knowledge, whetherderived

fromthe sciences of

language andl i terature or culture

andsociety,

acandid openness that more than anything else characterized the heart, themind, and the colorful personality of Hans Mukarovsky.

[by Karl t . Thomanek, University of Vienna]

-- - ~ - - - - -



- s--SYMPOSIUM ON THE PACIFIC RIM, WEST

We asked f i f t een prominent scholars of the languages ofsoutheas tern Asia and the southwest Pac i f i c to give us t he i ropinions on the taxonomic ques t ions confront ing us in thoseareas . As is the na ture of these th ings the r e p l i e s did not flowin r ap id ly . Never the less f ive scho la r s did give opinions ofsubstance; th ree of them (Geoff O'Grady, Paul Benedic t and RobertBlus t ) gave lengthy opinions of much value. Two (George Grace andH-Jurgen Pinnow) had highly impor tan t opin ions con ta ined in

r e l a t i ve l y b r i e f communiques. Above a l l , probably, Geoff O'Gradydid the most work and produced the most s t a r t l i n g conc lus ion . We

also gained gra t i s tw o o ther opinions ; one from Paul Sidwel l down

Melbourne way and the o ther from an outraged e-mai le r . Fina l ly ,we opted not to c u l l opinions from the e a r l i e r pub l i ca t ions ofNorman Zide and Gerard D i f f l o t h . Both abs ta ined from theSymposium fo r reasons known to themselves but not to me.

Paul Benedic t l eads o ff because he ce r t a i n l y ranks as thepioneer in th i s p a r t of the world. We've reproduced Pa u l ' s l e t t e r( the appropr ia te par t ) in i t s or ig ina l t ype s c r ip t . One has to

encounter one of h is l e t t e r s to apprec ia te h is v i t a l i t y . I t hasnot been poss ib le , nor wi l l it probably ever be, to reproduce thedebate between Roy Andrew Mil le r and Paul over the c la s s i f i ca t ionof Japanese. References to them are appropr ia te here .

In ACTA ORIENTALA 52 (1991): 148-68 Mil le r wrote a reviewa r t i c l e , e n t i t l e d "Japanese and Aust rones ian" . To give us a more

vivid look a t the s t y l e involved l e t us quote M i l le r ' s f i r s tsentence . Then we can quote another sentence in Pa u l ' s r ebu t t a l .Mil le r began: "A glance through t h i s as ton i sh ing little bookimmediate ly r evea l s t ha t it deserves n e i t h e r se r ious a t t en t i on

nor scho la r ly review; but given the presen t deplorable s t a t e ofJapanese comparat ive s tud i e s , it i s ce r t a i n to receive the

former , and so r e g re t t a b ly it becomes necessary to sub jec t it to

the l a t t e r . " Professor Mil ler plays very rough! As Paul has sa i d ,

"Roy i s accusing me of undermining Western c iv i l i za t ion ! "Pa u l ' s r ebu t t a l was in LTBA ( I have no volume# or year ) ; it

was e n t i t l e d "Mil ler : a l l about Japanese. A review of a review"After commenting on M i l le r ' s devas ta t ing review of Bened ic t ' s

SINO-TIBETAN: A CONSPECTUS which inc reased the book 's readership

gre a t ly , Benedic t sa id : "We come, now, to my th i rd book,JAPANESE/AUSTRO-TAI (JAT), which RAM as a Japano log is t was sure

to review. Again h is review t akes up a lo t of words and he f inds

abso lu te ly nothing good about the book. He c l ea r l y has read pa r t s

of the book, as he must also have read sec t ions of the CONSPECTUSbut he apparent ly sk ipped some of the a u thor ' s f a vor i t e passages

." The Benedic t ine response i s remarkably gen t le which mightbe a t t r i bu t ed to modesty or t e r r o r . But many scho la rs , inc luding

Mil le r h imse l f , would a t t r i b u t e the mildness to Paul ' s confidenceand e lan v i t a l . 'Why should the oak t ree concern i t s e l f with the

sow sc ra tch ing her back on i t s bark?" (Cour tesy of HermannJungra i thmayr . German t r ans l a t i on cour tesy of Fr i t z Ringer . )

Heinz-Jurgen Pinnow's l e t t e r fo l lows, par t l y to show you

t ha t h i s obi tuary was premature. The German we l eave to you. Hes t rong ly doubts the Muskovite recons t ruc t ions of Na-Dene and

f a i l s to suppor t Dene-Caucas ic . No o th e r opinions ( e . g . , Nahalior Aus t r ic ) because he h a s n ' t looked a t the data in years .



- b -12/20/92

Eal Fleming request of 9/21/92: Pl7UL 8f. .NE01CT

Austro-Tai: now substant ial ly strengthened in many respects ,with the diSCovery of incorporated morph. elements in KD and asolid YOU root to go with the previous I , along with a large numberof newly uncovered cognate sets of various kinds.

MY is still the 'odd man out 1 1 an early sp l i t from PAT, but therelat ive p ~ s i t i o n s of KD and JR with respect to AN remain arguableeven though in JAT I place Jp. closer to AN (Austro-Japanese).

To use M a t i s o ~ ~ ' s terminology, ST and AN are mega-groups whileAT is an expanded mega-group whereas IDene- (or Sino-) Caucasic andothers of that sor t deal t with by long ranbers are megalo-groups.

ATLC (1975) now badly out of date and should be used only withgreat caution··(like write me about any roots youwant to use); I dohope to get out updated version before very long and in the interimyou should check with updated things I included in JAT; see also mylong essay on Comparative Kadai: The Rules of Engagement, in Edmondson, J . Ao and D. Solnit (eds .) . Comparative Kadai (Dallas: SIL/UTASeries in Linguist ics, 1988) and the numerous ar t ic les by me on var i -ous KD problems/roots in the KADAI journal (ed. by Edmondson), Vols.1-4, many cit ing PAT-level roots . Three major KD groups rave now beenreconstructed: Tai, K a m ~ S u i , Hlai ( ~ Li: Hainan), with a ourth (Gelao) now under way, hence substant ial PKD-level r econ 1 s ow availableand wil l continue to improve rapidly, with several scholars in f ie ld .S i g n i ~ i c a n t l y , the changed recon's (from those in ATLC) have consist en t l improved the c ~ ' s with AN, e . g . the newly recjnstructed P-Hlai

is found in two cognate sets to date : ~ : - l o u A ..c::_.JHu (reg. s h i ~ t )1 ight ' , PAN -trwalu; ~ a i u C 1se l l ' , PAN ~ l - t s a l i u 'exchange/buy/sell ' ,both showing KD regular Canonical R e d u c t i o n - o n - t h e - ~ e ~ t (CRL), cont ras t ing with the CRR tha t is typical both o ~ MY and o ~ JR; see below.This consistent improvement as our recon 1 s get better is a hallmarkof (genetic) cognates as opposed to ' look-al ikes ' or 1 comps 1 (abbr.of M a t i s o ~ f ' s ' comparabil ia ' ) ; the basic rule here must be emphasized:'LOOK-ALIKE'S LOOK LESS AND LESS ALIKE AS WE LEARN MORE AND MORE. We

a l l - and esp. long rangers - are dealing with lang's and language~ a m i l i e s ~ o r which the recon ' s are grad. get t ing bet te r and bet ter ;review your own proposals: ~ o r given roots , as the recon's have improved have these roots looked bet te r and bet te r - worse and worse?To ci te one key example ~ r o m SEA: .for a proposed Aus t r ic , PMP · ~ · m a t a' eye ' , PI'I!K ~ < - m a t look good yet even here the syllabic reduction re -mains unexplained since, unlike the monosyllabic KD, PMK is more disyllabic than monosyllabic and thus a simple CRR won't do; the l a te rFormosan evidence has yielded PAN ~ ! - m a C a , with ~ ~ - c a cover symbol (Dyen)that ANists prefer not to ta lk about but that KD evidence makes cleaC'at least at the PAT level ; PKD { . . ~ ( m ) p r a A . c : : : . . PAT ~ r m a p r a , whence PMY may<.. ~ r m a y a , with -y for -pr- , and Jp. (another CRR lang.) me, Old Jp.ml! < .... -1:-mai (reg. s h i ~ t ) , paral lel ing MY; a l l t h ~ s very g ood f'or AT but

badt very bad f·or Austric; what's even worse, the Munda evidence (Pinnow) points to an ear l ie r P ~ . A - l e v e l * m ~ t , closer to PST *myakl Inthe case of Austric, claar ly, the anser i s : worse and worse.

Date fo r PAT? T.hink in terms of 5-6,000 BC, give or take a millenium or two.· . .All the evidence, inc l . that from prehistoric s i tes ,points to an AT homeland along the coast of the South China Sea, with



- 9 - -

movements offshore as well as inland, mainly to thew est and south.The Formosan lang's retain phonol. distinctions not present in l ~ ,e.g. J.i-C < ~ i ' c l u s t e r (see EYE, above) vs. -li-t, and Blust, I and othershave regarded the three Formosan groups !Atayalic, Tsouic and thelarger Paiwanic) as r e p r e s e n ~ i n g early spl i t (s ) from P A l ~ but Dyen andothers are now emphasizing evidence for a Form/Phil. grouping, onmorphological as well as lexical bas is j.while the KD evidence supports

both {:-c vs. ·Wt, etc . distinctions as well as the Form./Phil. lexicalt ie ; I 've called this the 1Form./Phil. dilemma•, which promises to bedebated at great length - w i t h ~ : m u c h i n t e n s i t ~ .. a t the coming symposium on F·ormosan lang's in 'l 'aipei. I sti l . l have the most l ikely historical scenario as having the Phi l . and other ~ W ( incl . Oceanic)groups bypassing Taiwan, so to speak, in offshore movements, prob. aser ies of them, rather than having a l l the AN peoples originating.·from the mainland via Taiwan (contra Peter Bellwood in Sci. -Am. 7/91).But don't bet on it- in time prehistory may provide some-clues.

Austric: Diffloth and I have both p u b l ~ s h e d our pro- vs. contraarguments recently; basically, we largely agree on the facts, that nocore (Swadesh-type) roots to speak of are shared by MK/AA and AN/AT

whereas, in contrast , there is some resemblance in morphology. Dargues that i t ' s okay i f the Swadesb-type roots don' t show up - i t ' sreal ly no big deal (he writes bet ter than this I) - they got lost ~ o rone reason ·or another (he mentions a •taboo' factor) while a varietyof 1 speciallzed 1 roots, such as SCRUFFY and SMEGMA, were retained.I argue that the morph. resemblance can be explained on an areal bas is , in a region (SEA) that has become famous for this sor t of thing{see the many papers on various aspects, inc l . tonal diffusion, byMatisoff e t a l . ) and that one cannot reconstruct a PA(ustric) on thebasic of SCRUFFY/SMEGMA roots; no respectable IEist would accept it

for PIE and we shouldn't go along with i t for PA. I keep complainingabout comparativists who think in Gertrude Stein terms: a word i s aword i s a word. They tend to count cognate sets /roots - often ask me

'how many you got '? I never know - a l l I know is ~ t h e r what I 've golooks l ike a proto-language. AT does, PA doesn't . No counting.

g-+-,!! (please !!,2! Sinitic::: . one side of ST made up of Chineseand Bai): an old Conrady-\Yulff idea (see ATLC: 450-51); as G. s. wouldsay, 'There's no there there ' : no roots, no morphology. I 've writtenon early AT loans to Chinese, from a Donor-to-Arch. Ch. lang. (DAC)>and recently Sagart has collected items of this kind, from AN, as evidence for a genetic relat ionship. Long rangers should look elsewhere.

S i n o - C a u c a s i c ~ Dene-Caucasic (Bengtson): I 've not been impressedby early attempts tO!Ink ST with Yenisei-Ostyak (Ket) or Dene - see

Conspectus: fn 's 8, 13-nor what what I 've ::1een of more recent attemptsfor a Caucasian hook-up. Bengtson has sent me material 'for a reviewof the ST aspects and I'll proceed with that . I'll also compare thestrength of such of 's with others tha t are available for ST and AT,to determine whether there is basis for PSC or PDC vs. P-Sino-AT.

Nahali, Australian, Indo-Pacific: I pass - don't know enough.



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- or-

1J " bi ·' . r -f- C: ./• (' +\.. LJ ~ ' • (..1_..-' 1,• ....----··--- - - - - - ~ --•w• ··-·-··--·

Dear Hal,

Herewith my response to your call for opinions regarding distant genetic relationship.

I am one of the few Austronesianists who has worked actively with data representing the entire language

family (around 930 members). For this reason I am familiar not only with "well-behaved" languages suchas Tagalog, Malay or Samoan, bu t also with some of the more lexically divergent Austronesian languages

of Melanesia and other areas. At present I have a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation

to produce a new and greatly expanded Austronesian comparative dictionary to replace Dempwolff (1938).Let me hasten to add t h a t - unlike a certain book recently published by Mouton with the misleading title

Comparative Austronesian Dictionary- mine is a real comparative dictionary, not a modern-day Mithridates

masquerading as something it is not.

To date I have produced about 800 printed pages of publishable material. Extrapolating from what

this represents in Dempwoff (1938) I estimate that I am about 16-20% of the way through. In other words,

the completed work will be some 3,500-4,000 pages, and will fill several volumes. It will have the fol

lowing overall structure: 1. Introduction (discussion of earlier contributions, methodological principles,conventions adopted, including list of language name abbreviations, major subgroup membership of each,

published sources, etc.), 2. 27 sections (*a to *z) ofreconstructions on any of nine different, explicitly marked

chronological levels, together with support ing evidence. Each entry begins with a number code marking the

chronological level, followed by the reconstructed form, its gloss and any doublet or disjunct ( terms explained

in the Introduction) which needs to be cross-referenced to it. Following a space the supporting evidence isgiven by citing language-name abbreviations in a fixed geographical order grouped under major subgroup

headings. Many en.tries conclude with a Note which contains information on possibly related forms which

are problematic in various ways, on problems of semantic reconstruction, and so on. Some of the notes are

a page or two in length, 3. an appendix of monosyllable 'roots' (submorphemic recurrent sound-meaning

associations), 4. an appendix of loanwords which are widely distributed and hence potential traps which

could lead (and in some cases in the past have lead) to erroneous reconstructions, 5. an appendix of whatI judge to be chance similarities or "noise" (to squelch possible complaints that they are valid etymologies

which I simply overlooked), 6. an English-Austronesian finderlist.

My appendix of chance similarities already contains over 380 entries. This was generated in system

atically searching about 120 sources and producing somewhat less than 1,000 accepted etymologies. The

judgement that a comparison is a product of chance convergence rather than of shared history is a distil

late of several different considerations which include: 1. the number of languages in which a phoneticallyand semantically similar form is attested, 2. how similar and distinctive the semantic agreement is, and 3.

whether the assertion of recurrent sound correspondences requires any kind of ad hoc ancillary hypothesis.

As you know, a number of proposals of rather startling variety have been made about the externalrelationships of the Austronesian languages. Some of these are quite obscure (e.g. the claim that Beothuk

and Austronesian are related), while others are reasonably well-known. I have studied both published

and unpublished evidence for 1. Austric (Schmidt, Reid), 2. Austro-Thai (Benedict), 3. Austronesian

Japanese (Kawamoto), and Japanese-Austro-Thai (Benedict), 4. Chinese-Austronesian (Sagart), and 5.

Indo-European-Austronesian (Bopp). In addition I have corresponded with Merrit t Ruhlen regarding the

Austronesian content of his 'Global etymologies', and with some other long-rangers. Laurie Reid and I are

friends and colleagues in the same department, Paul Benedict and I are friends who have corresponded and

. shared information for years, Takao Kawamoto and I have never met, bu t have corresponded and shared

information for years, and Laurent Sagart is visiting this year in Hawaii, and we have had some usefulfriendly conversations. I mention this because so much of the discussion of distant genetic relationship that

I have seen recently has been polarized to the point that honest and interested disagreement is sometimes

dismissed as nothing more than ideological posturing. When scientific inquiry begins to resemble political

squabbling to this extent I would rather go out into the fresh air and leave the room to others to battle it

out over their cocktails.

1



- /D-

This is my well-considered, and unbiased position: I have yet to see a body of evidence supporting any

proposal concerning the external relationships of Austronesian which, if confined to Austronesian languages,

I would not unreservedly consign, etymology by etymology, to my Appendix of "Noise". All of the proposals

concerning the external relationships of Austronesian that I have seen to date suffer from serious method

ological problems (much as I like and admire some of those who have proposed them). Contrary to the viewof many long-rangers those of us who remain skeptical are not clrised-minded or boorish plodders who cannot

take the giddy excitement of great scientific breakthroughs. We simply insist on uniform canons of evidence

for established language families and proposed super-families.Of all the proposals which I have studied Benedict's Austro-Thai is to my mind the most sophisticated,

the one most strongly motivated by a priori plausibility, and the one most likely to have some historical

basis. Having said this le t me emphasize that I have worked through many of the etymologies in Austro-Thai:

language and culture in relation to Benedict's tables of sound correspondences both on my own, and togetherwith students in classes which I have taught. The results are very clear: the proposed sound correspondences

work only if one accepts an elaborate machinery of hypotheses designed to save each failed etymology each

in a unique way. In other words, the "generalizations" about sound correspondences betweend Tai-Kadaiand Austronesian are spurious, since the only statement that can be reduced to tabular form is one which

includes a tortured appendix of excuses as to why the correspondences really don't work the way they

are said to work. Reid has suggested that Benedict has buried a valid argument for Austro-Thai beneath

an avalanche of dubious etymologizing and hyperbole. In Benedict 's view the attested Tai-Kadai forms

sometimes correspond to the first syllable, and sometimes to the second syllable of disyllabic Austronesianreconstructions. In Reid's view the only valid etymologies show Tai-Kadai forms corresponding to the last

syllable of Austronesian reconstructions. I agree with Reid that the most promising etymologies fit thepattern he describes. Some of these are quite striking (e.g. PAN *sakit, Kam kit 'pain', PAN *qetut, Kam

tUt 'fart', PAN *Sapuy, Kam pui 'fire'). The problem with these and other similarly striking comparisons

is that reconstruction within Tai-Kadai leads to proto-Tai-Kadai forms which are either phonetically less

similar to PAN reconstructions than the attested forms, or which involve additional segments which seem

to have no place in the PAN form. In other words, the further back one reconstructs in both Austronesian

and in Tai-Kadai the less similar the two proto-languages appear. This, of course, is just the opposite of ellle"

what o u l d expect if two groups of languages derive from a common ancestor. I t is, admittedly, possible

that the PAN reconstructions themselves need to be modified, bu t any modification should be made on the

basis of internal Austronesian evidence, not on the basis of external evidence from languages whose genetic

relationship to Austronesian is still in question.

In a casual communication such as this it is hard to do more than scratch the surface. You asked

for a statement of position and a few remarks in justification. I continue to be a skeptic not out of any

fixed ideological stance, but out of continuing disappointment with the quality of evidence that has been

offered in support of most claims of distant genetic relationship. Let me conclude with some concrete

examples using real language data to make my point. Consider the following comparisons: (1) Ilokano (N.

Philippines) bartzt 'variety of thin-skinned, greenish banana', Bontok (N. Philippines) btilat 'banana plant,

banana fruit', Tanjong (Borneo) balat 'banana', (2) Ilokano (a)wanan 'tiebeam', Ifugaw (N. Philippines)

wtinan 'the four beams of an Ifugaw house or granary .. . they serve as supporters of all the rafters of the

pyramidal roof', Yamdena (S. Moluccas) wanan 'bamboo lath on which thatch is placed in making roofing',

{3) Atayal (N. Taiwan) paga 'bed', Balinese paga 'bier', Sasak (Lombok) paga 'palanquin for bridal pair', (4)

Bikol (N-C. Philippines) btirang 'bewitch, cast a spell on someone', Aklanon (C. Philippines) btirang 'black

magic, voodoo, witchcraft', Gedaged (New Guinea) baz 'incantation, spell, magic, charm', (5) Javanese wilis

'counted, calculated', Sa'a (S.E. Solomons) wili 'give tribute, contribute money to a chief at a feast', Fijianwili 'count, read', (6) Tagalog btilok 'membranous covering structure of plants, fruits or nuts', Rembong

(Flores, Lesser Sundas) balok 'sheath (betel nuts), cover of bamboo, corn', (7) Tagalog (N-C. Philippines)

wtilat 'be destroyed', waltit 'destroyed', Javanese walat 'heaven-sent retribution', {8) Motu bala 'tail fins of a

fish', Sa'a pala 'dorsal membrane of a swordfish', Woleai (Micronesia) pash(a) 'tail of a fish'. Despite their

superficial plausibility, all of the above comparisons are treated in my Austronesian Comparative Dictionary

as "noise," and are accordingly assigned to an appendix of rejects rather than to the main body of the

dictionary. In (1) the Ilokano and Bontok forms are judged to be cognate, but the Tanjong form is not, in

2



- 71-

(2) the Ilokano and Ifugaw forms are judged to be cognate, but the Yamdena form is not, in (3) the Balinese

and Sasak forms are judged to be cognate, but the Atayal form is not, in (4) the Bikol and Aklanon forms

are judged to be cognate, bu t the Gedaged form is not, and in (5) and (8) none of the forms are judged

to be cognate. Space does not permit me to justify these judgements here, but a comparison of the above

material with that presented for many arguments in favor of distant genetic relationships will, I believe, show

no substantial differences in quality. The difference between the two cases is that all of the languages from

which the above material is drawn are genetically related, and this claim can be supported through reference

to many perfectly good etymologies. As noted already, I have generated some 380 rejects (consisting both ofloanwords and of chance resemblances) in documenting less than 1,000 etymologies to date. Since I am less

than 20% of the way toward completing the dictionary many more rejects clearly will be generated in the

work that lies ahead. The rejection of such comparisons is based on a careful and thoughtful consideration of

the evidence. The rejection of all claims regarding the external relationships of the Austronesian languages

which have been made thus far rests on exactly the same kind of careful and thoughtful consideration.

Sincere ly ,

Robert A. Blust

P.S. The paragraph beginning "Hy appendix" on page 1 shouldread ''Hy appendix of r e j ec t s a l ready conta ins" r a the r than ''Hyappendix of chance s imi la r i t i e s a l ready conta ins ." I couldn ' tge t our p r in t e r here to \oJOrk a f t e r I caught th e e r ro r .

3



~ ~ ! v e ~ s ! ~ y c ~ ~ a w a ! ~ s ~ Y a ~ o a~ e ~ a r t c e ~ t o ~ : ! ~ g ~ ! s t ! c s

:sao = a s ~ - W e s ~ 7 - a ~F.onolulu r.: 9 6 8 ~ 2

5 ! ~ o v e : : n b e ~ 1992

Harold C. FlemingAssocia t ion for the S t ~ d y of Language ! ~ P r e h i s t o ~ y5240 Forbes Ave.

P i t t s b u r g ~ PA 15217

Dear Hal:

: •ve ~ e c e ! v e d y o ~ r c o ~ m u n ! c a t i o n of S e ~ t . 21. I d o ~ ' tth ink I have much in the way of opinions of a:-. e>:pert na :-:.:.re

to of fe r . In an e f f o r t to be c o o ~ e r a t ! v e , :!:: say ~ ~ efol lowing:

w ~ e ~ S e ~ e d i c t ' s or ig ina l p ~ o ? o s a l fo r a ~ e l a t ! o ~ s ~ ! pbetween Austronesian and Ta!-Kadai came o-:.:.t, : t h o ~ g h t it:looked promising. Some year s l a t e r I went t : h ~ o ~ g ~ the

ava i lab le da ta somewhat: more c a r e f ~ : : y , and found some--butnot much--mere t ~ a ~ appeared in the or i g i na l p u ~ : ! c a t i o n . Istill th ink it

looks pre t tyl ! k e ~ y .

However, t he re a rea l so

some ind ica t ions of the re la t ionship of A ~ s t r o n e s i a n to

Aust roas ia t ic as proposed by Schmidt. However, from what: •ve seen, the ~ a i - X a d a i case ~ o o k s b e t t e r . ~ h e y =.!ght a : :be r e l a t ed , of c o ~ r s e , but I have no idea what e l se mighta lso be inc luded, or in what s ~ b g r o u ~ ! n g .

( I a lso t h ink , fo r what it's worth, t ha t =oe

Greenberg 's Indo-Paci f ic looks very good) .You po in t out t h a t I ' v e , as you put it, "seen f i t not

to jo in ASLIP". I s u p p o s e ! fee l kind of discouraged aboutthe performance of th e profess ion in dea l ing with th i s k i n ~of problem. I ' ve seen so many claims about ~ e l a t i o n s h i p st ha t show no apprec ia t ion of how easy it i s to f ind words in

any tw o languages t ha t are s i mi l a r e n o ~ g h p h o ~ e t ! c a l l y t ha tone could imagine how they might derive from a common source( in f ac t , sometimes they even se l ec t o ~ t p a ~ t s of words) ,and then , given tw o wcrds so s e l e c t e d , t o f igu re out ap la us ib l e way t ha t t h e i r meanings might have been der ived

from a common or ig ina l . :n shor t , they give no reason a t a l lto th ink th e whole th ing i s n ' t a matter of chances im i l a r i t i e s and seem qu i t e unaware t ha t there could be aproblem.

And then on th e o t h e ~ s ide I see a res i s t ance to new

proposals t ha t s t r i k e s me as r e f l ec t ing e i the r a near

phar i sa i ca l at tachment to n ice t i e s of procedure or e l se a

response to what i s perceived as a t e r r i t o r i a l t h r ea t .

I gran t you t ha t the ques t ion of more d i s t an t

r e l a t i onsh i ps i s i n t r i n s i ca l l y of gre a t i ~ t e r e s t . :t's ~ u s tt ha t I f ind it l e s s embarrass ing no t to see so much of whati s being done on one s ide and the o ther of the q ~ e s t i o n .

Sincere ly ,4 ~/t!:J:.G e o r ~ e w. Grace,

Emeri tus Professo r



13 -

1

Pama-Nyungan: an entirely viable Family-level

construct within the Australian Phylum

Geoff O'Grady

University of Victoria

Victoria, B.C.

Canada

Is your theory crazyenough to be true?

For non-specialists in Australian or Pama-Nyungancomparative linguistics, what follows will become clearer if large

scale maps of Australia are consulted. Ideally, such maps should

detail topography, rainfall distribution, the locations of the 230languages originally spoken throughout the continent and an

indication of the classifications that have been put forward for them.In particular, the following regions should be noted:

1. Northeast Arnhem Land

2. The remainder of Arnhem Land as well as theKimberley District of Western Australia



-llf-2

3. North West Cape and hinterland

4. The islands of Torres Strait, west and east.

5. Cape York Peninsula

6. The Arandic-speaking area of the Centre

7. Gippsland

8. The remainder of mainland Australia

9. Tasmania

What follows is an aumg of my views concerning the geneticaffinities -- internal and external -- of Australian languages. These

views have been evolving since June 1949, when I had my first

opportunity to hear and study an Australian language, Nyangumarta

(beginning with the noun /wi ka/ 'fire'), and to realize the

similarities in basic design which it bore to other languages I had

studied, such as Latin, German and Russian. Some of these

similarities were especially striking, e.g. with respect to the

presence in all four languages of rich systems of nominal case

markers. But there were also profound differences. For example, no

item of the vocabulary that I learned in those first weeks, such as/wika/, bore any formal similarity whatsoever to its semantic

equivalent in any of the non-Australian languages I had dabbled in

at the Adelaide Public Library years earlier, such as Malay, Swahili

and Hungarian. I felt indeed privileged to be able to make a start m

the study of a language in the Outback -- when not searching for

sheep or fixing fences -- whose speakers were the epitome of

patience and kindness in the face of my many questions.

The history of ideas on the internal and external relationships

of the Australian languages is replete with hair-raising oscillationsfrom one extreme in thinking to the other. As Bob Dixon points out



-1 s--

3

in his 1980 book, The lant:uages of Australia. members of CaptainCook's first expedition to the Pacific in 1770 transcribed nearly 200words of Guugu Yimidhirr, spoken on the northeast coast of the

continent. This material was generally taken at the time to berepresentative of a single Australian language spoken throughout

the continent.

In 1788, when a convict settlement was established at PortJackson (the site of modern Sydney, 2400km to the south), the locallanguage, Dharuk, turned out to differ considerably from GuuguYimidhirr. And in 1791, in what Dixon (1980:9-11) rightly termsthe first great breakthrough in Australian linguistic studies, it

transpired that the language spoken just 65km to the northwest of

Sydney was different again! What did this imply for the continentas a whole?

The second great breakthrough came in 1841 with thepublication of Sir George Grey's work on his often perilous

expeditions in Western Australia. Grey noted 'recurrent similaritiesamongst the multitude of languages' (Dixon 1980:11 ). Thus 'foot'

was T JENNA at Perth in the west, TIDNA at Adelaide in the south,

and TINN A at Sydney in the east (with forms in upper case to

identify the 'prescientific' transcriptions of the era). Buttressed by

modern transcriptions of terms for 'foot' in still other languages,such as the Geytenbeeks' jinang for Gidabal or jina for

Nyangumarta (see map), these forms can be confidently taken backto Proto Pama-Nyungan (PPN) *jinang.

For 'tongue,' Grey brought into focus the similarities betweenTDALLUNG at Perth, TADLANGA (Grey)ff ADLANYA

(Teichelmann and Schiirmann 1840) at Adelaide, and TULL UN

(Grey)/TALLING and TAL-LANG (Hunter and Collins respectively,

in Curr 1887) at Sydney. None of these representations makes clear

that the initial stop in each case was almost certainly a !aminodental - /th/ in the practical orthography used here. So also for the

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



1 ! --- p

4

'Adelaide' and 'Sydney' terms for 'foot' above. Forms transcribed inmodern times by professional linguists make this apparent - witness

Bidyara-Gungabula thalany and Warlpiri jalanypa 'tongue'. Thus

Australianists are pretty well agreed on the reconstruction * alany,

and ascribe this to PPN. (Note: Nick Evans shows conclusively that

this root, together with several dozen others, can in turn be referred

back to a genuinely Proto-Australian level. By contrast, h o w e v ~ r ,over 2,000 roots and suffixes can be reconstructed for Proto Pama

Nyungan).

Grey's observations resulted in the pendulum's swinging to

the opposite extreme, with scholars now being led to believe that all

of the languages of Australia belonged to a single language family.

It is ironic, incidentally, that among the handful of words which hedocumented ( 1841 :II: 131) for the Nhanda language, spoken well tothe north of Perth, was the inconspicuous-looking form MAL 0

'shade'. This is reconstructible to PPN *malung without difficulty,

but PPN acquired it from -- and here comes the bombshell!! -

overseas, namely as an early (ca. 4,000-year-old) Austronesian loan!

That is, if O'Grady and Tryon (1990) are correct - and they believe

they are, since over half a dozen further arguably Austronesian

loans into Proto-Pama-Nyungan were documented as well. Here's a

plausible scenario, then:

I. The dingo IS introduced into Australia about 4,000

years ago.

2. New tool technology starts to spread across Australia,

also about 4,000 years ago.

3. Austronesian loanwords are introduced into Australia

about 4,000 years ago and become part and parcel of

the subsequent spread of Pama-Nyungan across

seven-eighths of the continent.



1 7

5

Common sense demands that at least allowance be made for

the possibility that these three developments are simply different

manifestations of one and the same prehistoric event, namely, the

meeting and intermingling of Australian and Austronesian cultureson the far northeast Australian littoral. There has been far too

much closing of minds in Australian linguistics to such possibilities

as the presence of old Austronesian loan words at the sites of

present-day Perth or Adelaide, for example -- thousands of

kilometers from where Austronesians presumably would ever have

landed on the continent. Now that we have over a thousand roots

and suffixes of PPN age reconstructed -- albeit roots of varying

degrees of plausibility -- it behoves some enterprising, energetic,

imaginative and computer-oriented graduate student to embark on

a thoroughgoing comparison of ancestral Pama-Nyungan andAustronesian forms. The results, taken together with the recent

findings of scholars such as Barry Blake, Nick Evans, Rhys Jones and

Patrick McConvell, could well lead to a final, incredibly rich and

detailed vindication of Pama-Nyungan as a quintessentially viable

language family with a fairly shallow time depth. The estimate of

4,000 years that I have been bandying about for untold years, to all

who would lend an ear, may yet turn out to be not far off the mark.

I urge upon the sceptic a 630-second period of total suspension of

disbelief -- in other words ten minutes for clearing the mind of

preconceived ideas and half a minute for considering at least thepossibility of old Austronesian loans having been carried by

speakers of Proto Pama-Nyungan to far extremities of the continent.

I f such loans could be shown to be systematically absent from non

Pama-Nyungan languages, the implications concerning the further

vindication of Pama-Nyungan as a genetic construct would be

obvious.

All this must be viewed, of course, in the context of a 50,000-

year (+) presence of humans in New Guinea-Australia-Tasmania,

which would have been a single continent for something like a halfof that colossal span of time (from 37,000 to about 10,000 BP). It

· ~ - - - - - - - - - - .. · · · - - · - · - · · ~ ~ - · · - - . - - · - · - - ·.-



- 1 ~ -6

seems highly probable that of the roster of the many languages

spoken in the Australian supercontinent 27,000 years ago, say, more

than 90% would have become extinct eons ago. And this process of

language loss would have been considerably hastened by the spreadof Pama-Nyungan, together with Austronesian loanwords and a new

technology, over seven-eighths of the continent about 23,000 years

later. (The concomitant spread of the dingo would not have been

limited to what was to become Pama-Nyungia, of course!)

But more of such heresy anon. We noted above that Grey

(1841) initiated the idea that all Australian languages were related.

The pendulum was to take another wild swing in 1919 with the

publication of Wilhelm Schmidt's Die Gliederung der australischen

Sprachen. Although Schmidt agreed with Grey to the extent ofrecognizing that at least the languages of the southern two-thirds of

the continent (apart from the Centre) were 'related through a

number of common features,' he nevertheless concluded that 'the

whole of the north of Australia contains languages which do not

show any lexical relationship and only very few grammatical

relationships with the larger group and even with each other. Here

in the north we find a wealth of languages comparable with the

diversity found in New Guinea' (Schmidt, cited in Dixon 1980:221 ).

In terms of the nine regions detailed at the beginning of this airing

of my views, Schmidt was proposing that the languages of regions 3,7 and 8 were related, while those of the rest of mainland Australia

fell outside this grouping and themselves formed a number of

genetic groupings separate from one another.

While Schmidt never enjoyed the possibility, indeed the

privilege, of doing actual fieldwork in Australia, Arthur Capell was

able to spend two years in the field in the north and northwest of

the continent, under extremely rugged conditions, and to effect the

third great breakthrough in Australian linguistics. Armed with

a grammatical elicitation schedule and a 600-item wordlistquestionnaire, he sytematically surveyed about sixty -- yes, sixty! --

- - ~ - ~ - -



- 7 0 , -.. i

7

languages extending from La Grange Bay on the Indian Ocean1600km eastward to the Gulf of Carpentaria (see map). A tiny partof this enormous work appeared in the journal Oceania in 1940.

Capell proposed a dichotomy of Australian languages into ( 1)suffixing and (2) prefixing-cum-suffixing (the latter being located in

our Region 2 -- the Kimberleys and most of Arnhem Land).Although this was a typological classification, it did anticipate, with

a few exceptions, the later Pama-Nyungan/non Pama-Nyunganlexicostatistic classification proposed in 1962 by Hale.

Capell correctly recognized that the suffixing languages of

northeast Arnhem Land (Region I) are genetically far closer to

suffixing languages spoken 400km to their southwest than to theirprefixing-cum-suffixing (hereafter 'prefixing' for short) neighbours.

Indeed, this could be said of the suffixing languages as far afield as

you can get within Australia and still not drown in icy southern seas-- Cape Leeuwin in the far southwest, Cape Howe in the southeast, at

37230" S., and Saibai Island, nestling close up to Papua New Guineaat 92 S.

Capell pursued this and other themes further in his major

' 1956 work, A New Approach to Australian Liniuistics. Evidence

cited by him which bore on questions of genetic relationship amongAustralian languages in general included that of pronouns, nominalcase-marking suffixes, verbal inflectional suffixes and 48 word

roots. As one of his students, I showed in my BA thesis in 1959 that

lexicostatistic evidence corroborated, in broad measure, the outlinesof the genetic grouping which Capell's work had brought into focus.

Thus Gupapuyngu, as witness language of Region I, turned out to

share more cognates -- 20% -- with the Kanyara languages of the

North West Cape area in Western Australia, 2400km distant, than

with any other languages in Australia, including especially its

'prefixing' neighbours. (This discovery provoked equally as muchrapture and intellectual excitement, on my part at least, as the



8

Algonkian/Ritwan or Sino-Tibetan/North Caucasian breakthroughs

by US and Russian scholars were to later).

The fourth great breakthrough in Australian linguistics

consisted in the very arrival of Ken Hale on Australian soil early in1959. This prodigiously gifted, hardworking and insightful scholar

and truly great human being was to effect a profound upgrading in

the quality and quantity of research done on Australian languages.What concerns us mainly here is his contribution to the geneticclassification of these languages ( 1962,1964). He perceived withgreat clarity that almost all of Capell's 'suffixing' languages fellwithin a single family. He drew on the terms for '(aboriginal)

person' in the northeasternmost and southwesternmost corners of

the continent to coin the very felicitous name 'Pama-Nyungan' forwhat he (and others, including myself) had come to regard as 'thelargest coherent genetic linguistic construct' (i.e., language family) in

Australia. And this name has stuck.

Outside of Pama-Nyungia but still within Australia, i.e., withinthe remaining one-eighth of the continent, Hale recognized no fewer

than twenty-eight families and language isolates coordinate withPama-Nyungan -- an indication of the enormous linguistic diversity

in that part of Australia. (Later work by Wurm and by Blake ,

pointed the way to a reduction in the number of distinct families,however).

One of Hale's most important and spectacular accomplishments

was to demonstrate conclusively that great phonological diversity in

the languages spoken east of the Gulf of Carpentaria -- i.e., on CapeYork Peninsula -- belied their genetic homogeneity, which became

apparent as his reconstruction of their common ancestor, Proto

Pamic, proceeded.

The non-Pama-Nyungan languages spoken west of the Gulf,on the other hand, are phonologically homogenous but genetically



---;;_]-

9

extremely diverse, as is made abundantly clear m Jeffrey Heath's

1978, 1981 and 1984 works.

Let us conclude this first instalment outlining my views on theAustralian genetic linguistic picture.

I would like to provoke readers of Mother Tongue with a small

lexical database involving languages distributed throughout much of

the area between Indonesia and Tasmania. Those interested might

want to rise to the challenge of actually getting to grips with some

data, and to use it in forming hypotheses concerning some

peculiarly Australian facets of comparative work. How many

cognate sets would a reasonable linguist want to extract from the

114 forms given. after all? Better to mess around with some data

than hear me pontificating in the abstract. More next quarter!

1 UMPila aJa sha1low

2 WadJuK BUDJOR ground

3 GUPapuyngu buthuru ear

4 GUP d h irr ' thirryu -n frighten

5 WJK DJAM water

6 WJK GABBI water

7 WJK GORAD short; stunted

8 GUP gurnn short

9 War1piri(WLB) jalanypa tongue

1 0 PINtupi jarlinypa tongue



1 0

I I YiDiNy jili eye

I2 PIN Jina foot

I 3 GIDabal jinang foot

I4 WaRriYangka jirril afraid

I5 NY Angumarta jiti-rni flush (bird from cover)

I6 NYA jungka ground, dirt

I 7 PIN kapi water

I 8 DIYari kapi egg

I9 GAWurna KARlD wife

20 NgarluMA kartu man, male -- as of

animal

2I MaRDuthunira kartu thou

22 TIWi kukuni water

23 WEMbawemba kupa- drink

24 NGarLa kupapirri stooped posture

25 Bidyara-GUngabula kupu thana- bend, stoop

26 YDN kurran long, tall

27 MiRNiny kurrartu short

28 PIN kuru eye

29 NYA kuta short

30 UMP ku'un eye

3 I WLB lang a ear

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



1 1

32 WaRNman lang a

3 3 Proto Eastern Oceanic *malu

34 GID

3 5 NhANda

malung

malu

ground, dirt

shade, shadow

shadow, shade

shade

3 6 ADNyamathanha mangu face

3 7 YinGgarDa mangu

3 8 Proto-KAnyara *mangu

3 9 GUP mangutji

4 0 ARaB ana, PIN

4 I· WOiwurrung

mara

marram

marrambik

good

cheek

eye, seed . .. sweetheart

hand

body

I2 WOI

43 WOI

44 UMP

marrambinherr thou

ma'a

4 5 PaNKarla MENA

46 WJK MIKI

4 7 Kala Lagaw Ya MINA

min a

mma geth

4 8 JIWarli min a

hand

eye

moon

true, real, good, perfect

good

right hand ( ~ e t h 'hand')

right hand

4 9 TASmanian MEENA /mina/ I (SE and Oyster Bay)

50 ADN minaaka

5 I 'King George Sound' MIN AM

eye

truly



52 KGS

53 KGS

54 Proto-Pamic

55 WJK

56 WJK

57 GUP

58 WRN

59 WJK

60 WJK

61 TAS

62 NYA,WLB

63 PIN

64 NYA. DIY

6 5 PITta Pitta

66 PKA

1 2

MINANG

MINANG

*mini

MINOB

(N arne of language at

KGS)

the south

good

to be jealous

MINYT (= /minaj/?) the countenance

munatha ground

mu(r)narta ear

MUROO

. .

m vam

MY -A /maya/ a house

NEENA /nina/ thou (SE and Oyster

Bay)

, ngaju

ngampu

ngapa

ngapu

*ngapuru

I

egg

water

water

brains

6 7 TIW ngiab e> p - c : : : i ~ - A u ~ ~ o.1' . . ~ ' ~ \ ( '\

I ,c-, ..

~ < : : » u ( _ 1 : > \ ' ) ( . o ~ )water9 BAAgandji nguk:u

70 WLB

7 1

72

WOI

GUP

ngukunypa

ngupa-

nhu-na

brain

drink

thee



73 WJK

74 GUP

75 PPN

76 PIT

77 YCD

78 ARB

79 WRN

80 WRN

81 KLY

82 BAYungu

- d. b -

1 3

NURGO

nurrku

*nyun

pampu

papa

papu

parr a

parrangku

PARU

paaru

pay a

8 3 Bahasa INdonesia payung

84 GID

85 GAW

86 Yir-Yoront

87 PIN

8 8 :GID

8 9 'GIPpsland'

90 PIN

9 1 Gugu YAlanji

92 PIN

payuung

PIKI

pin

pin a

pinang

prra (sic)

purtu

tajali

tari

egg

brains

thou (Capell)

brain, egg

water

egg

I

thou

forehead, face; front

face

deep wooden baby tray

umbrella

sling for carrying a

child

moon

1. ear 2. site, place ..

country ...

ear

ear

man, person

in vain]

deep water

inside ankle bone



93 BGU

9 4 YINdjibarndi

95 UMP

96 WRY

97 BAY

9 8 NYA, PIN

99 WJK

100 PIN

101 UMP

102 YIN

103 NYA

104 UMP

1 0 5 Wirri (WRI)

106 NYA

107 WLB

108 w

109 TIW

110 WJK

111 WEM

~ b -

1 4

thalany

thama

tha'u

thin a

th u ngkara

tili

tongue

fire

foot

foot

ground, dirt

flame

TONGA (arguably /thungka/) ear

tungku

uungku

WITTI

witi

yampa

yampa

yamparra

yampirri

yap

yimitarla

ADDENDA

DILBI

kurumpaya

short

long

play

play

ear

. . (on the) ground,

place ...

single person

single men's camp

1. leaf 2. bush, shrub

tongue

leaf

to be jealous



112 WEM

113 PIN

114 DIY

- d - "7 -

1 5

-min

nyalpi

thalpa

(EMPHATIC particle)

leaves

ear

Note: Northwest and West Tasmanian /mang(a)/ 'I ' shows

excellent phonological and semantic congruence with items 36-39

above. This fact eluded me until the last gasp.

For References, see Dixon (1980) and O'Grady and Tryon, eds

(1990).

POSTSCRIPTEdi to r ' s Note: Geoff author ized me to add on th i s appendage whichhe dic ta ted to me over the phone but l a t e r conf irmed in wri t ing .

I t · i s a very bold s tep!

Consider #1 Tasmanian (SE) MEENA " I , 1 s t person s ingula r" whichi s arguably [mina] . I t s i t s well with my item #45, PaNKarla (PNK)MENA ' eye ' and with item #56 WadJuK (WJK) MINYT ' t he countenance 'which i s probably [minaj] , So, semant ica l ly , we have ' f a ce ' >m yperson> 'I, 1 s t person s ingu la r ' . (Or the othe r way around? ED.)

In summary Geoff be l i eves t ha t Tasmanian i s re la ted to Pama

Nyungan a t a 10,000 to 12,000 year t ime depth - - and , byimpl i ca t ion , Aus t ra l i an i s a l s o . He adds the SE Tasmanian and NW

Tasmanian forms fo r 'I ' to th i s group. Add a lso poss ib ly 'lip'.

Edi to r ' s 2nd Note: I e x p l i c i t l y warned Geoff t ha t he mightexper ience pain fo r th i s proposa l . He sa id he d id n ot mind t ha t

because he bel ieved t ha t th e Tasmanian < Aust ra l i an hypothes is

would grow now t ha t he and othe rs could s t a r t !poking fo rcognates . One of the p e c u l i a r i t i e s of Aust ra l i an l i n g u i s t i cpre h i s to ry i s t ha t it i s perhaps oppos i te to Indo-European in

t ha t i t s phonology remained f a i r ly s t ab l e while i t s meaningswandered fa r from t h e i r beginnings . One can see the meanderingmeanings in the list of words Geoff has given us.

For those who d id no t know before now - - -> Tasmanian has beenc l a s s i f i e d by Greenberg near ly 20 years ago as a member o f h is

Indo-Pac i f ic phylum. So Tasmanian could become c on t rove r s i a l butin a p o l i t e f r i endly way, given th e pe r sona l i t i e s involved.

- - - - ~ - - - - -



Jlirgen PinnowGorch-Fock-StraBe 26

D-2280 Weiterl.nd!SyttGermany

Prof. Harold C. Fleming

- ~ ~ -

ASSOCIATION for the Study of L ~ N G U A G E IN PREHISTORY

5240 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15217 USA

Sehr geehr·ter Herr Professor Fleming!

23.10.1992

Mit l e ider groaer Verspatung habe ich Ihren Brief vom 21.9.92,flir den ich Ihnen vielm::!lS d a n k e , e r h ~ l t e n . Er r::>t micy;-ehr in ErstBUnen gesetzt . ~ a ich ganz auf die N a - B e n e - S p r ~ c h e n konzentr ier t ~ r ,habe ich l e ider das Gebiet Austro::>sietistik fest tot!:ll PUS den 4.ugenverloren. Wird nun da.s g e p l ~ n t e OBITUARY vtillig .fallengelP.tssen od.erin eine Art Festschrif t umgewPndelt?

Erwahnen mochte ich,daB-es s t ~ t tH e n s - ~ l i r g e n Pinnow (Nordsee)Heinz-Jiirgen Pinnow (Westerland/Syl t )

heii3en mu.'3.

Zu Ihren F r a ~ e f t m t i c h t e ich nur in einem F ~ l l Stellung nehmen:

"NBh::>li is J e n e : c ~ u c a s i c surely".Ein Phylum : J E N E - C . ~ U C A S I C i s t - bisl=mg zumindest - eine bloBe

Hypothese, flir die dAs Meter ia l noch a.uBerst dlirftig i s t . Ich beziehemich dabei a l l e r d i n ~ s nur auf das Buch

Vita ly Shevoroshkin (ed. ): Dene-Sino-CaucPsia.n LPnguPges,

tl••• Bochum 1991 •Die Anga.ben"liber die Na-"1ene-SprAchen sind z.T. sehr verbesserungsbedlirftig und nicht ~ u f dem neuesten Stand. B e e o n d e r ~ die Rekonstrukt ionen von S. Nikolaev sind weitgehend nicht h a l t b ~ r . Wenn ru r dengena.nnten Stamm "!)ene C ! ? U C a . ~ i c " nicht Anderes MAteria.l vorl iegt alsdas erwar..nte Buch, muB ich ~ e h r d ~ v o r warnen, solch ein Phylum alsexistent anzusehen.

Ein Verzeichnis meiner jlingeren Arbeiten tiber Na-"'Jene fiige ich bei.

In d.er Hoffnung,bald von Ihnen zu horenmit freundlichen GrUBen auch an die a.nd.eren He-r-ren

'·

- - - - - - - · - -



The Editor,Mother Tongue,c/- Harold C. Fleming,

President, ASLIP,5240 Forbes Avenue,Pittsburgh, PA 15217.

Dear Editor,

2111193

P.O. Box 87,Kinglake, 3763,Australia.

I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the question of the classificationof Japanese, spurred on by the challenge issued in a recent edition of MotherTongue for "some long rangers to have a go at it" or words to that effect.

Firstly I would like to say that it strikes me that this is not a matter for casualconsideration, nor is it an endeavour likely to bring an outsider to the fieldany quickly satisfying results. The complexity and obscurity of much of therelevant data require special skills and a sound grounding in the body of

scholarship that has preceded us.

I fear for the intrepid long ranger who might wade into the data, armed witha set of preconceptions about the stability of particular sets of words (semanticcategories?) and unaware of the tortuous phonological and mmphologicalpaths that have been tread by the Japanese (and for that matter Altaic) lexicon

over millennia.

Having a longstanding interest in this issue, I feel obliged to express my viewthat the Altaic family is a real thing, and that Japanese is placed firmly withinit. Starostin's Altajskaja problema i proisxozdenie japonskogo jazyka(Moscow: Nauka, 1991.) is a thorough and scholarly treatment of the data,packed with extensive comparative lexicon of core vocabulary items backed upwith etymologies. The old assertion that the Altaic languages share littlecommon vocabulary suitable for comparison can and should be consigned tohistory.

Of course, Starostin' s contribution has not been to prove the Altaic origin of

Japanese, but rather to flesh out a more detailed and accurate description of

her Altaic pedigree. Convincing demonstration of the place of Japanese in theAltaic family has been available on library shelves for some decades. Thestate of knowledge at the end of the 1960's is well summed up in Roy AndrewMiller's Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages (University of ChicagoPress, 1971).

page 1



- ~ D -Worthy of examination is Miller's table of Altaic pronouns, including OldJ apanese(OJ), which shows the classic Altaic pattern of different stems for thenominative and oblique forms of the singular, but one stem only in the plural.For the benefit of readers I reproduce below part of the columns for ProtoAltaic(PA) (Miller credits to Poppe 1965: 193-94) and OJ pronouns from

Miller:-

Singular

1-p nom./oblique

2-p

3-p

1-p undifferentiated

number

Plural

1-p

2-p

3-p

tM 3476, M 4358

PA*bi/*man

*sit*san

*. /* .an

*bir

*sir

*ir

2M 904, Nihon shoki poem 803Kojiki poem 114M4343M = Man'yoshu poetic text Vill AD

OJ

milwan-ul

si2/son-e3

an/r-, ofl/r-, onor-e

wa-, war-e

mar-o, war-04

na-, nar-eta-, tar-e

-?-

The first thing to note about the OJ forms are the epenthetic final vowels inthe disyllabic pronouns, a consequence of the development of Japanese syllablestructure. The correspondence of labials is consistent over the 1-p singular

and plural forms. Also important to note the /r/ phoneme of the Altaicplurals is present through the plural and undifferentiated number forms of OJ.In the 3-p singular the /nl - /r/ correspondence is perfectly regular, as theAzuma dialect texts often show /nl where standard OJ has /r/. The /nl initialsof 2-p plural forms are explained buy the tendency for sporadic change of ltl> In! in OJ where the phoneme /r/ follows in the same morpheme.

However, while Miller's data and conclusions are quite excellent in this case, Idon't particularly agree with everything that Miller has ever written. I would

page2----------- - ~ - - - - - - - ~ - - - - ~



like to draw the attention of readers to an astounding gaffe on Miller's part inhis Origins of the Japanese Language (1980, University of Washington Press).Page 85 begins the most outrageous and fallacious deb•mking of the validityand utility of "Basic Vocabulary", in a piece that recalls the irrationalintolerance of the more recent 'he must be shouted down at every opportunity'school of anti-Greenberg hysteria.

Miller informs us that "basic vocabulary" (e.g. terms referring to body parts,human functions etc.) is not only no more likely to be subject to historicalchange than any other part of the vocabulary, but is of no special importancein proving genetic relationships. There follows a scathing attack uponglottochronology and lexico-statistics. Nowhere in this tirade does Millerrefer to the phenomenon of loan words. Now please correct me if I am

wrong, but I have always been under the impression that historical linguistshave believed that all vocabulary is subject to the processes of phonologicaland semantic change, but that many hold the view that "basic vocabulary" is

less likely to be replaced by loan words, so that regular phonetic similaritiesbetween "basic vocabulary" in one language and another is more likely to be

the result of genetic affinity than contact borrowings.

Miller is not alone among professional linguists in apparentlymisunderstanding some of the basic concepts and logic of historical linguistics.Traditionally its best practitioners have not been part of the mainstreamEnglish speaking linguistic establishment. I fear for linguistics students andothers, encouraged to proceed with study, but dependent upon only Englishlanguage or translated sources.

Is it any wonder that in the countries where linguists are trained byfamiliarising them primarily with the body of scholarship that has beenaccumulated in the English language, that historical linguistics has remained alargely neglected and misunderstood discipline. Much magnificent work hasbeen done by dedicated professionals in many countries, only to be ignored, oroften if it is read at all, sadly misunderstood.

I f some of today's linguists are still arguing about whether or not Japanese canbe linked to Altaic, I suggest that any of them who are afflicted by the curse

of English monolingualism take some positive steps to equip themselves withthe ability to read and comprehend the most important literature available on

this subject. In the w o ~ of a great Australian saying, put up or shut up.

Yours sincerely,~ ·L-- - -7Paul Sidwell.

page 3



2)

Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 14:09:56 CST

From: Eric Schiller <[email protected]>Subject: Re: 3.70 Proto-World

I, too, was outraged by the Scientific American article. Inthe Julyissue Austro-Tai is simply taken for granted, when it is merely atheory that spread due to lack of opposition. At the 6th InternationalConference on Austronesian Linguistics a session was devoted to theexternal affiliation of Austronesian, and there we heard proposalsranging from a link with Chinese, to Austro-Tai, to Nostratic etc.The old Austric Hypothesis (the best contender, in my opinion) hasbeen recently reinvestigated by Diffloth and Reid, among others,and I contributed a BLS paper back in 1987.

It is shameful that Austro-Tai is taken as default truth by somany authorities. and even finds its way into introductory texts.

Solid etymological evidence ('wood·, bone') has been presented forAustric, which combines Austronesian and Austroasiatic, while theAustro-Tai hypothesis rejects such a link. Toss in the fact thatboth families seem to have been VSO, and show a great deal ofshared affixes, and one would think that Austric should have at

least equal status. This is not to say that the Father Schmidt'sAustric hypothesis has been proven, but rather that it should notbe ignored, especially in speculation about great time depths andin combination with archeological evidence.

Eric SchillerUniversity of Chicago



....., -2>- -''- •

Is Kordofanian the Omotic of Niger-Congo?

Roger Blench, Cambridge

Since Greenberg, the membership of Kordofanian in Niger-Congo has scarcely been questioned and an article on

Kordofanian placed in the Bendor-Samuel volume appears to set a seal of approval on this assignment. Oddly,

however, the case for Kordofanian was seriously weakened by Thilo Schadeberg in 1981, author of this same

reference article, when he proposed that Kadugli-Krongo [now being referred to as Kado] be excised and assigned toNilo-Saharan.

The persuasive morphological feature of Kordofanian that has led to the Niger-Congo·assignment is the alternating CV

prefixes so characteristic of Niger-Congo. Greenberg backed this with a series of sound-meaning correspondences.

However, once Kado (which also has functioning CV prefiXes) is cut loose then the argument becomes surprisingly

weak. Either the Kado prefixes (which bear a striking resemblance to Talodi) are borrowings or they are coincidence.

Similarly, once the Kado ('Tumtum') languages are taken out of Greenberg's comparative list then the actual number

of convincing cognates is much reduced.

Greenberg proposes some 52 Niger-Kordofanian cognates. Nineteen of these include Kado -and so presumably would

be equally good evidence of a Nilo-Saharan affiliation. Many others are certainly cognate with Niger-Congo -but also

with Nilo-Saharan. Some, such as 'tortoise' or 'white' and 'and' also surface in Afro-Asiatic and are thus best

regarded as 'pan-African' [at least!]. I have recently argued that Niger-Congo should be included in Nilo-Saharan tomake a macro-phylum with the proposed name 'Niger-Saharan'. Whatever the fate of the hypothesis, the comparative

series show that Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan share a substantial number of lexical items, thus casting doubt on

their value in assigning languages to one phylum or the other.

Examples of items that are certainly cognate with Niger-Congo but can no longer be used as evidence for classifying

Kordofanian because of external Nilo-Saharan cognates are 'blood', 't o buy', ' m o u ~ · . 'shoulder', 'thorn', 'three',

'throat', tongue', 'tooth' .

Some of Greenberg's resemblances, as Schadeberg notes, are so weak as to be almost unusable. See for example,

'hill', 'to take', 'to think', 'oil', 'spear' etc. Others depend on a single citation, but this is problematic, because of the

significant lexical spreading between the branches of Kordofanian (see Schadeberg's example of 'large').

The sum of these exceptions makes the case for Kordofanian no stronger than the evidence linking Kado with Niger

Congo. The other side of the case is the CV prefix system. Williamson (1989) set out a table comparing the

Kordofanian prefixes with other branches of Niger-Congo. The phonological correspondences are not close, nor does

Kordofanian have the same rococo complexity as mainstream Niger-Congo. The main classes recognised in

Kordofanian are human beings, trees, body parts and liquids -semantic classes that have parallels outside Africa.

The point of this note is not to throw out the case for Kordofanian altogether, but to suggest that published

interpretations of the evidence have been strongly influenced by misleading factors. Schadeberg' s case for excising

Kado can be turned on its head to argue either that Kordofanian is Nilo-Saharan (keeping to the old dichotomies) or,

more convincingly, is the bridge between the two phyla. In this case, the 'tree' would look something like this;

The presence of Centralevidence is presented in the

probably features higher up the

consequence of this analysis is

are ancient borrowings from

evolved with the neighbouring

Other Nilo-Saharan

Mande-Congo Kordofanian Central Sudanic

Sudanic is not an error -paper referred to above. Kado

tree. The historical

that the class-prefixes of Kado

Kordofanian that have co

languages.

Sdladeberg T.C. (1981) 'The classification of the Kadugli language group' in Schadeberg and Bender (eds) pp. 291-

306 in 'Nilo-Saharan' Foris Publications, Holland.

Williamson, K. (1989) 'Niger-Congo Overview' pp. 3-46 in Bendor-Samuel (ed.) 'The Niger-Congo languages'

University Press of America, l.anham.



LAT-t c V11 s i on ~ : t - , c 1 a.. y r '1 q 3

~ ~ - - - - - - - - - -1. From an early period, scholars have noticed a series of resemblances, both lexical and phonological, between the African

language phyla today called Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Westermann put the two together in the first version of 'Die

Sudansprachen' in 1911. In 1972, Edgar Gregersen put fOtWard a series of lexical isoglosses to support such a macrophylum

and proposed the DIUDe 'Kongo-Saharan'. The debate over the cJassification of the Kadugli languages gives support to these

similarities.

2. The massive increase in availability of data on both phyla since Gregersen's work suggests that the time has come to make

this hypothesis more concrete. I f Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo are to be put together then it should be possible both to listthe common features tbat support the hypothesis. This in tum should provide a key to assigning one phylum in the 'tree' of

another.

3. I f an overall tree can be constructed then Niger-Congo will fall within the bounds of Nilo-Saharan. Niger-Congo is a far

more coherent phylum with a useful number of lexical isoglosses and there is general agreement among researchers about its

internal sbucture, as represented in Bendor-Samuel, 1989. Nilo-Saharan is far more diverse and major researchers have yet

to clarify its exact membership, and are still far from agreeing on an internal subclassification.

4. The most striking phonological features the two phyla have in common are the presence of labial-velars and the existence

of vowel harmony systems based on S+S +I- ATR. These are not recorded in this form elsewhere in the world and it would

strain credibility to assume they arose independently. Their presence is confmed to particular branches and it is likely thatthey are a useful indicator of genetic affiliation and subgrouping.

5. Bender proposed in 1989 a major division of Nilo-Saharan into two branches, uniting the Sudanic languages on one side

with Gumuz and Kadugli. The phonological and lexical evidence puts Central Sudanic closest to Niger-congo, followed by

East Sudanic and Kadugli-Krongo. The 'tree' of Nilo-Saharan may then appear as follows;

Jay

r

Pn,to-C''Ill'''-Saharan

I

Congo-Sudanic

I

Iast

Sudanic

Kadugli

Krongo

IKomuz

RMB July 1992

tree makes no hypothesis about the internal classification of the left-hand (Songhai to Berta) grouping.

Two historical conclusions can be drawn from these hypotheses; the significantly greater antiquity of Nilo-Saharan and a

homeland of Niger-Congo. Previous writers, based on the concentration of families in West

tended to assume a location somewhere near the headwaters of the Niger and explained Kordofanian by the

of a single group. I f the present classification is accepted it becomes far more likely that the homeland was in the

of present-day Sudan and that Kordofanian represents the Niaer-Con,o speakers who stayed at home.



- ~ s - -Niger-Coago: 1be Deep Sc8tteriDg Layer

David Dalby's attempts to classify African Janpages, both in his map publisbed some years ago md his ·ll lOftl recent

Thesaurus [rudely ba t appositely nMewed by Paul NewmaD in lbe m:eat JALL] have not met with wiclelprelclaseat

from Olber scholars. In particular, dJe 1alk of a ' F A J I " " " ' 8 ~ Belt' ICIOSS lbe area where most reeearchers aee Niger

Congo was il l received. The receat book 011 Niger--Congo edited by Jobn Beodor-Samuel seems to put lbe phylum into

fairly c:onvinciDa order with a series of discrete Jansuage families arnoged 011 a Christmas tree.

'lbe problem is that this was 8CbieYecl at lbe COlt of iporias ay data tbat did not fi t tbe acbema. In reality, however,tbele seem to be a ctisaurbios number of Janpages tbat are easy to assip to Nipr--Congo md difficult to pJace -or at

least lbe evidence for their cllssific:atiOD is more pographicallban derivins from a clemcla8b'able oommon 1exicoo. The

section below is a short list of some of hese••

1. Pte. To be fair, this language bas only mcently (2/3/90) been reported by Denis Cnrissels from Cote d'Ivoire.-pokeD in three villages 011 the Bouake-Seguela road. Allbough the language bas clearly been influeaced by the Mlllde

speech that SUI1'0Uilds it , its cJassification is a mysteJy. Allbough there are plalty of Niser-Ccmso rooa, none A

pretimiDaly peu might make it asiagle Janguage co-onlioate branch with Gur-Adamawa.

2. Due to the origin of the l>ogoJl 011 Sirius it is not lllllpl'isiaa that their language is problematic.~

from Gur

-nd Mlllde it is now treated as a isolate -but despite a ~ of data, no convincing I.IJUIDC!Ill for its place in

Niger-Congo. CaJame-Griaule (1978) says tbat tbele are some laaguaps 'ioside' Dogon -but '(ils] senimt a cllsser a

part; Ia pan11te n'apparait pas comme evidc:ale.' 'Ibis COIIIIDellt is reprised in a eadnole. However, it s clear that tbeJe

are aeve.ral speech forms in the Dogon area tbat nmain 11DClasaified.

3. !!!I: Laal is a Janguase spoken in 011 the Chari River in Cbad cfocumeated by Pascale Boyeldieu. In one publiabecl

article and in a loag 1IDpllblisbecl compuative wordlist he bas questioaecl the classificatiOD of this language, which is

eilber an Aclamawa Janguase nnder Chadic inf1ualce or W.vena. In lillY cue, there is a IIUbstantial amount of

mysterious vocabulaty. None of the Juae-scale cJassificatory articles publiabed rec:eatly have been williDg to tUe this

JanguaseOi l

board.

4. ~ There are may .laaguaaes caJiecl Fali, bat ther most problematic is the 1aqe dialect clusler in nortbem

Cameroun, which bas been extellllively studied by Guy Sweetman. Allbough this is nsually treated as Adamawa. it is

extremely llllllOte from Olber Aclamawa Janpaps. Apin it is easy to prove it is Niger-Ccmao, but difticnlt to place it

precisely.

5. 2!2. (Owrtb.]. Dab is a Jansua8e classified by Gneaberg to be Adamawa. but now pcraily apeed, fol1owiaa

Patrick Bamett's sunestion,to be BemJe.Congo. Recemt WOik by Raymoad Boyd mel Ricbard Fanion bas incJeasecl the

fund of lexical data 011 Dab Sllbsbmti&Uy. However, it is extremely difticnlt to pllce due to a abamce (eroeion?) of

affixes ad a clepnesiDa lack of obvious shared glosaes with Jleisbbouring J!OIIPS· Allbough I bave been promoling

Dab [Datoid] as a co-ordiaate branch of Bantoid with Mambiloid. hoaesty compels me to .man lhe relatjonshjp is no t

close.

Eumples cou1cl be mulbpJied. but I Jive these few to make a point -we are&r from baviDg a convincing tree of Nipr-

Congo ad we shoakl no t discount tbe poesibility that it is much JDOJe c:omplex and elabonde with may JDOJe saakias

bracbes.

In; lnventlllre de Eludea Llngulatiquea . . . 1M pays d'Afrique Noire d'.. . . , . . . ._ FaiiCIIiM • . . .

Med8a•c=-' ed. D . . . . . , ._._ CILF. P8ria



.

Proposed Genealogical Tree of Bantoid

Proto-Bantoid

I

R c , ~ ·..[ !1 ,,. J.. J k-- ~ '· : ~ ~ ~ ~ - ~ · · · - ~ - - .."- .. ./ -

r------ 1North Bantoid South Bantoid

II ---- - ~ - - ----IDakoid Mambiloid

Ekoid ·

Beboid

Jarawan

Ring Menchum Momo

The following languages are unplaced:

Ndemli, Bukwe, Mashi

Mbe

Tivoid

-Eastern

I

Narrow Bantu (G( o B c:;, n ·-t :..1.



SWISS BIOGENETICIST DISTURBED AT OUR NEGLECT OF FRENCH WORK!

Dr. Andre Langaney of Geneva became upse t when he rece ived acopy of MT-17 and an inv i t a t ion to jo in ASLIP. In h is opinion:

"Once more I am puzzled t h a t , as in any anglo pub l i ca t ion ,

the •garden of eden• discuss ion seems to come with Templeton 92

while , as you can check by the enclosed r ep r i n t s , we have beenopposing s t rongly to t h i s s tup id i ty s ince '87 in such minorjournals as YPA, Am.J.Hum.Genet. , J .Molec .Evol . , Hum. Bio l . ,

Encyclopedia of Human Biology and so on, not to speak aboutfrench speaking l i t e r a tu r e .

I s the anglo sc ience so c losed t ha t they cannot even quotefore ign r e fe rences publ i shed in t he i r own j ou rna l s in j o l l yco l loqu ia l English?"

It d o e sn ' t seem too l ike ly t ha t he wi l l jo in ASLIP, does i t ?And I r e g re t t ha t because Andre i s a f ine fe l low - - t r e s aimable- - in addi t ion to being an out s t and ing scho la r . Actua l ly h is

sample of MOTHER TONGUE was askew. Thanks to Er ic de Grol ie r andsevera l a l lus ions in the popular pres s we knew about h is ~ o r k andhad indeed mentioned it in e a r l i e r i s sues .

But even i f the reason i s t ha t we sampled the wrong j ou rna l s

and so missed h is a r t i c l e s , still h is work has been underrepor tedand we w i l l c or r e c t tha t s t r a igh t away. Since- to repor t a l l of it

would consume tw o MT i s su e s , we wi l l repor t the a bs t r a c t s andmake some few comments, not a l l of them complimentary. That i sbecause th e Afr icanis t in me i s not en t i r e l y happy with t h e i rana lyses and conc lus ions about Afr ica .

<<<<<<< ------- >>>>>>>

In C.R.Acad.Sc i .Par i s , t . 307 , Ser ie I I I , p.S41-546, 1988:PHYLOGtNIES DES TYPES D'ADN MITOCHONDRIAUX HUMAINES.

PROBLEMES MtTHODOLOGIQUES ET PRINCIPAUX RtSULTATS.Laurent Excof f ie r e t Andre Langaney

Abs t rac t ."Data

on thepolymorphism

of human mitochondr ia l DNA

(mtDNA) was reexamined and has been shown to conta in numerouse r ro r s in the mtDNA type def i n i t i ons as we l l as in t h e i rphylogeny. We were able to 4 e f i n e ances t ra l mtDNA types and to

bu i ld new phylogenies which show t ha t a l l types found in

d i f f e r e n t cont inents rad ia t ed from a few types . Th e presen tCaucasoid gene t i c s tock could be th e c los e s t to a hypo the t ica l

ances t ra l popula t ion . A new da ta c o l l e c t i on would permi t to

prec i se the gene t i c r e l a t i ons exis t ing between th e g re a t

con t inen ta l groups ."

Since t h i s i s a c ruc i a l a r t i c l e , we wi l l a l so reproduce afu l l e r Engl i sh summary. For thwi th :

"Abridged Engl i sh Version. A r ecen t s tudy of the polymorphism

of human mtDNA [1] has hypothesized the ex is tence of an AfricanEv e 200,000 years ago somewhere in Afr ica . This theory hasengendered much debate about th e or ig in of modern humans [2] to

[6] and has led us to reexamine ava i l ab le data on the

polymorphism of t h i s smal l ex t ranuc lea r genome.Data from severa l s tud ies in 10 popula t ions [7] to (11]

based on th e same s e t of r e s t r i c t i o n endonuclease& were used to

cons t ruc t a phylogeny of 61 mtDNA types (F ig .1 ) . Two types are

l inked i f they d i f f e r by only one mutat ion . The molecular nature



- ~ 8 -of the r e s t r i c t ion fragment l ength polymorphism leading to these

types was ca re fu l ly checked, and evident con t rad ic t ions with some

publ i shed r e su l t s appeared. This led to d i f fe ren t branchings fo r

type 3, 11 and 58, 18, 23, 31, 33, 36, 43 and 44. Type 55 wasalso found to be i de n t i c a l to type 47. The roo t of the phylogenywas determined by f inding a hypq the t ica l ances t ra l type , whichwas pos tu la ted to presen t a l l polymorphic r e s t r i c t i o n s i t e s in

t he i r more f requent s t a t e among the 61 types . This ances t ra l typei s equivalent to type 1, which i s also the most f requent type in

the major i tyof

thesamples .A p a r t i a l phylogeny of 27 types (out of 133) def ined by Cann

e t a l [1] in 5 popula t ions with a s e t of 12 endonucleases i spresented in Figure 2. Type 69 i s s imi la r to the ances t ra l type .The 106 o ther types are not shown on Figure 2 as they cannot beunambiguously connected to any type by l e s s than 2 mutat ions .Never the less , t h i s p a r t i a l phylogeny presen t s some fundamentald i f fe rences with the publ ished ' genea log ica l t r e e ' based on aparsimony c r i t e r i o n : types d i f f e r ing by a s ing le mutat ion are

genera l ly no t grouped together (such as types 69 and 116, 69 and80, 33 and 42 or 80 and 103) and the c lus te r ing l eve l does notalways correspond to a s ing le mutat ion (see types 32 and 33, 69and 70 o r 63 and 64) on Figure 3 of Cann e t a l [1 ] . Moreover ,

type 114 i s i de n t i c a l to type 116.The de tec t ion of severa l e r ro r s concerning type molecular

charac te r iza t ion and type connect ions in publ i shed s tud ies led to

new i n t e rp re t a t i ons of the phylogenies . When cons ider ing theshared types between con t inen ta l groups as a nc e s t r a l , one may seeon Figure 1 t ha t nine a n c e s t r a l types out of ten are found in

Caucasoid popu la t ions , which may then be taken as the c los e s t to

a hypo the t ica l or ig ina l popula t ion . Both phylogenies agree in

showing t ha t very close types are found in d i f fe ren t con t inen ta lgroups. This may be in te rpre ted as the conf i rmat ion of a uniqueor ig in fo r a l l modern humans. In t h i s view, types havingaccumulated many mutat ions would have appeared recen t ly , a f t e rthe f i r s t con t inen ta l s p l i t s . Further s tud ies would permi t to

prec i se our knowledge of con t inen ta l group d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n s . "

(We should adopt ' t o pre c i s e ' as a verb in Engl i sh . HF)Bas ica l ly , Excoff ier and Langaney are arguing t h a t (a) Cann andcol leagues are mistaken , (b) t ha t the Garden of Eden probably was

located in Caucasoid a reas , i.e., Europe, the Middle East or

nor thern Ind ia . They a re known to p re fe r the Middle Eas t .

Splendid , the Old Testament has had the same thought now fo r

qu i t e some t ime.< < < < < ------ > > > > >

In Am.J.Hum.Genet .44:73-85, 1989.

ORIGIN AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HUMAN MITOCHONDRIAL DNA

Laurent Excof f i e r and Andre LanganeyA summary i s given which bas ica l ly r epea t s the message found in

the f i r s t a r t i c l e (above) , except fo r these c h a n g e s . " · . Ap a r t i a l phylogeny of the types found in f ive o the r popula t ions

(not in the f i r s t s tudy - - HF) also demonstrates t ha t the myth ofan African Eden was based on an i ncor rec t ' genea log ica l t r e e ' ofmtDNA types . Two measures of molecula r d i ve r s i t y have beencomputed on a l l samples on the bas i s of mtDNA type f r equenc ies ,

on one hand, and on the bas i s of the number of polymorphic s i t e s

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



on the o ther . A l a rge discrepancy i s found between the tw o

measures except in African popula t ions ; t h i s sugges ts theex is tence of some d i f f e r e n t i a l s e l e c t i ve mechanisms. Th e l apse of

t ime necessary fo r c rea t ing the observed molecular d i ve r s i t y froman a n c e s t r a l monomorphic popula t ion has been ca lcu la t ed and i sfound genera l ly grea te r in Orien ta l and caucasoid popula t ions .

Impl i ca t ions concerning human mtDNA evolut ion are d iscussed ."

The reader wi l l please note t ha t these two a r t i c l e s haveappeared in reputable j ou rna l s 2 or 3 years ~ e f o r e Templeton 's

supposed break-through in f a l s i f y ing the Wilson group 's AfricanEve hypothes is . I suspec t t ha t t h i s i s what d is tu rbed Andre mostof a l l , not what MOTHER TONGUE sa id .

< < < < < < ------ > > > > > >

The next a r t i c l e seems to f ind the Geneva group t ak ing a morejaundiced view of phylogene t ic r econs t ruc t ion and ana lys i s .

In HUMAN EVOLUTION, vol .7 - N.2 (47-61) - 1992DO MOST HUMAN POPULATIONS DESCEND FROM PHYLOGENETIC TREES?A. Langaney, D. Roess l i , N. Hubert van Blyenburgh, P. Dard

The summary goes s t rongly to a viewpoint which oddly enough wouldprobably be most compatible with an a rc he o log i s t ' s perspec t ive .

"Molecular b io log i s t s and some popula t ion gene t i c i s t s haverecen t ly cla imed to be able to recons t ruc t modern human

popula t ions remote h i s to ry by means of phylogene t ic t r ee s . Manyobjec t ions to t h i s method are discussed in the presen t paper . Th emost important are

1) In te r -popu la t ions migra t ions are l ike ly to have been importanteven in the remote pa s t . So th e ' t r e e n e s s ' of t h i s evo lu t ion i sd i spu tab le .

2) There i s no reason to be l i eve t ha t ac tua l molecula r

phylogenies would be convergent between d i f f e r e n t molecules andwould t he re fo re r ep resen t popula t ions h i s to ry .

The va r ious kind of gene t ic da ta , t he i r ~ e l a t i o n s to o ther data

and the l imi t s of t he i r poss ib le use in the ana lys i s of our p a s t

are then d iscussed , toge ther with the ideo log ica l background ofth e most common t heor i es and of t he i r pub l i ca t ion .

It i s very l i ke l y t ha t th e h i s to ry of d i f f e r e n t popula t ions was

heterogeneous. Small and i s o l a t e d hun te r -ga ther s f r equen t ly

evolving c lose to a phylogene t ic model, while dense andinc reas ing popu la t ions , s ince the Neol i th ic , were c lose r to adynamic network model, s t ruc tured by i so l a t i on by d i s t ance .

In any case , our presen t knowledge i s obviously i n s u f f i c i e n t to

recons t ruc t our gene t ic pas t , e spec ia l ly on the long term, and we

can only hope t ha t th e development of the HUGO Genome Divers i typro j e c t i s going t o y ie ld the s i gn i f i can t informat ion presen t ly

lacking ."

And, indeed, Andre was presen t a t the HUGO conference a tPenn Sta t e l a s t October and probably a t tended a subsequent onet h i s February in Europe. (And HUM. EVOL. could use an ed i t o r ! )

For a 'mere ' 15 pages Andre 's a r t i c l e i s very powerful andthought provoking. Consider a l so t h i s sec t ion of the a r t i c l e



-1-0-which dwel ls on the r i va l ry between ' po lyc e n t r i c ' (Ris ing Tide)and 'monocent r ic ' (Garden of Eden) t heor i es . They needed a goode d i to r , as a l ready sugges ted . The sec t ion t i t l e i s misleading.

"Common or ig in da t ingFor over a century now, the hypotheses in which d i f fe ren t

modern human popula t ions would descend from d i f fe ren t pr imatespec ies , or even from difEerent human spec ies , have beenabandoned. Never the less , the ' po lyc e n t r i c ' hypothes is , s t a t i ngt ha t d i f fe ren t races of the same Homo erec tus ances tor would havegenera ted , almost independent ly, d i f fe ren t races of Homo sapiens

sap iens , still has some rare suppor ters in the f i e l ds of anatomyand paleonto logy (see fo r example Wolpoff e t a l , 1981 ... ) . On the

o ther hand, gene t i c i s t s and o ther an th ropo log is t s (see fo r

example St r inger & Andrews, 1988) suppor t the a l t e rna t i ve

'monocent r ic ' hypothes i s of a common or ig in of a l l modern humans,from a s ing le Homo erec tus popula t ion evolving in to the f i r s tHomo sapiens sapiens" .

"Under the po lycen t r i c model, races would have beens i gn i f i can t l y separa ted for 400,000 years , or more, and t he i r

common or ig in would be still o lder . Many s tud i e s , s ince Nei &Roychoudhury (1974), have shown t ha t the observed gene frequencyvar ia t ion in human popula t ions i s not compat ib le with more than

200,000 years of separa te evo lu t ion . So, the only way to sus ta inthe polycent r ic hypothes is i s to suppose tha t impor tant i n t e r migra t ions prevented gene t ic d i f fe ren t i a t i ons of popula t ions 1

;"

"but t h i s balance between migra t ion and i so la t ion by t ime j u s t

l eads to the idea of a worldwide monocentr ic network ofpopula t ions . The unique argument t ha t suppor ts polycentr ism i s aclaimed morphological s i mi l a r i t y between Homo e rec tus and Homo

sapiens sapiens from the same con t inen t . Such an argument rs-ext remely weak i f one in spec t s the cons iderable d i f fe rences

between Homo e rec tus and Homo sap iens , and the very s l i g h t

anatomical resemblances in face or den ta l morphology t ha t are

supposed to demonst ra te con t inu i ty throughout hundreds ofcentur ie s , thousands of ki lometers and analogous dras t i c changesin morphology. Moreover, i f such s i m i l a r i t i e s between Homoe rec tus and Homo sapiens from the same cont inent are genuine ,they could eas i l y be accounted fo r by the more pars imoniousexplanat ion of convergence between unre la ted popula t ions , e i t h e rby s imi la r environmental s e l e c t i on (very l ike ly fo r morphology)or by chance. Never the less , we cannot exc lude , with t h i s type ofarguments , a p a r t i a l con t r ibu t ion of l oca l Homo e rec tus to l oca l

modern Homo sap iens . But it i s obvious ly a non- f a l s i f i a b l e

1 Edi t o r ' s note . The argument i s too compressed but means

t ha t under polycentrism the popula t ions of va r ious con t inen ts a re

reproduc t ive ly i s o l a t e d from each o ther . I so la ted races whichswap no genes even tua l ly become separa te spec ies or ' f i s s i v e ' &i n t e r - s t e r i l e as Langaney puts it. So po lycen t r i c theory must

have a mechanism to keep the genes moving around from the

Kalahar i to the Orkneys, Tasmania and Patagonia . Thus Langaneyargues t ha t se r ious migra t ions are the only way to accomplisht ha t and save po lycen t r i c theory . Pace process people!



hypothes is . 2 "

The arguments, favoring the monocentric hypothes is a re ofthree types:

1) Unt i l now, a l l the o ldes t and doubt l e s s Homo sapiens

sapiens have been found in Afr ica and the Middle East . Even i fone cannot exclude fu tu re f inding elsewhere, it i s an argumentfo r a geographical loca t ion of our or ig ins in these a reas .

2) Nothing, in modern human genet ic pools , sugges ts an old

pa r t i t i on of popula t ions , or i nd ica tes a prev ious fus ion of

d i f fe ren t gene t ic pools , when one cons ide rs la rge sca le samplesof rep resen ta t ive da ta .

3) Genetic d r i f t , founder e f f e c t s , and migra t ions canper fec t ly expla in the observed d i s t r i bu t i ons of n e u t r a l genef requenc ies wi th in a his tory of about 100,000 years or l e s s ,while a longer i s o l a t i on of separa te races would have f ixed al a rge number of r ac i a l spec i f ic gene t ic markers , which are notobserved a t all.' " (End of quot ing and end of t h i s sec t ion)

Th e l a s t Langaney a r t i c l e tha t we have space fo r concernsAfr i ca . It appeared in GENETICS AND HISTORY OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA30:151-194 (1987), authored by Laurent Excof f ie r , Bea t r i ce

Pe l l eg r i n i , Al ic ia Sanchez-Mazas, Chr i s t i an Siman, and AndreLanganey.•

ABSTRACT "This paper aims to review the con t r ibu t ion ofgene t ic da ta to the preh i s to ry and his tory of sub-Saharan Afr icanpeoples . The au thors review br i e f l y paleonto logic da ta , whichgive l imi ted informat ion about modern Homo sapiens sapiens

or ig ins and i so l a t i on of presen t Afr ican gene pools . Mostl i ngu i s t i c and archeo log ica l t heor i es about African peop les '

preh i s to ry are then confronted with the most informat ive gene t ic

1 Easy fo r him to say but n o n - f a l s i f i a b i l i t y , the lack oft e s t a b i l i t y , i s a deadly comment on the s c i e n t i f i c meri ts of any

hypothes is . I f we cannot t e s t a theory empi r ica l ly to see i fit

i s t rue o r f a l se , then such a theory i s ou ts ide of sc ience , l i ke

the be l i e f s of r e l i g ion or myths of p o l i t i c s . However, what i s

obvious to one scho la r i s not necessa r i ly obvious to another .

Greenberg has su f fe red from t h i s problem fo r 40 years . Why i spo lycen t r i c theory ' obv ious ly ' un tes tab le?

' We both tend towards hyperbole. There ac tua l ly are some

marker genes which c or r e l a t e pre t t y c lose ly to ' r a c e ~ Gmfab andGmfanb adhere to so-ca l led Caucasoidsand sou theas t Asians-or

t hose -u l t ima te ly der ived from them, e . g . , Somalis & Polynes ians .

4 For the b e n e f i t of our members. Most of the authors can bereached a t the fol lowing address , except fo r Excoff ier who i s nowa t Rutgers Univers i ty (New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903):

Labora to i re de Genet ique e t Biometr ie e t Labora to i re dePre h i s to i r e e t Paleoanthropologie , Univer s i t e de G e n ~ v e ,1227 Carouge G e n ~ v e ,Suisse (Switzer land) .



da ta ava i l ab le . Rhesus, Gm, HLA, and DNA da ta a re analyzed. Thei rf requent haplotypes are compared between popula t ions by means ofgene t ic d i s tances and average l inkage c lus te r ing . Despi tehe te rogene i t i e s between the qua l i t y and the quan t i ty of da ta

provided by d i f fe ren t gene t ic systems, some c l e a r conclus ions canbe drawn. Genet ic d i f fe ren t i a t i on c l e a r ly p a r a l l e l s the

c lus te r ing of major l i ngu i s t i c fami l ies . These f ami l i es of

popula t ions seem gene t i ca l ly homogeneous, sugges t ing e i t he rre l a t i ve l y r ecen t or ig ins or long-term important and cont inuousin t ragroup migra t ions . The well-known divergence between the

h i s to r i ca l t heor i es sugges ted by immunological and DNA data aboutthe re la t ionship between Africa and o ther gene pools i sdiscussed. Decis ive conclus ions about Afr ican or ig ins of modernhumans e i t he r from f o s s i l or from DNA data seem very premature .An a l t e rna t i ve hypothes i s i ssued from o v e ra l l gene t ic var ia t ion

i s proposed . ' "The a l t e rna t i ve hypothes is i s given in t h e i r Conclusions; it

i s i n t e r e s t i ng :"Though Afr icans are gene t ica l ly c l ea r l y d i f f e ren t i a t ed from

o th e r popula t ions of the world, they do no t seem to c ons t i t u t e

the l a t t e r ' s d i r e c t ances tors• . I f we accept a hypo the t ica l

5 The pa ra l l e l s between gene t ic and l i ngu i s t i c c l us t e r s wi l l

p lease Cava l l i -S fo rza as it does many of us. The Excof f i e r teamalso ment ions the sa l i ency of the Tuts i and Hima genes, desp i t e

Bantu languages; the same for the Zulu, Xhosa and o ther SouthAfr ican Bantu. There i s also a noteworthy dichotomy among some ofthe very poor ly represented Nilo-Saharans : Kunama and Sara (veryd i f f e r e n t branches) are much more l ike each o th e r and West

Africans than they are l i ke the Nilo tes . The data should put to

r e s t the not ion t ha t t a l l East Afr icans are a l l a l ike . The

Nilotes c l ea r l y are no t the source of e i t h e r the Tuts i or the

Hima; nor are the p a s t o ra l Cushi tes the source of the Nilotes butthey seem to be akin to the Tuts i and l e s s so the Hima. The Swisst eam's l i ngu i s t i c taxonomy i s about 30 years ou t o f da te .

• Heavens! Who ever sa id they did? This i s the secondse r ious mis in te rpre ta t ion of co l l eg i a l hypotheses found in teamExcof f ie r ' s wri t ing . To say t ha t humanity der ives from Africa of100,000 to 200,000 years ago i s qu i t e d i f f e r e n t from sayingmodern Africans are the d i r e c t ances to r s of non-Afr ican moderns.The team Wilson hypothes is says t ha t Eve - - our hypo the t ica l

mother - - was the f i r s t woman in the l ineage which led to modern

peoples . Modern Afr i cans , even anc ien t Egypt ians , and Eskimauxare ' descended with modi f ica t ion ' from those bas ic o ld humans.

Thei r second mis represen ta t ion (e lsewhere) i s when theyscold Rapacz and team Wilson fo r proposing t ha t Africans are the

'miss ing l i n k ' between apes and modern humans (presumably no tinc luding modern Afr icans ) . They wax a l l indignant and scorn fu l

about t h i s supposed hypothes is bu t it i s a straw man. Root ingone ' s ca lcu la t ions in one area i s qu i t e d i f f e r e n t from pu t t ing

th e people of t ha t area in to the ca tegory [P r imi t ive Man-Ape].



- '-13 -·

i n i t i a l divergence between human groups around 200,000 B.P. , it

i s very d i f f i c u l t to imagine t ha t a l l the known gene t ic

d i f fe ren t i a t i ons could have been developed from an Afr ican genepool in such a shor t per iod of t ime on o ther con t inen t s . 7 Thati s why we favor the hypothes is of non-Afr ican popula t ions

coloniz ing Afr ica a f t e r having been subjected to a dras t i c

founder e f f e c t and random gene t ic d r i f t . The r e s u l t i ng l o ss ofsome a l l e l e s or haplotype& and a frequency increase of o ther s a re

in agreement with our r e su l t s on blood group da ta . In t h i s view,popula t ions still possess ing numerous d i f f e r e n t haplotype& may be

regarded as more or l e s s rep resen ta t ive of ances t ra l popula t ions .

This could be the case of some East Afr icans ."

"Studies of DNA polymorphism, though showing t ha t Afr icanshave accumulated more DNA changes than o t h e r s , cannot presume thed i r e c t ion of a pr imordia l migra t ion in to o r out of Afr ica .

Dis tances based on mean number of codon d i f fe rences do not take

in to account gene flow (S la tk in and Maruyama, 1975) or h i s t o r i c a leven t s . At any r a t e , as long as the ques t ions of mutat ion ra te

and i t s mechanisms are not solved, any a t tempt in se t t i ng

i n t ra spec i f i c divergence t ime seems premature . " (End of quot ing)In MT-20 we hope to show some of t he i r wonderful diagrams!

These are qu i t e d i s t i n c t from family t r ee type diagrams, al though

they also use ' dendrograms' in most of t he i r a r t i c l e s . Th ediagrams show a whole system of networks of popula t ions which are

also rooted in one place and have root ing type nodes which occurl a t e r on; these too being arranged in networks. The diagrams verymuch resemble an upside-down ve rs ion o f evolut ionary diagramsused sometimes in phys ica l anthropology . We once ( long ago)reproduced a c l e a r one from Michael Day 's book on fos s i l hominidswhich was focused on th e separa te pa ths taken by Homo sapiens

neander tha lens i s and Homo sapiens sapiens .

Some of team Excof f ie r ' s conc lus ions , espec ia l ly in t he i rAfr ican work, are supported by a data base which appears to beinadequa te . Ei ther they use too few genes /haplotypes or theysample too fe w of the hundreds of African peoples . One s tudy wasbased en t i r e l y on the Rhesus h a p l o t y p ~ fo r example. Nei ther the

va luable Duffy nor P nor MNS sys tems show up in t he i r

c a l c u l a t i ons . I am sure they would make a g re a t d i f f e r e n c e .

Anyway t ha t ca tegory has been rese rved fo r Tarzan, known to be an

Engl i sh lo rd manque.

7 But they mentioned in another a r t i c l e t ha t 200,000 years

i s enough to produce spec ies d i f fe rences ! How long does it t ake

to produce a human race (not the human race)? The evidence of the

Khoi and San sugges t thousands of years bu t modern Hawaiians and' b l ack ' Americans go t d i s t inc t ive in l e s s than 300 year s .

---- ------



-44-LET THE TAXONS (OR TAXA?) FALL WHERE THEY MAY

The Validity of Correspondences between Indo-European and Semitic

Saul Levin (State University of New York at Binghamton)

When Hal Fleming fMotber Tongue, 17. pp. 10-11) reviewed my

chapter on "'FuU and Other Key Words Shared by Indo-European andSemitic" in the Lamb and Mitchell volume, Sprung from Some CommonSource: /ovestigatioos into tbe Prehistory o f anguages, he must have feltwounded to the quick, because I had begun by disparaging Afro-Asiatic as a"loose constellation of language families·, not on a par with the coherence ofIndo-European. "Afrasian", as he prefers to call it, is (I see) very close to hisheart; by suppressing the o-, he symbolizes the perfect unity of those

languages spoken partly in Africa, partly in Asia.l But it is the facts oflanguage that are bound to prevail, in the long run, over any linguist's

sentiment.

There are facts of vocabulary and morphology that led, reasonably ifnot conclusively, to the grouping of many languages under the name ofHamito-Semitic, later renamed Afro-Asiatic by joseph Greenberg. There areimpressive verb-paradigms indeed, as Fleming declares, although I do notshare his certitude that these go back far more than 10,000 years. The most

extensive and precise of them. to my knowledge, is best exemplified by

BeQ.auye (a Cushitic language) and Arabic (a Semitic):

BeQ.auye Arabic2

'he has written' iktib

'she has written ' tiktib

'you (m. sing.) have writ ten' tiktiba

' " (f. sing.) ..

I tiktibl

'I have written' 8kt/b

'we have written' niktib

'they have written' ektlbna

'you (pl.) have written' tektiboa

. . ,. . s. (yattub}

• ++

. . ,.. ..I I I ;> J

•

'0 ,

(tattub}..

(..)o.';S ; (ta:ttubiY}.., ,

• '. &

. ,;SI (?attub}.. . ,

.. s . (nattub)•

,. . ,

,. . ,• ++<;.••u.· ·-.

(yattubna} (fem. only)

(ta:ttubna}

Lacking personal familiarity with the African languages (aside from a littleEgyptian), I rely upon Leo Reinisch's chosen paradigm.3 Doubtless he could



have chosen a different verb-root, which would not on its face be - like.k{-)1-b 'write' - a borrowing from Islamic civilization in the last thousandyears or so. But that would not matter much; for, in his opinion, ...Alledreiradicaligen verba konnen fast allgemein als semitische lehnworterbezeichnet werden" (p. 42).

What about the subsidiary morphemes? The four subject prefixes of

Semitic- (y-) 'he', (t-) 'she' or 'you',(?-) T, and (n-) 'we'- are reported tohave clear cognates throughout Berber and Cushitic (though not in Egyptian).The sharing of them is probably as old as any other feature of comparative

morphology, anywhere in the world- maybe older. Also (y-) and (t-) in the

sense of 'she' (but not 'you') have cognates in Rausa and some other Chadiclanguages. The suffixes that express gender or number are, however, lesswidespread. I do not consider it proved that the entire paradigm which

BeQ.auye shares with Arabic must antedate the separation of Cushitic from

Semitic (even if that was, in Fleming's words, one occurrence in "a real,knowable historical [I) and genetic Entwicklung"). An appreciable part, atleast, of this impressive sharing of morphology may be due to more recentdiffusion - say, from a superstrate or a substrate language (or languages)relatively late in the prehistoric period.4 Many variables are involved, andmost of them are only to a meager extent traceable.

So ALL comparative data ought to be welcome, as far as they go. WhileI, with my particular knowledge, happen to specialize in the links betweenSemitic and Indo-European, I want to see more research in the oppositegeographical direction too. comparing Semitic with what Fleming calls "itsown true kin". I am proud of my one article on "An AccentualCorrespondence between Hebrew and Rausa," in Forum lioguisticum, 4( 1979-1980), 232-240. Only Biblical Hebrew, among the Semitic languages,affords evidence of a cognate to the opposition in the Rausa vowel between

the jussive .Y.6 (low-pitched and short) 'let him' or 'he should' and the""preterite ya (high-pitched and long) 'he did'. The facts about Hebrew that

I ferreted out would have been accessible enough to any Hebraist who tookan interest in such minutiae, if only it had occurred to somebody before methat something worthwhile was waiting to be disclosed.

Now Fleming, I dare say, is glad to learn from me about a accentualcorrespondence, not previously perceived, WITHIN Afro-Asiatic. However.

when I publish other research along similar lines, but about correspondencesof morphology between Semitic and Indo-European languages, he reacts withdismay. Why the difference? Because Afro-Asiatic (or Afrasian) is "a validtaxon", while the connection between Semitic and Indo-European constitutes"an invalid taxon" (his underline). A term from biology becomes the labelfor a linguistic fallacy.

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



We have only to reflect that a language is not transmitted through thechromosomes; it is LEARNED, from people who already know and speak it.Over the generations, changes develop in it, sometimes slowly, sometimesrapidly, depending upon various circumstances. Among the most powerfulcauses of change is the influence of persons who know and speak otherlanguages. Many, if not all, of the morphemes shared by Semitic and IndoEuropean languages may well have spread in one direction or the other,together with important items of vocabulary, not very long before theSemitic peoples began to settle permanently in parts of southwestern Asia.From my perspective, that does not make them irrelevant to comparativelinguistics. And I make no claim to have identified which morphemes, ifany, bear the "Nostratic" stamp, however that term may be defined.

Nevertheless the model of language taxonomy to which Flemingadheres may be seriously affected, not to say weakened, by the success ofmy correspondences. In the article criticized by him, I have shown how

much of the inflection of the noun (pawr) 'bull' in Arabic, Tavp- in Greek, is

shared (herewith I give a sum mary of the evidence}:N 6, 1

Accusative singular, l.;y {pawran) : Tailpov

Genitive sing., Latin tauri : Arabic (-f) (at the end of a verse)

Nominative dual, Gr. T a ~ [-5) : Arabic (-i) (construct only)6 6" 6, 1

Gen. dual, Arabic t.>t..;J; (pawrayn) (pausal) : Gr. -otv

Nom. plural, Latin tauri (-EI) : Aramaic construct pl. '1111 {towreY)

6 "

Gen. pl., Gr. Tm}puJv : Arabic collective u (pirin) (pausal),Derived nom. sing. fem., Gr. TCIVp(i) (epithet of Artemis) : Old Aramaic i i , , ~{S/swrh) (-Biblical Aram. *{towr5ii) 'cow')

More of my article, however, concerns a broad system of stative formswith at least six inflectional morphemes, either internal or external; e.g.

Hebrew ~ " 0 (m3luw) 'full' : Gr. ' I J o ~ v l m p " ' o s 'fruitful'S T

Heb. fem. m $ ~ ~ ' P ~ ~ ~ (male?atfY misp5T) 'full of justice' :

Gr. " ' ~ l ) O t l c P a l l s o O . ~ Y l l 'the moon full of light'I also cite Hausa fa/; I am not aware, however, of any inflectional

correspondences to Semitic in this word.But all these correspondences between Semitic and Indo-European

cannot be wished away, or dismissed as illusory, and must therefore befitted into any valid theory about the prehistory and classification of

languages. The theory that Afro-Asiatic is one whole taxon, distinct from allthe rest. like the zoological order Cllr11ivora or Primates, will have to berevised. There may remain a tenable claim that in the languages called



- 4 7-

Mro-Asiatic some common vocabulary, or morphology, or both, originatedearlier than anything else in them. and that those shared features can bedefinitely identified. Only to that extent will Mro-Asiatic take precedence intime over correspondences of the sort that I have demonstrated, involvingjust the Asiatic part along with the Indo-European region beyond it.

The facts matter more than any theory. The same etymology that

brackets Arabic {pawran) with Greek Tailpov must take in the Finnishaccusative tllrYIIIIO (referring to the bison or the aurochs). Here thenominative form tllrYIIS (found in Estonian too) is likewise cognate to theIndo-European form exemplified by ~ , Lithuanian taiTras, and - above

all - Gaulish TARVOS, which displays the same metathesis as Finnish. I twon't do to infer that the inflections of this word uphold the geneticcloseness of Indo-European to Uratic (- Finno-Ugrian), in which Flemingapparently believes along with many others, but nothing of the sort inregard to Semitic.

Not only in the book review but elsewhere in Mother Toogue, he

manifests a consuming interest in genetic classifcation of ALL THE LANGUAGES

OF THE WORLD, besides biogenetics (analysis of DNA, etc.), so as to chart theprehistoric development and movements of all branches of the human race.I consider this far-reaching quest admirable in itself, but liable to err byoverlooking many particular facts, or even disregarding them methodically,if they appear incompatible with the one grand scheme envisaged by theresearcher.

I personally am equipped for a different kind of research. How muchthe learned world will gain from it in the long run, is beyond my control.But those who disagree with me have to cope to something inherent in the

data, which they may never be able to surmount: The ancient languages thatI concentrate upon enjoy the advantage of having been accurately recorded,ages ago, in scripts sensitive to fine nuances of sound.5 Accordingly, if wetake the trouble -o r rather, if we feel the urge - to study them, we canknow them in much greater and more precise detail than thousands ofmodern languages that have been sketchily described in the nineteenth orthe twentieth century. By comparing the few ancient Semitic languages witha somewhat larger base of Indo-European languages, we probe theprehistoric past along a limited but singularly clear trajectory. I do notattempt to estimate how many thousands of years it reaches back; others, no

doubt, can do that better.

l AJ'nsiu is of course modeled upon Eunsi&a. However, Eu.rasi6 means '(all of)Europe and Asia'; and as a geographical term it mates good sense, nov that we haveprogressed beyond the knowledge of the ancient Greet geographers. But hardlyanyone would speak of *AJ'ruis, in view of the narrow land-bridge at Suez.



What's in a hyphen, anyhow? We call a certain Slavic language Serbo-Croatian;but the scholars of the region, who spell it cpncKOXPBITCKH jeaHK in the modifiedCyrillic alphabet or srpskoJJrY8/ski jezik in Latin letters, have not allayed the hatredsundering the two communities. .,2 These Arabic forms are jussive: 'let him write', etc. But the negative adverb ~(lam} mates it 'he has not written' or 'he did not write'.

3 "Die BeQauye-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika. III." SiiZUDisbericJJte der plJDosopJJiscb-JJistorisciJeD Cluse der I11iserliclJeD Abllemie der ll'isseDsclla.fteD, 130. Band (Wien,18CHI1893D. Abhandlung VII, 56. I have, however, corrected an inaccuracy in hisArabic (probably a misprint).1 In this connection, it seems pertinent that the Arabic dual and masculine pluralforms are not represented in BeQauye, but that all the BeQauye forms are representedin Arabic, except for tlkti!Jil. 'you (masc. sing.) have written'. The identity of the 'she'form with the 'you (masc. sing.)' is the one most striking anomaly of the Semiticlanguages, NOT shared with any others.5 The Phoenician(-Hebrew) consonantal alphabet, reformed by the Greets to includevowels and thereafter reinforced with supplementary marts, is not only of unique

impoJ:"t for cultural historyin

general - of more enduring consequence to mankindthan any lint between the Semitic nations and the Egyptians Uet alone the otherpeoples speaking Afro-Asiatic languages). Also for linguistics in particular, alphabeticwriting constitutes the inescapable framework within which we study all languages,including the ones not so written by the communities that employ them.

The alphabet of course spread easily throughout Semitic territory, in timeemnguishing the Akkadian cuneiform syllabary; and beyond there the successfuladjustment of it to the Greet language was what released the great genius of Occidentalcivilization. (Others too, such as the Berbers, picked up this Semitic invention, but it

made no such difference in their culture.) So I mate bold to say that the Greets were,at any rate mentally, most AKIN to a Semitic people in their ability to analyze alanguage practically and intellectually. This shared still was derived, perhaps, fromsome mutually profitable symbiosis in prehistoric times, which is evinced by the

vocabulary and morphology found in the Greet and the Hebrew corpus, and which theGreets of the classical period expressed mythically in their tales of Cadmus, thePhoenician founder of Thebes.



- 4 C1-

Dear Hal,

3291 s. Spring Branch Rd.B l o o ~ n g t o n , IN 47401Sept. 9, 1992

You are doing a great job with MT. I t i s extremely useful and veryinfo:nnative. Thank you for your kind words about me in the review of theRice conference volume. There is to o much 's ilence and si lent disapproval' ( , ) .

Her{''With some reactions to your statement with regard. to my ' rtUes1

(never so--labelled by me) tha t 1thei r target i s mistaken; while ignoring

closer relat ives, they.focus on a remote ancestor' (9). The next pageimplies tha t my reconstructions are a t a level comparable to N. I am notsure what you mean by ' ignoring closer relatives•. I thought tha t I wasdealing with just such.

Following i s the last paragraph of my paper ( 'Hallelujah 1 ) for the 19th

LACUS Forum 1992:

I t remains to say a few words about the implications of approach

followed here for the investigation of long range relatiousnips inlanguage. The c o n s o n ~ ~ t ablaut forms discussed here and elsewhere were

unquestionably part of the proto language, but i t is not yet clear towhat stage of the prehistoric era they belong. They are certa:inly

ancestral to a l l of Lislakh. One of the most strild.ng features of thisphylum i s the manner in which consonant ablaut enables us to clarifythe relationships of hundreds.of roots. I f a long range comparison

includes Lislakh or any portion thereof and ignores this organizationof the material, it loses a key tool in the setting up of regularmund correspondences.

This implies that I agree with you tha t the recunstructions are of

broader application. There i s , however, much more to be said about i t .

A dist inction mould be made between a base with i t s consonant ablaut variants

(the simple base) ana that. same base plus other affixes (the affixed base).The affixes involved include both prefixes and suffixes, tha t fac t it.&el..fbeing importarrt!when considering other possible r e l a t i ~ ~ h i p s . I t i s in thedistribution of affixed bases that we can see the narrower scope of LL i t se l f ,

of a single branch thereof , or of a combination of branches. That is , thesemore restr icted distributions are one of the cr i ter ia by wnich LL or any

other proto grouping may be justif ied. I don't beJ.iove tha t my f i les todc1te al:-'.rn-r me form solid judgments along these l ines , but one can observe

some indicatior:s that such data are forthcoming. I t follor.s tha t what arenow being reconstructed as affixed bases may be a much stronger tool foruncovering long range relationships than are the simple bases alone.

An example of what I mean i s **d-b 'margin(al) ' . This yields Eg. d-b

'horn' , IE .tfdwO 1two 1 • With affixes (in parentheses): **(?-)d-b, Eg. ?-d-b'bank (o f r iver ) ' ; **(?-)Nd-b, Eg. ?-n-b 'wall ' . An IE affixed form -Hd-b(-s)becomes Gk. dis (loss of b), Lat. b is (loss of d) ' twice•. Another affixedform, **(5-)Nd-b · 'pertaining to the margin' yields Eg. z-n-b-w 'battlements' ,Ar. 5anab 1t a i l 1 and, from nsnwV-, IE *sne- (Watkins), *sni- (Pokorny)

1 (having to do with) the nose•, with IE *S from ...a. So snout (which retains



:;-() -

the w from *lib) and t a i l are both regarded as marginal. Cushit ic has

ilda.nb- 'hindqu:!rters', apparently from the same affixed base. As moreAAs related forms may show up, we are not justified in setting up an

Eg.-sem.-Cu.-IE subgroup a t the present t:ime. If a large number ofaffixed bases are found to occur in this se t of branches of the phylum,we could consider such a subgroup. Likewise, if we can show that both

simple bases, such as ~ - b , and affix ones from the same bases are re

flected in Uralic, Altai.c or other preseumed relatives, we would have amuch stronger case for claiming relationship. Reflexes of an affixedform only could point to borrowing.

Among the affixes which have been postulated are ? , h, ~ and c(proto **?, **h, **?Hand **hH respectively). ? and h have long been

recognized as affixes. Leslau identified ~ as such but did not includeEgyptian in his examples. c was only a stepchild aff ix unt i l recently,when it has come into i t s own. Work on LL has mown that a l l of thesemay serve as affixes. M,5ller included ?, ~ and c in his 'Laryngale', and

the IE Laryngeal Hypothesis has suffered fran not following his lead.A suffix -x (presumably -h) has been seen in Hit t . newax- •to renew', but

where there is no Anatolian evidence uncertainties abound. For example,Eg. \1-b-s ' c lothe ' , 3-b-s (a type of headdress) and Sem. *1-b-s ' c lothe'show that the base **b-s 'on' may take the prefixes h and 1 (Eg. 3).IE *Wes- ' c lothe' shows no trace of a prefix and presumably reflects plain*i{-b-s. I t may, however, have had a laryngeal prefix now los t . The frequentuse of affixes consisting of laryngeals must be recognized if we are todeal effectively with the Laryngeal Hypothesis in IE . The possibleoccurrence of more than one laryngeal affix on the same root greatly complicates the situation, but this complexity must be faced if we are to reachany useful conclusions. The considerable loss of lary.ngeals in IE i sparalleled in other groups (e.g. , Chadic) and may also occur in more distantrelatives. To recognize this possibil i ty i s essential to broader based

comparisons.

To conclude, the simple and affixed bases reconstructed by me may fa ir ly

be ascribed to LL as they are based upon LL data. I t i s probable tha t the

simple bases wil l prove to be or to resemble the shapes of proto forms

eventually to be reconstructed for a broader based relationship. I have notmade comparisons beyond LL, nor wil l I have time to do so. The N reconstruction I have looked a t ignore consonant ablaut and are, to that extenta t least , flawed. If I were to broaden the comparison, I do not feel thatI could rely upon what has been done but would have to make fresh analyses.

This i s the approach I have taken with LL. While many earl ier comparisons

have been validated, this has come about by re-assessing the data, not by

uncrit ical acceptance of ear l ier results . I applaud my predecessors but havehad

to makemy

own way tothe resul t s awaiting discover,r. Considering

thelarge number of bases which h a ; v ~ e e n observed to be in connnon between AAsand IE, I do not see how anyone can doubt the relationship of the two groups.(Something over 100 LL bases have been treated in same fashion or other inart icles now in print . More to come.)



- 5 1 -

Changing the subject slightly, something should be said about Levin's

approach (10). As I noted in rrry review of his 1971 book, one eh ould notcr i t ic ize him for not doing what he had no intention of doing, namely t ra-

dit ional comparative l inguistics. He points out remarkable parallels between

Semit ic and IE, but he does not claim that these features are inherited -only that they exis t and are not the resul t of chance. If I understand him

correctly (we had discussions in Montreal in August), he thinks of them asareal phenomena, due to the geographic juxtaposition of the languages involved

a t some period prior to classical Sansla-it, Greek and Latin times. I am moreinclined to see the same phenomena as inherited, but one should not put up

a barr ier between his work and that of others just because he has l imited hisfield of investigation. His observations need to be included in our work.

I come now to a f ie ld in which I have no expertise, tha t of physicaltypes (47-hB). Years ago I asked our physical anthropologist Georg Neumannto what physical type the ancient Egyptians belonged. His answer was 'Medi

terranean •. I have followed Munson in taking the AAs peoples from a homeland on the Upper Nile (11); IE must be added if 11 is valid. Our evidence

for their physical type i s twofold, skeletal remains and ancient Egyptianrepresentations. The l a t te r clearly distinguish between black Africansand Egyptians. The former are painted black, the l a t te r red for the menand yellow for the women. There i s an (J ) Old Kingdom reserve head which

i s clearly that of a black African. others in the same collection are ofa different physical type. Your observations about the variety of types inAfrica i s right to the point. My conclusion i s that the 11 peoples were adifferent physical type from the more southerly black Africans, 'Who in turnwere of various physical types. I would now l ike to hear from more physical

anthropologists on the subject.

A minor note. The 4000 years of page 11 refers to the time presumably

covered by the fonns discussed in the 1975 art ic le , not to the total length

of time far which we have written records in Egypt.

This has become much longer than I intended. Even S J , it i s a poorsubstitute for a chat about i t .

With best wishes, Y o u r ~Carleton T. Hodge



A Provisional Classification of Human Languages

MACROPHYIA:

KHOISANIC

KONGO-SAHELIC

SOUI'H NOSTRATIC

NOR1H NOSTRATIC

DENE-cAUCASIC

AtBI'RIC

INDO-PACIFIC

AUSTRALIC

AMERINDIC

Phyla:

by John D. Bengtson ,

Sample languages:

south Khoisan

HadzanSandaweanNiger-KongoanEast SUdanianMandean, etc.AfrasianKartvelianDravidianIndo-HittianUralianYukaghiranWest AltaianEast Al taian

ChukotianEskaleutianMacro-Caucasian+SmnerianSino-TibetanYeniseianNa-DeneanAustro-MiaoAustro-Tai+TasmanianAndamanesePapuan

Pama-Nyungan,etc.Northern AmerindCentral AmerindChibchan-PaezanAndeanEquatucanoanGe-Pano-Cariban

!Kung, Nama

HadzaSandaweSwahili, Zulu, Yoruba, FulaNubian, Maasai, BarabaigMandinka, Songhai, KanuriArabic, Hausa, Somali, RiffGeorgian, ZanTamil, Brahui, +ElamiteWelsh, Kurdish, +HittiteFinnish, Magyar, NenetsYukaghir, +QnokTUrkish, Mongol, ManchuKorean, Japanese, Ainu*

Chukchi, KamchadalInuit (Eskimo), AleutBasque, Avar, Burushaski+SumerianChinese, Burmese, GaroKet, +PumpokolHaida, Tlingit, HUpa, NavajoKhmer, Jtnong, VietnameseMalay, Fijian, Maori, Thai+TasmanianJarawa, Onge, +Aka-BoSiroi, Iatmul, ArapeshDyirbal, Aranda, Tiwi

cree, Zuni, Yuma, +YahiHopi, Kiowa, otani, +MangueTarascan, Timucua, +ChibchaQuechua, Yamana, +PuelcheJivaro, Guarani, +TainoBororo, carib, +Mongoyo

+ Denotes extinct. phylum or language.* The classification of these languages is perhaps the most controversial o f all . Most paleolinguists include Japanese and Korean in NorthNostratic (J.H. Greenberg's Eurasiatic). Paul K. Benedict classifies

Japanese as Austro-Tai. Karl Menges includes Japanese and Korean, butno t Ainu, in Nostratic. Clearly, Japanese incorporates elements fromboth Nostratic and Austric. The problem is to determine which ancienttype predominates in the genetic ~ of the language

~ ~ ~ ~ - - - - · - - - -



"N ,,EW

- .5 ;5 -

DENt.- C,4UCAS'ICA-Joh"'" .D. Bet•a {<>,r-....

, 4 l ( ~ t t ) i }'{ql-

"sALIVA, p u s , s o R . ~ '': Bas•rue.. (6-LlipuzccM.) le'Yde "d••'l!'€..1,

.sa.livet.'' / CaL.tc.. • f w l ~ d . . t ; Arc.l,i ~ i t • · m ~ n u t e ' ;Avcvr )(we-rd.. ' 'pus'' 1/ Na- Devte: K u + d t ~ ' k . - }id..

· ~ c a r ' ' , C h i p e w y t ~ , . . . _ h ~ . r"sc«.b'', No.vako

- I ' C : ~ d . ,.. J66d 11 sore''.

''SMAL.L MA/Vlfr lAL": Bslf. erb i ''ra.bb,·t'• .::( ~ e- -rVgw i ICa.uc. •Y:{gwV t , U - ; ~ k k - d.a¥wa_''"rnouse")

J Y I ~ u s k dA.)(ka... id., Akhwakk ' r " e ~ ' c . . c . . ' 's'fui(fel;

wettse.l ", TiYldt "Ye."'u. ''?no-rteYL-11/ / Sit1o-Tibe..ttNK.:

*1"t.t.DLk : ;Vlanc 'rU..k ••-rat" J Burmese k-TWAk //

? T .".L-

d , ,t ../ ' / v

d ,,ND : . ' ' ~ j ' l . Q.O.. ' 'wftlse( "J ' "ava 10 ·ns- O l

"lynx, wllcLctt.t". (StatYOStik.. fq8"lj : Ca..u.c + ST) .

"sEED'' Ca.l{c.. *k.'er k'enV : W(!st Co..u.(. • k,a.k'tt" CJ ~~ k . ' A l ' \ . & k ' t t "e.9j• wcdt1.c.d:-", ~ l . t r r • ' a . . . v klYikiYi-(j)a.nnd-

''.seed of p i ~ e o m e " , }<tvrt\iA. k'ctrk'a."- "e99", Ava.r

k,orJt'c't\U. ' ' q - r ~ p e - , berr3 '' / 8 t u ~ . t s h 4 s b ' (. Na13 if")

ko..ki.yo "(uhJ.,Y"okett) wa.ll1c.t.t" / / S.T: TihetaJ;t.,

k"''Y'Cl.11

c:L k.·..,c:{ of seed' ' , Old.CJ.,,'vtese •k ra - s''seed, to sou>" / / ND : Hw'da... k'tAt{"-kJQ.lt)' ,...,

k ' t ( . ' t l . f c , t a . A . . ~ ''u.n-ripe.- berr•es' 'J f\Jo.vaho - k ' ~ t ?''seed, pit''.

11 \NSECT WITH &1 ~ 6 - " : l3s'J.. I; z-lor ( 61Atp.) II wa.sp I) Iozer(Sou.leb-"'-) ' 'hornet" J loze- bTd: (SoLd.) ' 'wasp" /

C .u.c.. 'F ~ ~ "Yhc' V : Ava.r "-'ol '' wa.sp '' // N D :

C, · - o:tr> / ' ' 'b IIJ fl " ~ ) " ' ' "",' pewyQ."'- A t'Z.£ t.t oo9 ';1 , A t 'Z£- teu.w£

" N h "" ' ' " ' " dI w a . s p ~ ) C::Wl\. l> /\ e% I I ' ' h o r . s e f l ~ , ga ''.

(Bot.lCl.a. 1 q ~ g - : Bstz + ~ t . u c )' ' f iREwoot:>, FIREBRAND'' Bs'l * t- t i ~ i i > ilhil1ti (5oCA.feht,)""

i U l'\dl ~ \ (i.,d.l., etc. 11 f il'"elorlWI.d 1 e.'""ber" /

Ca.uc. * w t1' \ d. V " fi.-HvooJ '' '> A , c J ~ .f: tA. eli. }

H A n z i h h.tld l..t., l<:hwa.rsh i li.d.o 1 ~ ~ c . //

N D : £yAk ~ id. "cl.eo..ckoooc.( f il'"ewz,od''.

(Nikol4ev 1qq1 : Ca.u.c + t-JJJ)



John D. Bengtson

Some Dene-Caucasic comparisons:

1 . Sino-Tibe tan: Magari l e t • tongue• , Kachin s i g - l e t , OldChinese * l a t / / Na-Dene: T l i n g i t l ' U t ' • tongue• , Eyak -laat'

- n , a t , , Yakutat k h a - l e t h .

2. Basque a n a i ( e ) ' b ro the r • (male speaking) , ne-ba ' b ro the r •

(female sp e a k i n g ) / / Na-Dene: Tl i ng i t hunaX •man•s o ld e r

bro the r • , Chipewyan -unaya ' o l de r b ro the r • , Navajo -{na1.

3. Basque ho tz • ( to be) c o l d ' / Caucas ic : Avar k v a ~ - • ( to be)c o l d ' / / Na-Dene: Athapaskan *k ,as • ( to be) c o l d ' .

4. Caucasic : Bezhta 1 - t , i n o • s m a l l ' , Avar h i - t , i n - a b / /Sino-Tibe tan: Old Chinese * t o n ~ • s hor t • , Tibe tan t hug ,

Kachin g e - d u n / / Na-Dene: Haida t ' a • -3 u ' t h i n • , Chipewyant ' ' . - h ian e , NavaJO t,a •

5. Basque e d a n - e r a n • to d r i n k ' / Caucasic *HVdvVnV • to

dr ink ' (Bezhta Xuna l ) / / Na-Dene *ftaNH • to d r i n k ' (Yakuta t- l i a , Navajo -At= -d l B ) .

6 . Basque ja n· ~ o e a ~ ~ / / Na-Dene *yan • to ea t • ( T l i n g i t-yan , Navajo - y ~ , -y a a ? ) .

'f=ORTHCD/VIINCr ~ l l c L E By



-56 -~ D 'MJ? kA. $!A '1\d.a.. - D..e Y'\.l(.- La ltl. Cctb' _c0 'Wi. ra. '\' ! _ ! . _ ~1. Kus gi ta-se ' ch i ld ' (G, H)// Yen * g ~ ? t 'children• (Ket kA7t,

Kott kat Yen 161 ) / I ND: Haida g it " 'g i i t •son •, Tl g i ty it •son• (P §42) [cf . also Nahali g i ~ a •younger brother ' ;Ruhlen 1989a Yen + ND + Nahali; Gurov 1989: 43 Kus + Y e n ] ~

2.. sum na •person •, ni- ta , nf-tag •man • ( B.)ii -Kus nlyu•person• (R) / / ND: Tl na • t r ibe , people, Ath • - n e ~ • - n•person, people ' : Sar dl-n6, Nav di-ne, Mat - n i i (P §19)[Bengtson NSC §129 Sum + ND].

3. Kus duvai 'husband' (R)/ / ST *do •to be related by bir th

4 or marriage• ~ K a c h d o c B u r m tau SdTC//59) ma •to take ' (H)• Bsq e-ma-n to g ve Sum mu i • Kus[cf . Nahal! ma- •to give• ] .

5. Kus bhoq (R), bhrok (H) ' h o t ' / / ST *bok 'white• (OCh*bhak, Garo gi-bok.-vgi-pok STC 181); cf . Kan bokh 'hot•(Bai ley) / / Yen *bo?k ' f i re• (Ket b ~ ? k , Pump b u ~ Yen 161)[Semantics as in IE *bhel - ) Slav belu 'white• vs. Ole b il' flame• Pokorny 1959: 119].

6. Kus qaaivan 'dry• (R)/ / Yen *qAj- 'dry• (Kott xuj - , Arinqoija Yen 164) [An al ternat ive , or complementary, etymologyis given by Starost in Yen 212, and Bengtson NSC §115].

7. Cauc *[?i]qV or *?irGvV •to get/be cold ' (Lzg reqi -z , Hur

eg-o, egi,..., ig iHU

60 ) / I Kus yo?au •cold • (R).B· Bsq zuzen •right (rectus, j us tus ) ' / / Cauc •c•in?V •new•(Tsez ec•no, Ub c•a, Bats c•in •nouveau•, c•a in -c •an i'propre, saint• Yen 216; Sommerfelt 1938: 122)/ / Kus j inda Ij ina?i •new• (R)/ / ST • s rn - • s i 9 (Burm sad •new•, Tib g-i in'good' Yen 216-7) [Starost in Yen 216 and Hyp 21 Cauc + ST +Yen *tur- ; note semantic paral le ls in Bsq, Bats, Tib] .

9. cauc: Botl b i l l •greasy, fa t • , Cham bei-ab, Hnz bol-eru(Gud 90) / / Bur b ls (pl . blao).v (W) bes ' f a t • (n . ) / / Kus b i j i' f a t • (adj . ) (H) [Bouda 1964: 604 Cauc +Bur] .

10. Kus ~ a n y i •many• (R)/ / ST •aag (Trung d ~ - m a g 'b ig; older• ,OCh *mag ' e ldes t ; great , pr incipal ' STC 189).

, -1· Bsq lanh1r (S)-v laino (L)- lanb(r)o (L, BN)""' lano (AN, G) ,-ow

laino (V, G, BN) •mist, fog ' / / cauc • r x n ~ • v v . ' c loud' (? Godhanlo, Tnd hinalu, Cham hina X 75) / / ? sum dungu ' c loud'(B ) / / ? K u ~ duling ' c loud' (RT) [cf . Alb ren:;:>rl •.cloud•,I l ly r rhinos 'Nebel ' , possibly from DC substratum: Krahe1955: 38].

12. Cauc • g v l m h V ~ * m ( h ) i g v V (Tsez qema •rain• , Bzht qima-ro' c louds ' , Abkh a-naq•Va ' f og ' ) / / ST •mik ' fog• (Tibr-mug-s-pa, Lpch muk ' foggy•, OCh *mok ' d r izz le ' STC 77) / /Kus gaanigil ing ' fog ' (RT; c f . preceding for element- l i ng) / / Yen: Yug xoag ' fog• [Starost in Yen 210 Cauc + ST +Yen].

13. Kus khaangu •cold ' (adj . ) (RT)// ST: Tib khyag-s ' ge f r ie ren,erfr ieren• , OCh *Xjvan 'Eiswasser ' / / Yen: Ket qug-el , qu,qou ' ice• [Bouda 1957: 90 ST + Yen].

14. Bur a-s i (pl . a-sim-uc) • s ta r • , (W) a-sum-un i d . / / Kussaa?naan •star• (RT)// ST: OCh *seg •s tar• , Hruso l i -cog,Yatshumi clghJ, Tengsa lu- t ig t ig (Hyp 22 ; IST 177; Shafer1947: 194) / / ND: Haida s ig ' sky, day•; Ath *sUn?....,•con? •s tar• : Minto sen?, Chip t9an, Nav sq? (K 57).[Bengtson NSC §74 Bur + ST + ND].

15· Kus duvu I du •earth ' (R)/ / Yen • tu?v- ' c lay• (Ket tu?,Pump tu - Yen 147).

1'· Kus taang •water• (R)/ / ND: Haida tag •sea water• , Eyakt 'h •waves•, Gal t a - •water ' (in comp.), Chip t a - , Nav t a (Sapir 1915: 553; NDE).

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



11 heac.L "

"ear 11

"eye"

" ?"' eck "

"Flesh."

' 'bone"

,, ha.'Y\ d. "

11 pers CfYL.''

"child."

"yea...r 11

•• ea"ri:k''

' 'Water' '

II f ire I

AINU AND AUSTRIC

lriNU:

pa..) pa..ke..

k1·sa.ra...

~ ra . ( ro..) 1 )'\.

;y l Y'A.- '1"\ Ll YY\GL.

"e.yelorow"

vp a Y o ~ ca...ro

ko...'YYL-

pone

tek

kokkCL!3 lA Y u. "'-J

kU.'YU.

II ve.vy YD"'"'"c.L1 i ld , ,J

t.ei1'Y\ep

pe. (.he)

o.. be,..., a.pi.

AUSTRfC:!: . B o.J'I?\ttr- * bo: ?

_M LAt\do. ff b ~ k ( b : : : > k )(A tJ =kt-ts YOY\eS ,·

AN ~ bu ?L.tk

L ,· -lf "Y\.O')"n.. " h ~ d . ha.ir" ·

T ~ i . *- tra..CL AN *'YYlo..CGL Mia.o * 7 l c t ~s. S o . . h ~ a r * bar '' l,·p., ba.'ll\k" Tt.li '* b i IV

AN ~ birbiY" ''riW\J e.dtje 1 bon:ler'' ''lip

AN * I ikud•I I ')')eclc haJl..k I I

)

AN (AtQ.ya.J) =N: ba'Yl i

M t A Y l d . ~ _. t i? Viet t ~AN : RlA.ktA.l. * koko "l-eg"

D h ~ - B . e . . kol< "kYle.e..'' TG\t * kok ' 'foo;V\ul'ldec.. * ko ro ''1'1'\atl\. 11 ( o f i-r-e.e;

Mon.. ~ r U.Q.? 11 'l'Y\cUe"M u'hd.a.: Pa.re-n8i i::-o'Yla.'n.. " y o u a ; , ~

~ t si.sf-erjV\ j 'l O - Y lO ~ l ' \ . . . 11.5 0 n. 11

Ta.L ~ p i Li ?be~ - 8tA..hl1tA.r * t 1 1 e . ~ h . AN *i.o..na.h. "/a

JVl,·40-

ylO

*1..

t a.a..("h.)TtA

( * 7din.S a . h ~ C l r ha..h. "'riVer's mo&.A..th'' T«L * ?bo..

AN * ba.?a.h. "flood1 WtA.ter-'' " o v e r f l p ' i l

TaC: * vo..y

(Cll.bstv-a.d:e.d.. f - r ~ "Lexica..! P a . r ~ l l e . l s Be.iweeh..

Ai'l'\u.. OMd Ausir-ie;' by v&.c.lttv 8 f q ~ e l c . , IGJ'f.3 'n\S.)

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



-.5""7

3 'i Fa Tf rck Ry a_ yt

O c t o b e r 1 2 , 1991

Mr. H a r o l d C. F lemin g

5240 F o r b e s AvenueP i t t s b u r g h , PA 15217

A l I f l $ A I r- y 0 [ Th diAJ)+ro.. f.;' . CtJmm.i)lTs ~ o J t c ~ -b..d.

Dear H a l :

T h a n k s v e r y much f o r i n q u i r i n g w h e t h e r I h a v e b e e ngetting M o t h er T o n g u e . It s e e m s that we a r e now o n

t r a c k w i t h my a d d r e s s , an d I t h a n k you f o r t h e t r o u b l e

you t o o k to i n s u r e d e l i v e r y .

I am e n c l o s i n g a c h e c k fo r 1991 d u e s .

I e n j o y e d y o u r article in M o th e r

It w as an interesting o v e r s i g h tr e g a r d i n g t ax o n o my an d p h y l o g e n y .

Tongue li v e r y much.on current t h i n k i n g

I am a l s o r a t h e r s u r p r i s e d when efforts l i k e t h o s e o fA i h e n v a l d - A n g e n o t result i n s t r a n g e l a b e l s l i k e " N o s

c a u . " P r o t o - S a p i e n s " a s a d e s i g n a t i o n f o r a l a n g u a g e

( ! ) seems particularly i n a p p r o p r i a t e s e m a n t i c a l l y .

Y et y o u r article made me realize that I h a v e b e e nb a r k i n g up th e w ro n g t r e e fo r some t i m e . I h av e b e e n

a b l e t o i d e n t i f y th e earliest s y l l a b l e s (CV) an d their

m e a n i n g s t h a t a re th e f o u n d a t i o n fo r r o o t s o f t h e form

eve, s o familiar f rom ( P ) I E a n d o t h e r early r e c o n s t r u c t e d l a n g u a g e s .

I h a v e d e s i g n a t e d t h e s e syllables " N o s t r a t i c " i n myarticle an d in c o r r e s p o n d e n c e w i t h Alan when I really

s h o u l d h a v e b e e n calling t h em " P r o t o - S a p i e n s " , o rbetter P r o t o - L a n g u a g e .

Alan is so b u sy w i t h h i s m a j o r p r o j e c t now t h a t I am

w o n d e r i n g if you w o u l d be a v a i l a b l e to o f f e r a c r i t i q u eon t h e s e i d e a s , and s u g g e s t p u b l i c a t i o n s t h a t m i g h t be

w i l l i n g to e n t e r t a i n th e i d e a o f p u b l i s h i n g t h em.

N e e d l e s s to s a y , r e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h e s e s y l l a b l e s and

their m e a n i n g s a l s o entails my r e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f th eearliest p h o n o l o g i c a l s y s t e m w h i c h differs i n o n l y

m o s t l y m i n o r ways f rom A l a n ~ s r e c o n s t r u c t i o n f o r Nostratic

I h a v e b e e n t h i n k i n g that it w o u l d b e profitable t ocome i n t o c o n t a c t w i t h o t h e r s , p e r h a p s A S L I P p e r s , whoa re w o r k i n g o n an d i n t e r e s t e d i n A f r i c a n an d E u r a s i a nto s e e how t h e s e P r o t o - L a n g u a g e s y l l a b l e s an d m e a n i n g s

( a s w e l l a s p h o n o l o g i c a l s y s t e m ) c a n b e regularly

r e l a t e d . Do you h a v e any s u g g e s t i o n s on whom I m i g h t



- s-8-co n tac t ?

I have been in cor respondence w i th P r o f e s s o r Lehmannfo r ove r t e n y ea r s ; and though he h as k i n d l y s e n t memuch i n t e r e s t i n g m a t e r i a l , he has so f a r avo ided makingdirect c om m e n t s on my work (for u n d e r s t a n d a b l er e a s o n s ) . I am u r g e n t l y in need o f f eedback f rom some-one l i k e y o u r s e l f who i s in a p o s i t i o n to be f a m i l i a r

w i t h e v e r y t h i n g t h a t i s d e v e l o p i n g in o u r r a p i d l yburgeon ing f i e l d o f i n t e r e s t .

I would l i k e to t r y a n o t h e r i d e a on you if I may.

Withou t g e t t i n g i n to t h e q u e s t i o n o f w he the r th e A ihen va ld -A ngeno t " t r e e " i s an accu r a t e r e f l e c t i o n o f th edeve lopment o f r e l a t i o n s h i p s among th e l a ngua ge s o f t h ew o r l d , I would p r o p o s e a t axonomy t h a t m i g h t be alittle more i n t e r n a l l y c o n s i s t e n t .

Here i s a list o f t h o s e su g g es t io n s :

s u g g e s t e d , , .

Leve l 1 ( f rom 130 ,000 B.C . )

Pro t o -Sa p i e n s Pro to -L anguage

Leve l 2 ( f rom 92 ,000 B.C . )

A f r i c a n A fr i c a n

Pro to -Noscau Eu r a s i a n

Leve l 3 ( f rom 40 ,000 B.C . )

Eu r a s i a n ->

P r a t o - N o s t r a t i c North Eu r a s i a n

Pro to -Scau Sou th Eu r a s i a n

A u s t r a l i a n A u s t r a l i a n

Leve l 4 (35 ,000 B .C . )

North Eu ra s i a n ->



- .s- 9 -

Caucasoid

Mongoloid

Amerind

Nor thwes t Euras ian

No r t h eas t E u r a s i an

American Euras ian

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

South Euras ian ->

Sino-Caucas ian Upper -South Euras ian

Aus t r i c Lower-South Euras ian

Leve l 5 (from 20,000? B.C. )

Nor thwes t E u r as i an ->

Afro -As i a t i c Lower-NW E u r as i an

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Nor thea s t E u ra s i an ->

S i b e r i a n

Arc t i c

S i b e r i a n NE E u r as i an

Arc t i c NE Euras ian

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Upper-South Euras ian ->

Na-Dene

S ino -T ibe t an

Yenis sean

Nor th Caucas ian

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Lower-South E uras i an ->

A u s t r o - A s i a t i c

Aus t rones i an

Level 6 (10 ,000? B .C . )

A s i a t i c L o wer - S . / E u r a s i an

P a c i f i c Lower-S . E uras i an



Upper-NW Eura s i an ->

Kar t v e l i a n

Indo-European

Drav id i an

Leve l 9 ( f rom 6 ,000 B.C. )

S ibe r i a n NK Eura s i an ->

Ura l i c

Al t a i c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . . . . .. .. . . . . .Arc t i c NK Eura s i an ->

Chukchi -Kamchatka • Yukagh i r • Gi lyak

Esk imo-Aleu t

I r e a l i z e t h i s i nvo l ve s some f a i r l y l e ng thy nomenc la

t u r e bu t th e advan tage t h a t o f f s e t s t h i s , in my op i n i on , i s t h a t it t r a n s p a r en t l y r e ve a l s th e pos t u l a t e d

r e l a t i o n s h i p s (and i s con s i s t e n t l y geog r aph i c ) .

I hope t h a t I have co r r e c t l y i n t e r p r e t e d th e t ime s o fth e a rbo r e a l s ke t ch you p rov ided .

Wel l , I hope to hea r from you when it i s po s s i b l e .

- ~ 'Pa t Ryan9115 West 34 th S t r e e t

L i t t l e Rock, AR 72204(501) 227-9947



Harold C. Fleming Ph. D.5240 Forbes Ave.Pittsburgh, Pa. 15217

Dear Hal,

I 10 ...

February 28, 1993

In the Fall issue of "Mother Tongue" you were most kind to mention my work and the assessment

I have promoted; that human/primate relationships may have untested parallels. The issue I haveinvestigated started with a simple idea; that the American Indian has rarely been included in thesearch for human origins. Ultimately, my research led to the far ranging hypothesis; that shouldman have originated from within the American continents (A R. Wallace 1887 1889; Sir A. Keith1911; F. Ameghino 1915; and others) then a source for this origination must have been derivedfrom within the higher primate family of which both modem humans and New World Platyrrhinesare members. However, the general consensus has determined that New World anthropoids couldnot have achieved similar adaptations characteristic of the Old World apes.

The data I have accumulated so far leads me to counter that the arguments that wouldeliminate the evolutionary potential for the development of upright walking or any conclusions thatwould decree that terrestrial adaptation could not have been achieved by this isolated haplorhine(higher primate) group are arguments made from negative evidence. The fact that there are no

known extant apes in the Americas and that fossil evidence to support their prehistoric existencehas not been recognized (AL. Bryan 1978)does not mean that paleontological evidence will neverbe confmned. "The paleontologists studying the fossil history of primates have good reason tolament the fragmentary record that must be used to decipher the evolution of this important group.With the great strides that have been made in recent years in the Old World, it can truly be said thatthe paleontological record of the New World platyrrhines is indeed the weakest of the lot. There aremany reasons for this, but these mostly stem from the fact that, with the push to find humanancestors, emphasis has been outside of South America" (Bruce MacFadden 1990 pg. 7).

My own research has led me to conclude that the discoveries of fossil hominoid forms in theOld World have been made through the efforts of fmancially supported research strategies that havegrown from the need anthropological science has to verify the evolutionary history of our ownkind. Carrying my own hypothesis to what I believe is its logical conclusion, from frrst the beliefthat our human ancestors may have been American Indians, then, the final analysis must leave

open the question as to whether the evolutionary capacity of platyrrhines affords the same potentialadaptations achieved by their haplorhini sisters of the old World.I now believe that the sudden presence of modem humans in the Old World, marking - in

European terms - the advent of the Upper Paleolithic, implies that modem humans - Homo sapienssapiens -- were in the New World long before this event (> 35,000 ybp ). A rationalization forshaping successful research strategies could be found in an archaeological consideration of thecurious defmitions of the New World paleoarchaic period. I welcome your skepticism and youropen heartedness, however, I also recognize my own obligation to stand my (New World) groundin the belief that anthropology, as a science, has eliminated the American Indian from evolutionaryconcerns through the mis-evaluation of negative evidence. As you have suggested, my hypothesiscan find wide ranging academic support from genetic (R. H. Ward 1991); linguistic (J. Nichols1992) and historical (A. F. Chamberlain 1912; C. F. Lummis 1925) assessments that alsopromote the acceptance of a "pre-Clovis" archaeological defmition and, at least, a mid-Pleistocenepresence of mankind in the Americas.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity to respond to your counsel and remain,

Sincerely yours,~ / J ! . ~Alvah M. Hicks22050 Maricopa Hwy.Ojai, Ca. 93023



LA LUTTE RAJEUNEE: THE NEWS

NEW DICTIONARY OF ULWA. Kenneth Hale of M.I.T. sa id t ha t be hadbeen busy l a t e ly working on t h i s , so he hadn ' t rea l ly had· t ime to

par t i c i pa t e in the Pac i f i c Rim Symposium. It i s DICCIONARIOELEMENTAL de l ULWA (SUMU MERIDIONAL). 1989. CODIUL/UYUTMUBAL,Karawala, Regi6n Aut6noma Atlan t ico Sur; CIDCA, Centro de

Inves t igaciones y Documentaci6n de la Costa At lan t i ca ; CCS-MIT,Centro de Ciencia Cogni t iva, M.I.T.Ulwa i s a member of the Misumalpan c l us t e r of languages,

spoken mostly in eas te rn Nicaragua. I t i s maybe as fa r from

Miskito as Engl ish i s from German, or a b i t f a r t he r .

Th e d ic t ionary has about 1500 primary i tems, plus a veryuseful comparat ive list of Miski to . Trans la t ions in to bothEngl ish and Spanish are given. Short grammatical ske tches are

inc luded . There i s a va luable compara-tive sec t ion a t th e endwhich has some l e x i c o s t a t i s t i c s and recons t ruc t ions .

We a re not qua l i f i e d to review t h i s d ic t ionary , so wehappi ly i nv i t e some Americanis t to review it in MOTHER TONGUE. Isuspec t it w i l l g e t high grades .

GREENBERG RETORTS. While eager to f i n i s h h is Euras ia t i c book, JoeGreenberg f i na l l y decided he needed to take some t ime to respondto the c r i t i c s of h is LANGUAGE IN THE AMERICAS book or more

prec i se ly the s c i e n t i f i c assumptions made by h is c r i t i c s . Here i sa list of some of h i s cu r ren t r e bu t t a l s o r r e t o r t s :

"THE LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE REGARDING THE SETTLEMENT OF THEAMERICAS". This w i l l appear in AMERICAN BEGINNINGS, ed i t ed byFreder ick West.

"Observat ions Concerning Ringe ' s CALCULATING THE FACTOR OFCHANCE IN LANGUAGE COMPARISON.". This should have appeared in

PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, vol .137, no .1 ,

1993, 79-90. Greenberg was motiva ted in pa r t by h is percept ion ofRinge ' s ' g r a t u i t ous l y deroga tory remarks about my work ' . He aimsto show t ha t ' h i s own approach [Ringe ' s ] to t h a t sub jec t i sf a l l a c i o u s . '

"On the Amerind Aff i l i a t i ons of Zuni and Tonkawa" which i s are jo inder to Manaster Ramer 's a r t i c l e in CLN 24:1 "Languages in

the Americas". We repor ted some of Alex is ' remarks in MT-17.

While Alexis was not perce ived as a hos t i l e c r i t i c , Greenberg wasconcerned to show t ha t Zuni d id belong to Penut ian and Tonkawa to

Hokan (both branches of Northern Amerind). It i s poss ib le t ha t

t h i s a r t i c l e has not found a jou rna l ye t , s ince none i s l i s t e d ."The Convergence of Euras ia t i c and Nos t ra t i c" which has been

submi t ted to STUDIES IN LANGUAGE. This i s aimed a t c l a r i fy i ng ther e l a t i ons h ip between ( in e f fec t ) tw o s i m i l a r hypotheses , r a the r

than answering c r i t i c s ."The Concept of Proof in Genetic Lingu is t i c s " which w i l l

appear in a F e s t s c h r i f t fo r Sydney Lamb. This i s aimed a t what Ic a l l ' h igh t heory ' in h i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s but also a t c r i t i c s .

A 10-page review a r t i c l e of Johanna Nichols LINGUISTIC

DIVERSITY IN SPACE AND TIME (Chicago, 1989). Joe perce ives

Johanna as assuming t ha t the comparat ive method can only reachback a sh o r t way and as a t tempt ing to give preh i s to ry a viable

a l t e rna t i ve but still using language da ta . He d o e sn ' t th ink she



- b3 -

i s succes s fu l in c rea t ing a v iab le a l t e rna t i ve to what she andher col leagues are des t roying . (This also may lack a j ou rna l . )

TWO SEVERE REVIEWS of Greenberg and Ruhlen have appeared. I f whatVictor Golla repor t s in SSILA i s any i nd ica t ion , there are l o t s

more where these came from! The f i r s t i s a p i t i l e s s review ofGreenberg 's LANGUAGE IN THE AMERICAS by Robert L. Rankin

(Univers i ty of Kansas) in IJAL 58: no.3 , July 1992, pp.324-353.I t i s a c l a s s i c a l s t a t e m e n ~ o m the young pr ies thood. Onesentence from h is conclus ions says it a l l . "We must remain opento new sugges t ions , being ca re fu l not to throw out any heal thy

methodological babies with t h i s Greenbergian ba thwate r . " Of more

i n t e r e s t i s Rankin ' s view e a r l i e r on t ha t : "But c l a s s i f i ca t ion i snot a 'first s t e p ' ; it i s a f i na l one. One may begin anywhere."

I once t r i ed to po in t out to the popular pres s t ha t , whileGreenberg had had a f a i r l y easy t ime of it in Afr ica , he was

going to be savaged in the Americas. ATLANTIC's e d i to r s d i d n ' t

th ink tha t was a very impor tan t poin t !"

Equally severe was William Poser ' s (S tanford Univers i ty)

review inLANGUAGE,

vol .69 , Number 1 (1993), 220-221, of Merr i t tRuhlen 's GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES, VOL.1: CLASSIFICATION.2ND EDN. Poser ' s f i na l summary was t ha t : "As a reference onc l a s s i f i ca t ion t h i s book i s comprehensive and usefu l i f one t akes

in to account i t s s t rong Greenbergian b ias . As a his tory ofc l a s s i f i c a t i o n , it provides usefu l po in te rs to the l i t e r a tu r e ,but i t s ana lys i s and eva lua t ion a re unre l iab le . As a t rea tment ofthe methodology of gene t ic c l a s s i f i ca t ion it i s incomple te ,i naccura te , and misleading."

As Paul Benedic t might say - - Ruhlen seems to be underminingWestern Civ i l i z a t i on . Having wri t t en a long review a r t i c l e on

the same book 's 1 s t edi t ion and having seen the modest changes in

the 2nd e d i t i on , I cannot recognize the book Poser i s t a lk ing

about . Surely I am biased because I l i ke Greenberg ' s work.However, Professor Poser might take a peek a t h is own b iases ! Bythe way - - what i s with Stanford Univers i ty? It resembles the GunFight a t the OK Corra l .

USEFUL WORK ON NILO-SAHARAN i s being done by M.Lionel Bender.Granted t ha t r ecogn i t ion i s hard to gain when one works on poor ly

known African (or Amazonian or Papuan) languages fa r o ff thebeaten t rack , still we should give him a round of applause . Notonly should we be very concerned about disappear ing languages - a major po in t s t re ssed by Kenneth Hale - - but we ought to

remember t ha t the f i na l t e s t of globa l gene t ic t heo r i es wi l l come

i n g rea t phyla l ike Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, Indo-Pac i f i c andAust ra l i an . The 'we ' here i s long rangers , of course .

Bender has done a mighty reconst ruc t ion of Cent ra l Sudanic ,a c r i t i c a l sub-phylum of Nilo-Saharan. It looks pre t ty good.(Apologies! I ' ve ' f i l e d ' it somewhere.Time pres su re prevents . . .More recen t ly a t the 22nd Afr ican Lingu i s t i c s Conference,Nairobi , Ju ly 15-19, 1991 he gave a paper on "Comparat ive KomuzGrammar". That i s a usefu l summary of morphology in perhaps themost d i s t i nc t ive sub-phylum of Ni lo-Saharan. I t a l so serves as ar e bu t t a l to Fleming ' s argument, l ex i ca l l y based, t ha t Shabobelongs to Komuz. ( I ac tua l ly sa id it was neares t to Koman, theusua l name fo r what he c a l l s Komuz.). Anyway he i s r i gh t ; Shabo



grammar i s not much l ike Koman, or any other for tha t mat te r .

Since people fo rge t th ings , it should be repea ted t ha t ChrisEhret also has recons t ructed a l l or pa r t s of Nilo-Saharan. You' l l

have to wri te to him (UCLA) because h is mater ia l i s on t apes or

has been publ i shed somewhere I 'm unaware o f .

THE ICEMAN OF THE ALPS which was repor ted to you previous ly hasa t t r ac t ed much a t t e n t ion . There i s a big a r t i c l e on t h i s f rozenfel low in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, vol .183,No6, June 1993, 36-67,complete with photos , maps and much archeology. It's grea t . Butthey still do not r epor t on the phys ica l f indings in terms of DNA

or o ther genet ic t r a i t s . However, there i s a scu lp t of h is head!

THE INDO-EUROPEAN HOMELAND, the never-ending but still i n t e r e s t ing d iscuss ion , has a new f a c e t . An exper t , Igor Diakonoff , hasreviewed an innovator ' s hypothes is . Colin Renfrew's book ARCHEO-

LOGY AND LANGUAGE: THE PUZZLE OF INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGINS, 1987, awell known book. But I g o r ' s review i s not well-known to most ofus. I t appeared in ANNUAL OF ARMENIAN LINGUISTICS, vo l .9 , 1988,

pp.79-87; a f a i r ly long review. Although 5 years old now, h isconc lus ions a re worth a lo t in our discuss ions :

"Thus I would borrow Renfrew's processua l approach toanc ien t popula t ions (and language) movements, but I should s t i ckto ca. 5-4000 BC,. fo r the da te of PIE, and regard the farmers ofQatal-Huyuk as Pre-Proto-Indo-European speaking; i . e . , speaking alanguage which could be the ances tor both of PIE and o ther

languages. And I would ce r t a i n l y leave alone Easte rn Anatol ia asa candida te fo r the Indo-European 'homeland ' . Easte rn Anatol ia - o r , as we in our country usua l ly term it, the Armenian Highland(exc lus ive of the southern s lopes of the Taurus , which belong to

the pr imary agr icu l ture zone] , i s a land of i so la ted va l leys

with, in a n t iqu i ty , densely fores ted mountain s lopes , unfavorablefo r very ea r ly a gr i c u l tu r e , and, a t a l l t imes , unfavorable fo r

popula t ion movements [ c f . , P.Zimansky 's recent book]. There are

no s igns of anc ien t IE speakers here , and no horses before thesecond millennium B.C. Thus, the country [ ju s t as neighbour ingI ran ian Azerbai jan] i s unsui ted for an Indo-I ranian homeland."

Please note tha t John Kerns has wri t t en a book on t h i ssub jec t and i s prepar ing a new one. He p o s t u l a t e s another area .

EDITOR'S NOTE: MT-19 i s now too big , espec ia l ly s ince we havecrammed j u s t about a l l the o ld MT-18 mater ia l in to it. MT-20 wi l l

have to carry the burden of archeo log ica l and biogenet ic repor t s

which have by and la rge been l e f t out of t h i s i s sue . One l a s t

repor t fo r t h i s b loa ted i s sue :

NEW FOSSILS IN SPAIN SHED LIGHT ON NEANDERTHALS. Widely repor ted

in newspapers and based on an a r t i c l e in NATURE, Apri l or May,

1993. Juan-Luis Arsuaga and col leagues a t the Univers i ty ofMadrid found the jumbled ske le tons of 24 human beings in a caveca l led the P i t of the Bones in Sie r ra de Atapuerca in nor thern

Spain. Th e da tes are 300,00 and more. Everyone agrees t ha t thepopula t ion i s highly var i ab le but a n c e s t r a l to the Neander tha l s ,bu t what it a l l means beyond t ha t i s c o n t ro v e r s i a l . At l e a s t it

su re ly impl ies t ha t Neander tha ls have t he i r roots in westernEurope, a po in t Eric de Grol ie r made some t ime ago.



WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS 3

New Delhi, India, 4- I 1 December 1994

MAJOR THEME 3: LANGUAGE, ANTHROPOLOGY ANDARCHAEOLOGY

Theme Organisers: S.P. Gupta (India), B.B. Lal (India), P. Bellwood (Australia), R.M. Blench (UK), J.P.

Mallory (Northern Ireland), C. Renfrew (UK), andM. Spriggs (Australia)[Version 3.2, May 1993]

For some sessions potential co-ordinators are listed who have not yet responded to our invitations (names inbold). Better geographical and gender spread are needed-all suggestions welcome.

A.) ARCHAEOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE: The processes of linguistic

change and their archaeological implications. This consists ofa series ofprimarily methodological papers

relating to various sociolinguistic processes.

Sub-topics would include-

1. Archaeology/Biology and the Origins ofLanguage. Suggested co-ordinator: lain Davidson (UNE,

Australia).

2. Language and the Spread of Agriculture. Examines the theory that the distribution ofmany of he world's

larger language families can be explained by their association with the origins and spread of agriculture from key

centres such as the Middle East, China etc. Co-ordinator: Peter Bellwood (ANU, Australia).3. Language and Prehistoric and Historic Migrations. Examines the archaeological evidence adduced for

migrations, along with the perltaps cautionary tales of he archaeological evidence (or lack of it) for historically

known migrations which have had a linguistic impact. Suggested co-ordinator: Kristian Kristiansen

(Copenhagen, Denmark).

4. Language and Societv: Variation and Change. Includes topics such as language diversity, trade languages,pidgins and creoles, language levelling, language switch and obsolescence. All of hese sociolinguistic processes

can be expected to have archaeological implications but have been rarely considered by archaeologists. Co

ordinators: Tom Dutton and Darrell Tryon (ANU, Australia).

5. Dating Language Spread and Change. Examines the somewhat instinctive feel linguists have for how

quickly languages change, hopefully to make more explicit their reasoning and the extent to which it is based on

now-perltaps discredited methods such as glottochronology. Attempts to calibrate linguistic change to

radiocarbon dates will be considered. Co-ordinators: Malcolm Ross and Matthew Spriggs (ANU, Australia).

B.) ARCHAEOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC EN1'11'IES COMPARED: After the

more general methodological papers ofSection A, this will get down to detailed case studies while not forgetting

or ignoring methodologies involved.


1. The Ouestion ofMacro-Families and Possible Archaeological Correlates. How related are the World's

languages and how might this have implications for the spread ofmodem humans? Co-ordinator: Colin Renfrew

(Cambridge, UK).

2 The Genetics ofLanguage Groyps. Recent studies in various areas of he world at macro and micro-level

are providing fascinating evidence ofgenetic boundaries in relation to language boundaries, and bringing out new



/ ,..

- c b-

theories to explain the fi t or lack of it in particular cases. Suggested co-ordinators: Susan Serjeantson (ANU,

Australia) and Erika Bagelberg (Cambridge, UK).3. Oral Traditions. Myths and Archaeology. Considers traditions and myths oforigin in relation to

archaeology. Examples include French work in the Pacific attempting to relate voyaging traditions and historical

migrations, and Australian research examining Aboriginal stories in relation to movements ofgroups and

languages. Suggested co-ordinators: Daniel Frimigacci (CNRS, France) and Bob Dixon (ANU, Australia).

4. Proto-Lexicons and Proto-Cultures. How far can lin8!Jistics be used to reconstruct vocabularies relatingto the "homeland" ofparticular language families, and to the cultural baggage of he speakers of reconstructed

proto-languages? How do we cross from the proto-language to its presumed archaeological manifestation?

Suggested co-ordinators: Robert Blust (Hawaii), Roger Blench (Cambridge).

5. To,ponymy and Other Geographically-Informative Semantic Fields. Toponymy is perhaps an old-

fashioned topic in Europe but has not been used enough elsewhere and is worthy of further consideration. Animal

names, flora and meteorological terms are also useful in helping place the locations of particular language stages

or in showing connections between areas. Suggested co-ordinators: J-M. Bombert (Lyon D, France)

C.) THE ARCHAEOLOGYOF LANGUAGE FAMILIES: A series of case studies bringing in the

methodological concerns of earlier sessions. This can be seen as a summing up of he major theme. h will alsogive the opportunity to present more specialist papers relating to particular language groups.


1. Eurasia. Suggested co-ordinators: Gina Barnes (Cambridge, UK), Aron Dolgopolsky (Haifa, Israel) andJ.P. Mallory (Belfast, Northern Ireland).

2. Indian Subcontinent. Suggested co-ordinators: S.P Gupta and B.B. Lal (New Delhi, India) and K.

ZvelebD.

3. Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Co-ordinators: Roger Green (Auckland, New Zealand) and Andrew Pawley(ANU, Australia).

4. Africa. Suggested co-ordinators: Roger Blench and David Phillipson (Cambridge, UK) and KayWilliamson (Port Harcourt, Nigeria).

5. The Americas. Suggested co-ordinators: John Rowe (UC, Berkeley, USA) and Joyce Marcus (Michigan,USA).

---.......,,,0 ~ 'J. -fJ( '("" U ko

Cc:t »-t b" t J t ~ r j ~ ~ v ~ , s , f ~h t s - t ~ .



ISCSC Newsletter _L, 6. C. S.C..

ANNOUNCEMENT:

A World-Systems Electronic Conferencing Network

'Ibere is a Dew traasaatioaalaad tnasdiscipliaary e-mail aetwork for scholars aad researchers who are studyiag

world-systems or other topics relevaat to the world-systems perspective.Its purpose is to facilitate the sbariag of iaformatioD about research, data, publicatioas, aaaouacements,

meetiags, syllabi, COIIIIDCDtary, book reviews, scuttlebutt aad etc.

1be aame of the world-system aetwork is WSN aad you caa subscribe to it by seadiag the simple message •sub

wsa • to mailservOcsf.colorado.edu

Messages to the Detwork should be seat to [email protected]

Coaaected with WSN js an ftp archive ( w s ~ ) which will be edited by Chris Chase-Duan and Pete:

Grimes. This archive will be located at Boulder ia csf. 1be archive .is for sbariag more permaaeat

aaaouacements, documeats, syllabi, data sources, essays, book reviews, aad etc.

If you are oa iatemet you caa retrieve materials from the wsystems archive by usiag ftp {file traasfer program).ftp to csf.colorado.edu aad login as •aaoDymous. • Chaap directory {cd) iato the wsystems subdirectory aad

thea into the relevaat subsubdirectory {e.g. •boot reviews. • Use the Directory {dir) COIDDWld to list the files.

You caa thea traasfer iadividual files back to your home computer with the get COIDDWld. 'Ibe aame of each

file is oa the far right of the directory list. (Uaix is upper/lower case seasitive.) For those oa bitaet it is also

possible to retrieve files from the archive. For more iaformatioD about using ftp ia coaaectioa with csf sead

mail to csfservOcsf.colorado.edu aad place the commands •betp• aad •befp ftp• ia the message proper.

Materials caa be deposited ia the wsystems archive by:

1. seadiag a diskette to Chris Oase-Duaa, Sociology Departmeat,Jobas Hoplcias Uaiversity, Baltimore, MD.21218 USA ([email protected]) or

2. by ftp {aaoaymous login) for those who are OD iatemet. ftp to csf.colorado.edu iato the •mput• subdirectory

of the •wsystems• sabdirectory. 'Ibese materials should DO t be subject to copyright restrictioas aad should be

provided ia ascii format.

WSN is part of a larger •aested• maiJserv Detwork. 'Ibe mother Detwork is PSN, the Progressive SociologyNetwork fol•nded 2!!d·managed by Ma...t.h Gimenl.'!7- at the Uaiversity of Color:u:b, Bco.:lder. PSN is ia tum part

of csf, a larger graadmotller electroaic coafereaciag aad arcbiviag operatioD·at Boulder, which is orgaaized by

Doa Roper.WSN is a subaest of PSN ia the sease that all messages seat to WSN go both to WSN subscribers aad to PSN

subscribers. This allows PSNers to listea ia to world-systems coDversatioas. World-systems researchers are

eacouraged to subscribe to PSN aad participate ia that more geaeral coDversatioD. Wbea you sub PSN you get

all the PSN messages. If you only waat WSN messages, thea sub WSN. Ia order to sead to the WSN subaest,address your mail to WSN.

Aaother subDest of PSN is IPE, a Detworlc set up by Lev Goaiclc for the Jateraatioaal Political BcoDomy sectioD

of the Iatematioaal Studies AssociatioD. Maay WSN subscribers will also waat to participate ia JPE. You may

either subscribe to both IPE aad WSN or just subscribe to PSN aad get everythiag. As with WSN, ia order to

racb all IPEers you Deed to sead your message to IPE.

For more iaformatioa CODtact Chris Chase-Dona - [email protected] or Peter Grimes -

[email protected]







- - -fU-- POCCHHCKA71Al<a.a.eMHJl HayH

MHCTHTYT B O C T O K O B E A E H M ~1037SJ, Mocxaa, rcn,Polj(JilCTSfiiK.l. 12. Ten. 221·18·84, 295·6-4·61

P. c•. Ht 110602 D l>aywiHCKON OTA. roc6DHK8

SYMPOSIUM ON LINGUISTIC AND ETHNO-CULTURAL HISTORY O F _ S E M I ~ C PEOPLES

Dear colleague, Moscow, 25 November I992We are pleased to announce a Symposimt on Linguistic an d Ethno-CUltural History

of Semitic Peoples fran th e 4th to 1st Mill. B.C., to ba held in 1--bsco,, Septontgr20-25, 1993. •

The symposium Will include a worl<Shop on possibilit ies fo r an internationalproject, '!be Semitic Cc:llparative-Historical an d Ethynological Dictionary (SOiED).

h tentative table of 5Ub1ects for papers and a l i s t of topics fo r discussion atthe workshop are enclosed. Papers on r<::.late:3 subjects no t mantiona:l in the tableare also welcaned.

Scholars wishing to present one or nore p3pers ar e invited to sul:mi t abstractsbJ June 1. Papers can be presente:i in English (preferably) and French. 1\dditionalnaterial fo r circulation a t th e symposium should ba sent by August 15 .

I f you Wish to participate please send in reply forms oofore February 15 .

we regret to say that OJr acccm::dation facil i t ies may l::e limited, and .,,e may have

to trake a selection. The results of th e selection \'l'ill re announce1 refore i'u.:>ril1.

Time allotted fo r e.."lch presentation is b:!t•,·JeCn 30 an:l 110 minutes, iJ1cludi!l':ldiscussion, depending on th e numl:er of particir.ants.

Th e symposium w i l l t ake p lace a t a suburban Moscow h o t e l .

Terms of Participation

Registration fe e fo r th e symposium is US$90 (accompanying guests an1 s t ~ i e n t s --US$50). The cost of accom:>dation is US$60 pe r diem. This amount covers th efolla,ling services, pr011ided ~ the or.]anizing agency: visa support; neeting and

transportation fran arrJ to th e airport upon arr ival an:.! dep;1rture; single (o rdouble) roans at a suburban rotel; three IIP...als daily, te a and coffee breaks, abanquet; arrl a cultural program including a sightseeing tour of 1-bsccM by bu s an:ia ~ a l k i n g excursion in th e Kremlin arr.l th e historical center.

Cbmplementary cultural program may include tours to St. Petersburg, the IwssianGolden Ring tour I two--three rlays) , 'fl f ' r i : ~ · to Zagorsk' s St. Sergi us t · b r a a ~ L ~ y .An ad:litl.onal cultural program during the symposium \ d l l be available ' for the

acCCX1;)anyir¥3 guests U[Xl'l request.Directions for payment, a visa SURX>rt let ter and aCHitional information about

th e synp::simt ,.,.ill l:e sent upon the reception of Registration Form. Sinceth e Russian nail is sla:1 \'le \oJOuld prefer to receive. your replies py fax.

Feel f r ee to share t h i s in format ion w i ~ your ool legues t

Registration Farm

Nama + Tit leAddress:

Telephone:

Telefax:Elnail:

\ 'rill present a paper Yes/Not i t l e of the paper:

l ' lill contribute to the l'JOrkshop Yes/NoVisa Support Information:

date arrl plaoa of birth:

f,l of passport:date of issue:expiraticn date:proposed time of arrival and departure:

'!he regis t rat ion form should be sent to:Alexander Militarev (201 7276 h.)Yuri Longinov ( te l . 336 3709 h.)'!he Insti tute of Oriental Studies of the Russian 1\cademy of Sciences

# 12 Rozhdestvenka, Moscow, 103753, RussiaFax: (095) 292 6511 box # 001608 Sincerely yours,

Alexander Militarconvener



\- i

IDRKSHOP: Difficulties and Olallenges in D::>ing a Semitic (l:xrpirativearrl Etynological Dictionary · ·

' lbpics for discussion:

1 •

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

\'lhy has i t ro t been done yet an d \"bat are we a l l afraid of?

Consonant oorrespoodences: area l l

of them established?

"Irregular" correspondences and variant roots ( i t r l a . l ~ ·.1-huriif,

"Maizelisms") : is it wise to continue ignoring them? · ·

lb w to harrlle Semitic (and Afrasian) vocalism?

Is a step-by-step branch and group reconstruction of SemiticP'lonemes a'ld lexical units a necessity?

Semitic histor ical norphology: \..tlat has been done and hot, toincorporate i t in th e d i C ' t - , i ; o i ? - ~ Y ' ? ·

Whatcr i ter ia

are to1::e

applied to tel l ing inherited lexicon frqinter-Se.llitic b:>ri'CMings? ·

Is i t reasonable to include old loan-oords fran ron-Semiticlanguages (SUII'erian, etc. ) ?

9. Are Afrasian cognates worth including and if so to \·tlat .extent?

10. How elab:>rate should a system of references and c:xxrments te asregards previous studies en etymologies, the interpretaticn ofmeanings, etc.? lb. , to react to other authors • incanplete dataand unacceptable conclusions? lbt1 to deal in this context \"lith

the ethical problem of priority?

11. .What are th e test \-Bys to cx:mputerize the "second lab:>r af ter

Hercules •s" (Josephus Scal:iger )-?

12. Is a cal l for a real and effective international project OOane:i

to remain the voice in the wilderness and i f , R:>pefully, ro t -

\Yhat to d:>?



-tr:).• 1• 6\o . , _ . ~ .... Hi .li ii "") ilo

l1HCTHTYT BOCTOKOBE,UEHl15II0375'3. MocJIDO, rcn. PcnK,UEC1'1lEIII(il,, 12. TCJI. ~ 2 1 - 1 6 - 8 4 , 295-G-Hi I

P. C•l. NY 110602 D o a y . I U I I t ' I I O ~ I Ol"J\. rocCintma

6th. N ~ R W t T I O N A . L HAMI'l'O-SEMI'l'IC C.ONGRESS • M0$00\V I994

Dear Col league, Moscow, ·25 November I9

He are pleased .to announce that we are planning the 6th International HamiSemitic C o n ~ s in M:::>sm·r, Russia, April 24 to 30, 1 9 ~ (as su9geste:li:Jy ProfeHermann JungraJ.thnayr). ..-c:: · -

SCholars Wishing to p a r t i c i p ; ~ . t e are invited to sul:xnit their proposals rot

la ter than May 1, 1993. Abstracts of r,apars should b:: handed in by l ~ o v e m b e r 1 ,1993. Tine allotted for each presentation is 20 minutes and an additional ten

minutes for discussion. Papers may te presente:\ in English (preferably), Frenc

an d Russian.· · '!he ·a::>ngress \vill cx:mprise eight divisions:

1. Hamito-Semitic/Semito-Hamitic/Afro-Asiatic/Afrasian; 2. P...erber ( includinc;

Guanche) i 3. <lladici 4. CUshitic; 5. Egyptian; 6. Orotic; 7. sP_mitic; 8.Internal and external (Sumerian, Indo-Europ=an, Nostratic, etc.) genetic and arconnections of H S / k ~ .

~ Terms of Participation, 0 ~ ~ 0 ~~ '!he registration fe e will be about US$ 100 (acco:npanying guests an d studen

~ u - ~ : -US$ 60) • The cost of accanooation will oo beb.·1een US$ 80-1 00 per diem dep:ndi~ " t . a . . ~ ~ " " ~ o n the economic an d pol i t ica l situation in th e oountry. 'Ihis amount Hill cover~ ~ " ' ' .. ua: the follo;,ting services provided OJ the organizing agency: visa support; rreeting~ ........ u.,. . .. . and transportation from and to the airport up:>n arrival and dep:trture; single (

~ . . . . _ , . . o double rcans) a t a suburban M::lsco11 hotel (Hhere th e Congress \·lill take place);.....,... three daily m=als, t.t=>..a and coffee breaks, a b:mquet; and a cultural pr(J-Jram. . . . _ ~ e ....1',.... - ~ including a sightseeing tour of ttbsco.•l by bus aoo a •.·Jalking excursion in the K- .1 q, .e ... ._.o and the historical center. .

Complementary cultural prog-ram nay include tours to St. Petersburg, a thre

day bu s tour of the old Russian t ~ ~ s ; and a t r ip to Zagorsk's St. SergiusMonastery. An additional cultural program during tile congress will be a v a i l < ~ lto the accompanying guests upon requests.

Directions for paymant, visa support le t ters and additional information H

be f o i " \ · ~ r d e : : : l upon the reception of the Registration Form.

Name + Tit leAddress:

Telephone:

Telefax:Email:

Registration Form

vrill present a paper Yes/Not i t l e of the paper:

Visa Support Information:date an::l plaoa ·o f birth:fil of p:tssport:

date of issue:

expiration date:proposed time of arrival and departure:

The registration form should be sent to :AleY.and.er Militarev (201 7276 h.)Yuri Longinov ( te l . 336 3709 h.)The Insti tute of Oriental Studies of the Russia.'l Academy of Sciences

fl 12 Roztrlestvenka, M::>scow, 103753, RussiaFax: (095) 292 6511 box # 001608 S ince re lye yours

Alexande r -Mi l i t

convener





- 7 LI-The following books are available for review in Word. I f you wish to review a book, please write to SheilaEmbleton, Dept of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, South 561 R?ss Building, York Univ, 47,00 KeeleStreet, North York, Ontario, CANADA M3J IP3. E-mall [email protected] [email protected]. Telephone (416) 736-5387 at York and (416) 851-2660 at home. Books areavailable on a "first come, first served" basis. Graduate students are welcome to participate under supervision of afaculty member. Reviews are due 6 mo.nths after .you receive.the book. Please send 3 c o p i e ~ of your review,double-spaced with at least 2 em margm on all stdes. I f posstble, please also send your revtew on computerdisk specifying whether you used mM or MAC, and which software programme you used. It may not bepossfble to return your disk to you. I f your review will be less than one journal page or more than four journalpages, please check with the Review Editor before submitting your review. One journal page is roughly 1.5

double-spaced typed pages. ·Books marked with * are appearing on this list for the last time. I f you wish to write a review, this is your lastopportunity. I f there is somebody who would like to receive that book, but not for review, let me know- ifnobody requests it, I might be able to send it to you (as a "gift").Date of this list: January 5, 1993

Aarts, Bas. 1992. Small Clauses in English: the Nonverbal Types. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. xi+ 228

i a ~ : t .A-'1Vlt1L 1991. Reduplication in South Asian languages. An areal, typological and historical study. NewDelhi, etc.: Allied Publishers. xxii + 193 pages.Akamatsu, Tsutomu. 1992. Essentials of Functional Phonology. Foreword by A n d r ~ Martinet. ( S ~ r i eP ~ d a g o g i q u e de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain, 16.) Louvain-La-Neuve: Peeters. xi+ 193 pages.Anderson, Stephen C. ed. 1991. Tone in five languages of Cameroon. Dallas: SIL & Univ of Texas at

Arlington. x + 125 pages.Andvik, Erik E. 1992. A Pragmatic Analysis ofNorwegian Modal Particles. SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington.ix + 136 pages.Auer, Peter & Aldo di Luzio eds. date? The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins. vi + 402 pages.Barwise, Jon, Jean Mark Gawron, Gordon Plotkin & Syun Tutiya eds. 1992. Situation Theory and itsApplications, volume 2. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. xiii + 637 pages.Benzian, Abderrahim. 1992. Kontrastive Phonetik Deutsch!Franzosisch/Modernes Hocharabisch/Flemcen-Arabisch (Algerien). Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. 256 pages. ·Bradley, C. Henry & Barbara E. Hollenbach eds. 1991. Studies in the Syntax of Mixtecan Languages, volume3. Dallas: SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. ix + 506 pages. 1992 .. . volume 4. ix + 431 pages.Brenzinger, Matthias ed. 1992. Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference toEast Africa. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. viii + 445 pages.

Brogyanyi, Bela ed. 1992. Prehistory, History and Historiography of Language, Speech, and LinguisticTheory, vol. 1. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. x + 414 pages.Brogyanyi, Bela & Reiner Lipp eds. 1992. Historical Philology: Greek, Latin, and Romance. Papers in honorof Oswald Szemerenyi II. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xii + 386 pages.Bromberger, Sylvain. 1992. On What We Know We Don't Know: Explanation, theory, linguistics, and howquestions shape them. Univ of Chicago Press: Chicago & Center for Study of Language andInformation:Stanford. vii + 231 pages.Bouquiaux, Luc & Jacqueline M. C. Thomas, transl by James Roberts. 1992. Studying and DescribingUnwrinen Languages. 2nd edition. SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. xi + 725 pages.Burquest, Donald A. & WynD. Laidig eds. 1992. Phonological Studies in Four Languages ofMaluku. Dallas:SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. viii + 227 pages.Burusphat, Somsonge. 1991. The Structure of Thai Narrative. Dallas: SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. xii +231 pages.

Casad, Eugene H. ed. 1992. Windows on Bilingualism. SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. xii + 208 pages.Coulmas, Aorian ed. 1991. A language policy for the European community: Prospects and quandaries. Berlin &

NY: Mouton de Gruyter. x + 311 pages.Crowley, Terry. 1993. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 2nd edition. Oxford New Zealand. 336 pages.Davis, Garry M. & Gregory K. Iverson eds. 1992. Explanation in Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xiv + 227 pages. [Papers from April1990 Milwaukee Symposium]De Mulder, Franc Schuerewegen & Liliane Tasmowski eds. 1992. Enonciation et parti pris: Actes du colloquede l'Universite d'Anvers (5, 6, 7fevrier 1990). Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. 368 pages.*Di Sciullo, Anne-Marie, & Anne Rochette. 1990. Binding in Romance: Essays in Honour of JudithMeA 'Nulty. Ottawa: Canadian Linguistic Association. x + 305 pages.



- - ; -Downing, Pamela, & Susan D. Uma & Michael Noonan eds. 1991. The Linguistics ofLiteracy. Amsterdam &

Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xviii + 319 pages. , . . .Duez, Danielle. 1991. La pause dans la parole de I homme polwque. CNRS: Pans. 165 pages.Dyer, Donald. 1992. Word Order in the SimJ?Ie Bulgarian Sentence: A study in grammar, semantics andpragmatics. 1992. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodop1. 161 pages.van Essen, Arthur & Edward I. Burkart eds. 1992. Homage toW. R. Lee: Essays in English as a Foreign or

Second Language. Berlin & NY: Foris. x + 307 pages.Fagan, Sarah M. B. ,1992. The syntax and semantics ofmiddle constructions. A study with special reference toGerman. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press. x + 300 pages.Fislak, Jacek & Stanislaw Puppel eds. 1992. Phonological Investigations. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John

Benjamins. x + 507 pages.Gerhold, Leopold. 1992. Spanischer Grundwortschatz in etymologischer Sicht. 1. Teil, A bis F (Abajo bisFuera). Wien: Verband der Osterreichischen Neuphilo1ogen. 1991. 2. Teil, G bis Z (Ganado bis Zarzuela).Gerhold, Leopold. 1991. In Search of the Origin: A short etymological survey. Wien: Verband derOsterreichi.schen Neuphilologen.Gershenson, Daniel E. 1991. Apollo the Wolf-god. (Journal of Indo-European Studies, Monograph Number8.) 156 pages.Gilley, Leoma G. 1992. An Autosegmental Approach to Shilluk Phonology. Dallas: SIL & Univ of Texas atArlington. x + 214 pages.Glaser, Rosemarie, ed. 1992. Aktuelle Probleme der anglistischen Fachtextanalyse. Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang.188 pages.Gutierrez Gonzailez, Heliodoro. 1993. El espaftol en el barrio de Nueva York: Estudio lexico. NY: Academianorteamericana de 1a lengua espanola. xii + 442 pages.

Gvozdanovic, Jadranka ed. 1991.Indo-European Numerals. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. x + 943 pages.Gvozdanovic, Jadranka & Th. Janssen eds. 1991. The function of tense in texts. Amsterdam, Oxford, NY &Tokyo: North-Holland. ix + 292 pages.•van Halteren, Hans, & Theo van den Heuvel. 1990. Linguistic Exploitation of Syntactic Databases: The useof he NijmegenWB program. Amsterdam & Athens, GA: Rodopi. 207 pages.Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-verbal Predication: Theory, Typology, Diachrony. Berlin & NY: Mouton deGruyter. xxiii + 321 pages.Herbert, Robert K. 1992. Language and Society in Africa: The theory and practice of sociolinguistics.Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Univ Press. 380 pages. ..Hernandez-Sacristan, Carlos. 1992. A phenomenological approach to syntax: The propositioiial frame.Annexa 3 to LynX, A Monographic Series in Linguistics and World Perception. Valencia: U ~ i v e r s i t a t ,Departament de Teoria dels Llenguatges. 175 pages. ::Hess, Wolfgang & Walter F. Sendlmeier eds. 1992. Beitriige zur angewandten und experimentellen Phonetik

(Zeitschriftfiir Dialektologie und Linguistik, Beiheft 72.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. viii+ 244 pages.Hoffbauer, Johann Christoph. 1991. Semiological Investigations, or Topics Pertaining to the General Theory oSigns. [reprint of orig Latin text Tentamina semiologica, sive quaedam generalem theoriam signorum spectantia(1789), ed, transl, introduction by Robert Innis] Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xv + 120 pages.Hudak, Thomas John ed. 1991. William J. Gedney's The Tai Dialect of Lungming: Glossary, Texts, andTranslations. Ann Arbor: Center for South & Southeast Asian Studies, Univ of Michigan. xlii + 1189 pages.Hwang, Shin Ja J., & William R. Merrifield, eds. 1992. Language in context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre.Dallas: Sll.. & Univ of Texas at Arlington. xxiii + 616 pages.Jahr, Ernst HAkon ed. 1992. Language Contact: Theoretical and Empirical Studies. Berlin & NY: Mouton deGruyter. vii+ 234 pages.Johansson, Stig, & Anna-Brita Stenstrfim. 1991. English Computer Corpora: Selected papers and researchguide. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. vii+ 402 pages.Journal of Celtic Unguis ics, volume 1, 1992. 178 pages.

Jucker, Andreas H. 1992. Social Stylistics: Syntactic Variations in British Newspapers. Berlin & NY: Moutonde Gruyter. xxii + 297 pages.Kefer, Michel & Johan van der Auwera ed. 1992. Meaning and Grammar: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Berlin& NY: Mouton de Gruyter. x + 427 pages.Kerler, Dov-Ber ed. 1991. History of Yiddish Studies. Chur, etc.: Harwood Acad Publishers. xv + 176 pages.Klauser, Rita. 1992. Die Fachsprache der Literaturkritik: Dargestellt an den Textsorten Essay und Reunsion.Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. x + 205 pages.Klein-Arendt, Reinhard. 1992. Gespriichsstrategien im Swahili: Linguistisch-pragmatische Analysen vonDialogtexten einer Stegreiftheatergruppe. KHln: RUdiger KOppe Verlag. 396 pages.Korrel, Lia. 1991. Duration in English: A basic choice, illustrated in comparison with Dutch. Berlin & NY:Mouton de Gruvter. x + 146 na2e.c;.



- f 6 -Kramer, Johannes. 1992. Das Franzosische in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.Kuiper, F. B. J. 1991. Aryans in the Rigveda. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. iv + 116 pages.Leitner, Gerhard ed. 1992. New Directions in English Language Corpora: Methodology, Results, SoftwaDevelopments. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. ix + 368 pages.Li, Chor-Shing. 1991. Beitriige zur kontrastiven Aspektologie: Das Aspektsystem im Modernen ChinesiscFrankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. viii + 320 pages. ·MacDonald, Lorna. 1990. A Grammar ofTauya. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. xiii + 385 pages.Machan, Tim William & Charles T. Scott eds. 1992. English in its Social Contexts: Essays in HistoricSociolinguistics. Oxford USA. 320 pages.Maganga, Clement & Thilo C. Schadeberg. 1992. Kinyamwezi: Grammar, texts, vocabulary. KOln: RUdig

KOppe. 325 pages.Mann, William C., & Sandra A. Thompson eds. 1992. Discourse Description: Diverse linguistic fJIUllyses ofund-raising text. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xii + 409 pages.Martin, James R. 1992. English Text: System and structure. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. viii

~ ~ l ! : ! ~ u . Grant D. 1991. A Macro-Sociolinguistic Analysis ofLanguage Vitality: Geolinguistic profiles anscenarios of anguage contact in India. Sainte-Foy, Q u ~ b e c : Les Presses de l'Universioo Laval. xxxv + 431 pageMcGroarty, Mary E. & Christian J. Faltis. 1991. Languages in School and Society: Policy and pedagogBerlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. x + 570 pages.Meyer, Charles F. 1992. Apposition in contemporary English. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press. xiv + i5pages.Mondesir, Jones E. 1992. Dictionary ofSt. Lucian Creole. Part 1: Kweyol- English. Part 2: English- Kweyo(Lawrence Carrington ed.). Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. xi+ 626 pages.

Nakajima, Heizo. 1991. Current English Linguistics in Japan. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. vi+ 54pages.*Neale, Stephen. 1990. Descriptions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Noonan, Michael. 1992. A Grammar ofLango. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. xvi + 352 pages.Nf/Jrgard-Sf/Jrensen, Jens. 1992. Coherence Theory: The Case ofRussian. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter.+ 222 pages. ·Nuyts, Jan. 1992. Aspects of a cognitive-pragmatic theory of language: On cognition, functionalism, angrammar. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xii + 399 pages. .*OIIer, John W., Jr. 1990/1991?. Language and Bilingualism: More Tests of Tests. Lewisburg, PA: BuckneUniv Press. 192 pages.Osada, Toshiki. 1992. A reference grammar of Mundari. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages anCultures of Asia and Africaffokyo University of Foreign Studies. 168 pages.van Ostade, Ingrid Tieken-Boon & John Francis, assisted by Colin Ewen. 1991. Language: Usage an

description. Studies presented to N. E. Osselton on the occasion of is_ retirement. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopviii + 200 pages.*Otomo, Nobuya. 1990.Interlinguale Interferenzerscheinungen im Bereich der Aussprache bei ausliindischeStudenten, untersucht bei Japanem und Englischsprachlem. Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. 269 pages.Polome, Edgar C. & Werner Winter eds. 1992. Reconstructing Languages an4_ Cultures. Berlin & NY: Moutode Gruyter. ix + 550 pages.Radloff, Carla F. 1991. Sentence Repetition Testing for Studies of Community Bilingualism. Dallas: SILUniv of Texas at Arlington. xvi + 194 pages.•Reiner, Erwin. 1989. Les correspondances regulieres du vocabulaire franfais-allemand. Wien: Verband dOsterreichischen Neuphilologen.Richter, Derek. 1992. English Usage Guide. Lewes, Sussex: The Book Guild. 200 pages.Rising, David P. 1992. Switch Refuence in Koasati Discourse. Dallas: SIL & Univ of Texas at Arlington. xii86 pages.

Roca, Iggy M. ed. 1992. Thematic Structure: Its Role in Grammar. Berlin & NY: Foris. xvi + 325 pages.Schadeberg, Thilo C. 1990. A Sketch ofUmbundu. KHln: RUdiger KOppe. 61 pages.Schadeberg, Thilo C. 1992. A Sketch ofSwahili Morphology. 3rd revised ed. KHln: RUdiger KOppe. 39 pageSchmitt, Ernst Herbert. 1992. Interdialektale Verstehbarkeit: Eine Untersuchung im Rhein- unMoselfriinkischen. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 253 pages. · .Schuhmacher, W. Wilfried, F. Seto, J. Villegas Seto & Juan R. Francisco. 1992. Pacific Rim: Austronesiaand Papuan Linguistic History. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. xii + 199 pages.Shannon, Thomas F. & Johan P. Snapper eds. 1991. The Berkeley Conference on Dutch Linguistics 198Issues and Controversies, Old and New. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. xviii + 205 pages.Shields, Kenneth. 1992. A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: JohBeniamins. viii+ 160 oa2es.

~ ~ ~ - - - - - - · ·--- -··-··-· -------



-77-Sobkowiak, Wlodzimierz. 1991. Metaphonology ofEnglish Paronomasic Puns. Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. iv

325 pages. .Stein, Dieter ed. 1992. Co-operating with Written Texts: The Pragmatics and Comprehension ofWntten TextBerlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. viii + 701 pages.Svartvik, Jan ed. 1992. Directions in Corpus Linguistics: Proceedings ofNobel Symposium 82. Stockholm. 4

8 August 1991. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. xii + 487 pages.Taejln, Kim. 1992. The Particle pain the West-Saxon Gospels: A Discourse-Level Analysis. Bern etc.: PeteLang. 178 pages.Takamf, Ken-ichi. 1992. Preposition Stranding: From Syntactic to Functional Analyses. Berlin & NY: Mouto

de Gruyter. xii + 304 pages. . . . . . . .Tlmm, Christian. 1992. Grbt es erne Fachsprache der Lrteraturwrssenschaft? Fachtextlmgu1strschUntersuchungen an englischen Texten der Literaturgeschichtsschreibung. Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. 193 pages.Vanderveken, Daniel. 1990-1. Meaning and speech acts. Volume 1, 1990, Principles of language use. x + 24pages. Volume 2, Formal semantics ofsuccess and satisfaction, x + 196 pages.Ventola, Eija ed. 1991. Functional and systemic linguistics. Approaches and uses. Berlin & NY: Mouton dGruyter. xiv + 499 pages.Watts, Richard J, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich eds. 1992. Politeness in language. Studies in its history, theorand practice. Berlin & NY: Mouton de Gruyter. viii+ 381 pages.Waugh, Linda R., & Stephen Rudy (eds). 1991. New vistas in grammar: invariance (lnd variation Proceedingof the Second International Roman Jakobson Conference, New York Univ, Nov 5-8, 1985. Amsterdam &

Philadelphia: John Benjarnins. 570 pages. . .Wegener, Philipp. 1991. Untersuchungen Uber die Grundfragen des Sprachlebens. (Classtcs t

Psycholinguistics, 5.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. xlvii + 208 pages. [ed Konrad Koerner anintroduction by Clemens Knobloch]Wenk, Reinhard. 1992./ntonation und "aktuelle Gliederung": Experimentelle Untersuchungen an slavischeEntscheidungs- und Ergiinzungsjragen. Frankfurt etc.: Peter Lang. 400 pagesWestley, David 0. 1991. Tepetotutla Chinantec Syntax. (Studies in Chinantec Languages, 5.) Dallas: SIL &

Univ of Texas at Arlington. xiii + 129 pages.Wolfart, H. C. ed. 1991. Linguistic Studies Presented to John L. Finlay. (Algonquian and IroquoiaLinguistics, Memoir 8.) Winnipeg: Dept of Linguistics, Univ of Manitoba. 190 pages.Young, Lynne. 1990. Language as Behaviour, Language as Code. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjarninix + 304 pages.*****************************************************************************************April 16-18, 1993. International Linguistic Association. Theme: History of Linguistics. Marriott EaSide Hotel, New York. Abstract deadline: January 15, 1993. Edward Fichtner, Germanic, Slavic & E EuropeaLanguages, Queens College CUNY, Flushing NY 11367-0904.May 27-29, 1993. Fifth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Theoretical and applied papers oany aspect of IE Studies: linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology, and culture; interdisciplinary anspecific topics (typology, methodology, recontruction, relation of IE to other language groups, interpretation o

material culture, etc.). Abstracts by Feb 15/93 to IE Conf Committee, c/o Germanic Languages Dept, 302 RoycHall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1539. [email protected]. weekdays (310) 206-4396; evening(310) 207-4834, (818) 919-3661, (310) 794-3446.August 15-21, 1993. International Conference on Historical Linguistics. UCLA. Contact HenninAndersen, Slavic Dept, UCLA, Los Angeles 90024, USA.December 27-30, 1993. MLA. Toronto, Ontario, CANADA.August 1993. LACUS. Chicago, IL, USA. Ruth Brend, 3363 Burbank Drive, Ann Arbor, MI48105, USA.January 6-9, 1994. Linguistic Society of America. Sheraton Hotel, Boston, MA, USA.December 27-30, 1994. MLA. San Diego, CA, USA.

January 5-8, 1995. Linguistic Society of America. New Orleans, LA, USA.July 24-28, 1995. International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Manchester, ENGLAND.*****************************************************************************************Possible job: Possibility of tenure-track position in French linguistics, junior asst professor with recent PhD oABD (PhD by July 1993). Doctorate in French linguistics, record of publication in field of specialization. Must bable to teach French language and linguistics at BA level and in proposed MA programme focusing on FrenchCanadian linguistics. Preference given to Canadian citizens or permanent residents, but others should apply tooContact Prof o s h ~ Starets, French Dept, Univ of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, CANADA N9B 3P4. (519) 2534232 ext 2062.



The TainosRise and Decline of he PeopleWho Greeted Columbus

IrvingRouse

WhenColumbus arrived in the Americas, the

first peoplehe

encountered were the Tainos, inhabitants of he islands of thenorthern Caribbean Sea. In this book a noted archeologistand anthropologist tells the story of he Tainos ftom theirancestral days on the South American continent to their rapiddecline after contact with the Spanish explorers.

Drawing on archeological and ethnohistorical evidence, IrvingRouse sketches a piaure of the Tainos as they existed duringthe time ofColumbus, contrasting their customs with those of

their neighbors. He then moves backward in time to theancestors of he Tainos-two successive groups who settledthe West Indies and who are known to archeologists as theSaladoid peoples and the Ostionoid peoples. By reconstruaing

the development of hese groups and studying their interac-tion with other groups during the centuries befure Columbus, Rouse shows precisely who the Tainos were. He vividly

recounts Columbus's fuur voyages, the events of the Euroean contact, and the early Spanish views of he Tainos,

larly their an and religion. The narration shows that thes did not long survive the advent ofColumbus. Weak-by fOrced labor, malnutrition, and diseases inttoduced by

fOreigners, and dispersed by migration and intermarriage,ceased to exist as a separate population group. As Rouse

the Tainos' contributions to the Spaniards-fromballs to an, artifaCts, and

"We are fortunate indeed to have at last the authoritative and up-to-date accountof he Taino Indians-

'in all the world no better people,' as Columbus said-

from the acknowledged dean ofTaino scholars. Anjust in time so that we may remember them too duringthis Quincentennial year."-Ki.rkpatrick Sale, author ofConquestofParadise: Christopher Columbusand theColumbian ugacy

ISBN 0-300-05181-6 35 illus. $25.00

Also by Irving Rouse and available ftom Yale University Press:Migrations in Prdlistory: Inferring Popultltion MwemmtfromCulturtdR.e,.ins. ISBN 0-300-04504-2 $10.95 t ~ p e r b o u n t i

words-we realize that their effect on Western civiliza-brief though their contact, was an imponant and lasting

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Before WritingVOLUME 1: FROM COUNTING TO CUNEIFORMVOLUME ll: A CATALOG OF NEAR EASTERN TOKENS

By DENISE SCHMANDT-BESSERATForeword by WILLIAM W. RALLO

Vol. 1: 1992, 8 112 x 11 in., 304 pp., $60.00Vol. II: 1992, 8 112 x 11 in., 544 pp., $85.00

''Every so often, a fzeld of study is revolutionized by a single discovery or a unique hypothesis. Before Writing

promises to play such a role in our understanding of he emergence ofcivilization. "-FROM THE FOREWORD

The origin ofwritinghas puzzled experts for centuries. In this groundbreaking work, Denise Schmandt-Besseratoffers convincing evidence that when writing began in the Near East it was not a sudden and spontaneousinvention, as previously thought, but rather the outgrowth of thousands of years' worth of experience at

manipulating symbols.About 8000 B.c., following the rise of agriculture, a system of counters, or tokens, appeared in the Near

East. These tokens-small, geometrically shaped objects made of clay-represented various agriculturalproducts and were used to count and account for them. Through a study of archaeological and epigraphicevidence, Schmandt-Besserat traces how these counters were used until finally they came to be represented bytheir impressions in clay and the actual tokens were eliminated. From these impressions, she asserts , developedcuneiform script, the first written language.

Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform presents this working hypothesis. Volume II: A CatalogofNearEastern Tokens details the primary data on which Schmandt-Besserat bases her theories.

Denise Schmandt-Besserat is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas

at Austin.

Please send__ copies of Before Writing, Volume I at $60.00 (70783-5) and Volume II at $85.00(70784-3) plus $3.00 (per set) for shipping. Add 8% sales tax if a Texas resident.

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- 8 0 -

PRIERE D'AFFICHER

LE 25e CONGRES DES ALGONQUINISTES

PREMIER APPEL DE COMMUNICATIONS

Le dqtartement de linguistique de I'UQAM sera 1116te du 25e congres des Algonquinistes A

Montrealles 29-31 octobre 1993.

Les organisateurs convient les chercbeurs de toutes disciplines A oumettre un resume avant

le 1er septembre 1993. I..es communications pomront etre donnees en f r a n ~ s ou en

anglais. Le tarifd'inscription sera de $25 ($20 pour les etudiants).

Veuillez envoyer le titre et un resume i :

Lynn Drapeau, Congres des Algonquinistes, Dep. de linguistique, UQAM,

C.P. 8888, succ. ~ Montreal, canada H3C 3P8

Tel: (514) 987-3914; fax: (514) 987-4652; e-mail: [email protected]



- 8 1 -

LETTERS FROM MEMBERS

Long l e t t e r s which were in tended fo r publ ica t ion are s implycopied. They are ga thered toge ther a t the end of t h i s sec t ion .

Other l e t t e r s have se lec t ions taken from them and entered in to

t h i s sec t ion . In a very few cases a l ine or two of a copiedl e t t e r i s blanked out because I was pre t t y sure the wri t e r wouldnot want to say whatever pub l i c ly . There are some fasc ina t ing

th ings going on.< < < < < ------- > > > > >

KAY WILLIAMSON wrote from Niger ia , asking i f we found no womenworthy of nominat ion to the Counci l of Fellows. Should thejou rna l now be ca l led FATHER TONGUE? What can I say? As ac o l l e c t i v i t y ASLIP's members fouled up/screwed up. Kay he r s e l f

should have been nominated. However, before I accep t the ' gu i l tt r i p ' , please remember t ha t ASLIP has many women in it. Not oneof them nominated a woman, not even Kay herse l f . Next t ime I wi l lpersona l ly put her name in nominat ion, not only because of her

mer i to r ious work on Niger-Congo but also because she i s our f i r s tLIFE MEMBER. She wi l l never ge t a dunning l e t t e r !

MYKOLAS PALMAITIS wrote from Kaunas, Li thuania . A mostd i s t r e s s i ng l e t t e r ! "Today I have rece ived your l e t t e r and I amsu rp r i sed t ha t as i f 1) I do not respond 2) t ha t I must pay mydues . How to pay, my f r iends? To send in a l e t t e r ? Th e l e t t e rwi l l be robbed al ready in Kaunas. To send through the bank? Ihave no currency in our bank and Lithuanian currency i s not

conver t ib l e . And WHAT to send? I do not know how much I must sends ince I have not pa id anything up to day (da te -HF). Why? Becausemy 'wages ' a t the un ivers i ty equal $15 in a month and with pr ices

near ing to those in the West my family can e x i s t normally witht h i s sum only one week. As a r e s u l t my smal l daughte rs are

cons tan t ly e i t h e r without bu t t e r or without suga r . Maybe you canhelp me to come in America and to make money? I can l ec ture onthe h i s to ry of the Bal t ic languages , on modern Li thuanian andLatvian or Old Pruss ian , on the d i a l ec t s of Li thuanian . I canclean W.C.es ( t o i l e t s -BF) and wash dead corpses in pol icy(? -HF) .

I am ready to work as a persona l he lper of one of you. My aim i sto earn $10,000 or $15,000 in one year and to re tu rn home."

" I have responded to a l l l e t t e r s which demanded answers . ButI do not want to d i scuss with you s ince a l l my ideas have beene i the r ignored or used without any word by your co l leagues . Nowthey are out of date but formerly I wrote tons of l e t t e r s to

Allan Bomhard showing h is mis takes and he answered to me s ince itwas usefu l fo r him. But he has never c i t ed my ideas . He s implycor rec ted h is works. Even my cr i t i c i sm in the IF (?-HF) where Ihave shown such t e r r i b l e and pr imi t ive h i s mistakes as comparingGreek xa( (I 'm unsure of t h i s -HF) with Li thuanian k ~ has beenl e f t without quo ta t ion . And I have long ago w r i t t e n , I negate the

schemes of Moscow Nos t ra t i c i s t s with the accusa t ive charac te r ofthe Mother-Tongue and with r ich vocalism (what ' s the meaning?-BF)For you and your col leagues I am only a s t a t i s t ( s t a t i s t i c -BF)in your performance. You may cross me o f f i f you want . Sincere ly"

Bombard has wri t t en to Mykolas and sponsored h is membership



in ASLIP. We do not know how to ge t money to him, but we havenever asked any from him. I f our West European col leagues know

anyone t rave l ing to Li thuania , perhaps they can ge t some goods o l id DMs to Mykolas. Le t ' s everyone give t h i s some thought!Mykolasl Your col leagues around the world wish you well!

ROGER WESCOTT, enjoying h is r e t i r ement , f inds himsel f perhapsbus ie r than ever . Going to f ive conferences t h i s June. Also:

"I 'm still pushing what I c a l l consonantal apophony &asse r t ing 'unphonemic ' cogna t ions , such as kid - g o a t , houndcur - w o l f , and have - g i v e - k e e p -off. Also archaic i n f ixa t ionpa t t e rns , espec ia l ly involving sonoran t s , as in PIE/PIH pe(y)k ,

f l eece ; g(y)eu , chew; bhe(w)g, f l e e ; s (w)er , lift; ka( r )p ,

harves t ; bh ( r )eg , break; we(l )g , wet; k( l ) e u , perceive; ghe(n)d ,t ake ; m(n)egh, grea t ; ge(m)bh, t ee th . (The lack of a C(m)VCpa t t e rn impl ies t ha t CV(m)C i s ass imla ted from CV(n)C. I hadin tended the a r t i c l e asse r t ing t h i s to go to the L.O.S.Forum; butit's a l ready ge t t ing too long."

Roger i s a l so p res iden t of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THECOMPARATIVE STUDY OF CIVILIZATIONS (ISCSC). They are having t he i r

meeting June 3-5 a t the Univers i ty of Scranton (Pennsylvania ) .

ANNA BELOVA wrote from Moscow l a s t October . A shor t note f i l l e dwith good wi l l and seasons gree t ings (she d i d n ' t expec t the

l e t t e r to reach me u n t i l Chris tmas t ime) . She adds t h a t "ours t u d i e s on Semi t ic and Arabic h i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s cont inue .

Soon I hope to send you my c r i t i c a l review ( in Russian) ofEhre t ' s work in JAAL. (My review i s publ i shed in th e j ou rna l

"Voprosy yazhykozhnaniya" 3, 1992). And my paper on Himyar i t ic ."

At ten t ion Chris Ehre t . Look up her review. Should be good.

WILFRIED SCHUMACHER wrote two shor t no tes . The one sa i d : "Maybeyou have seen my PULLUM review in WORD, December 1992. Do you bythe way know of any black American-r i :nguis t? Maybe th e re s i s tance

to Amerind, Dene-Caucasian, e t c . by U.S. l i ngu i s t s may be a kindof ant i -Semi t i sm, eh?" Well , Wilf r ied , l e t us r ed i rec t t h i sques t ion to Del l Hymes and Carle ton Hodge who know a l o t moreabout the h i s to ry of American l i n g u i s t i c s than I do. The onlyh a l f - c l e a r case t h a t I know of was when the Harvard crowd opposedBoas back in th e e a r ly pa r t of t h i s century . There were rumblingsabout Sapir suspect ing some of h is c r i t i c s of being an t i -Semi tes .

That was a f t e r a l l th e t ime when H i t l e r had gained power. But Inever heard of anything l i ke t ha t with r espec t to e i t h e r Swadeshor Greenberg. And about the Muscovites? Forget i t !

W il fr i e d 's o th e r note sa id : "E.P.Hamp was in town (Denmark)

speaking about 'Macrocomparison ' , which he e labora ted as MacroSao- , Sopho-, Kindumo-, and Anoo-comparison' - meaning comparisonof macrofami l ies , be it sound, cau t ious , hazardous , or nonsense-l ike ! . Br ie f - having in mind to at tend the Eas te r I s l and

Conference a t the Univers i ty of Wyoming, Laramie . . 3-6 August .

IGOR DIAKONOFF wrote from S t. Pete rsburg on Columbus Day by ourr i t u a l ca lendar , saying: " · . vide your 'Repor t s from Russ ia ' -and many thanks fo r th e l a s t Motner Tongue, which was as always,most exc i t ing reading. It i s a pi ty I can no longer a c t ive ly workon long range comparison - - my team of co l l abora to rs working on



an Afras ian His to r i ca l Comparat ive Vocabulary has f a l l en asunderfo r d i f f e ren t pr iva te reasons , and my book Proto-Afras ian and OldAkkadian which being prepared fo r p r i n t by Robert Hetzron . for theJAAL, i s ' i n the making' fo r the l a s t tw o or three years .

[ E d i t o r ' s Note: it once took Frank Livingstone f ive years to ge t

a book publ i shed through my un ive r s i t y . By which t ime it was

obsole te in a rap id ly developing f i e l d . ] '

"I have been most touched by Mark Kaiser ' s repor t on p.1 andthe e d i t o r ' s p.2 . The r epor t , however , i s r a the r out of da te ;

ins tead of 100 rub les a $ cos t s now 350 rub le s . [Edi tor again .

Now in May 1993 one can get 2000+ rub les fo r $1.]"

" I f you al low me some cr i t ic i sm of MT, I would say t ha t you

a re sometimes not discr imina t ing enough in rec ru i t ingco l labora tor s - they range from qui t e b r i gh t boys to

graphomaniacs l ike a ce r t a in . . But be it as it may, it i sexc i t ing reading . I would l ike more s t r e s s on the f ac t t ha t thereneed not be a d i r e c t co r r e l a t i on between gene t i c k insh ip [Edi torreads t ha t as biogenet ic ] and l i n g u i s t i c kinship - - exceptperhaps before- rhe Ice Age or something l ike t h a t . "

" I wonder what Sergei Sta r os t i n has to say to Se to ' s list

(p .56 sqq) . A list of es tab l i shed phonet ic correspondences wouldhelp ; as it i s , I am somewhat in doubt . Why does not he useHurro-Urar t ian mate r ia l?"

We could a l l probably agree t ha t the co r r e l a t i ons of genesand language groups a re not , and never have been expected to be,of the famous ' one - to-one ' type , i.e., 100%. For la rge phyle t i cgroups t ha t have been r es iden t in f a i r ly l a rge a reas for qu i t esome t ime one ge t s some impress ive co r r e l a t i ons . But the d e t a i l sof some of the ' tw igs ' on the t r e e s may be very uncor re l a t ed . In

Afr ica and Southeas t Asia and Melanes ia there are many areas

where co r re l a t ions a re r ea l ly lousy . Why? Gene flow es pec i a l l y .I too wonder what Sergei th inks about a lo t of t h ings . But

he c a n ' t be bothered to wr i t e to h is 'mother• - - ever .

MERRITT RUHLEN r epor t s from Palo Alto t ha t "Lord Renfrew i s heret h i s week (Apr i l 1, 1993 -HF) de l ive r ing the Tanner l e c tu r e s onHuman Values and e t h i c s . Joe and I met with him two days ago andRenfrew asked Joe ~ i s opinion of Dene-Caucasian and "Proto-World"both of which he endorsed . (Edi tor : which one of them?) Tannerl e c tu r e 1 was given l a s t n igh t on 'Archeology, Language, andGenet ics : Th e Origins of Dive r s i ty ' . In s ho r t , h is view of the

Emerging Syn thes i s . I s a t with Joe , and he sa id a f t e r it was over'w e go t in some good plugs t o n ig h t ' . Bob Sokal and Luca Caval l i Sforza were a lso in a t tendance . Joe l e f t today fo r Utah to give

two l e c tu r e s a t Brigham Young. I cont inue to work on my popular

book fo r John Wiley, which should appear next Spring i f a l l goeswel l . "

Merr i t t a l so enclosed cop ie s / r ep r in t s of tw o pieces whichGreenberg r ecen t ly wrote , e s se n t i a l l y answering h is c r i t i c s .These and two othe rs wi l l be mentioned in Th e News.

M.LIONEL BENDER wrote in l a t e March, pa r t ly to answer my l e t t e rto members and p a r t l y to wish me wel l . Key poin t was:

"One sugges t ion fo r MT. Let readers know about the b r i l l i a n ta r t i c l e by Donald Ringe: 'On Calcula t ing the Factor of Chance inlanguage comparison. 'Appeared in Transact ions of th e American



82/-

Phi losophica l Soc ie ty 82.1 : 1-110. I t answers once and fo r a l lhow to s e t t l e the ' l ong- range ' problem. I am now apply ing it to

Nilo-Saharan. I have a l ready heard from Merr i t t who r e j ec t s it

because it doesn ' t lead to the r e su l t s he l i ke s . Some s c i e n t i f i c

method.""Yes, a lo t of good work i s being done in h i s to r i ca l

l i ngu i s t i c s - as wel l as the 90% which i s t r a s h , as usua l . But I

am a f ra id I must include much long-ranger work in the l a t t e r( 'wor ld etymologies ' , no tab ly ) . "

OFER BAR-YOSEF wrote from Cambridge, Mass. where he i s George G.and Jane t G.B. MacCurdy Profe ssor of Prehis tor ic Archeology,Peabody Museum, Harvard Univers i ty . This fo r those who may havethought he was in I s r ae l . Perhaps because he wrote on S t .

P a t r i c k ' s Day he sa id : "This t ime of year i s hec t i c l i ke he l l andI am ac tua l ly looking forward fo r the summer digging in I s r ae l ,

Georgia and Turkey. Our papers on Kebara ( l a s t CA) and the one onKebara and Qafzeh in the Apri l i s sue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN wi l l

give you an idea where we a re heading now. With be t t e r techniquesand c a re fu l excava t ions we can l ea rn more than by j u s t looking a t

the s tone a r t i f a c t s and the f ragmentary fos s i l s . So, l e t ' s keepthe fos s i l s as fund r a i se r s (as they cannot speak to us) . "

UNNAMED C O L L E ~ wrote from an African p lace , not Ethiopia

however . I have chosen to conceal h is iden t i ty and the country sot ha t we might hear h is sent iments openly without fear for him.

"Also, I apprec ia te highly the concern on my sa fe ty : 'Areyou sa fe and wel l ' , which the Edi to r of MOTHER TONGUE ISSUE 14;August 1991 in sc r ibed on the envelope, a t a t ime when Univers i ty

academics and facu l ty were going through the f i r s t s tages of the

s t rugg le fo r Human Rights , Soc ia l Respons ib i l i ty and Democracy in

Whateverland. The evolut ion of s t a t e - i n t e l l e c t u a l s re la t ionshipand i t s impact on academic f reedom: compliance, re s i s tance ,

def iance , apathy and f a t a l i s t i c acceptance of the s t a t e ofr ep res s iveness , overburdened the psyche. 'Are you safe and wel l ' ,

gave me a sense of belonging in the wider academic community andgave the academic environment in Afr ica , some l e ssons ofbehaviour . . Yours s ince re ly , Profe ssor Whomever."

VACLAV BLAZEK wrote from Pfibram in February, 1993, answering thec r i t i que of h is and Claude Boisson ' s work in MT-17.

"Thanks fo r your comments informing long rangers about ourpaper (Claude had devised the name 'Urplough' [?-HF] fo r him.)But I cannot agree with some of your too ca tegor ica l ly c r i t i c a lno tes . Our knowledge of Elami t ic 1 i s too f ragmentary to decide

i t s pos i t ion among Sumerian, Dravidian, I -E, e t c . I have foundthe fol lowing remarkable i sog loss : Sumerian GUD ' b u l l , Elami t ic

KU-TU 'R inder ' (W.Himz & H.Koch, p .159) : Dravidian KOT.I 'young

Ko f t.1 Edi t o r ' s note . I presumed t ha t they had, or were fami l i a r

with , McAlpin 's book which presented evidence of Elami t ic ' s t i e sto Dravidian. We have been discuss ing Elamo-Dravidian fo r yearsin MT - - which proves nothing about the va l i d i t y of the proposedElamo-Dravidian hypothes is .



k.O f .b u l l ' , KUT.' ' cow' (DEDR 2199, 1886) (Unfor tuna te ly I had onlyshor t occasion to excerpt the newest ELAMISCHES waRTERBUCH ofHimz and Koch. Ber l in : Reimer 1987) Our a t tempts to expla in some

etymologies on the bas i s of ce r t a i n scenar io r ep resen t only onep o s s i b i l i t y , they are no t meant def i n i t i ve l y . We expec t the

a l t e rna t i ve models the d iscuss ion with s p e c i a l i s t s , esp. witha rcheo log i s t s , h i s t o r i ans , e t c . Of course , new s t ronger argumentscan cause the change of our op in ions . "

" I don ' t know t ha t Alexander Mil i t a r i ev i den t i f i e s the pre

Sumerian subst ratum with East Cush i t i c . I know only h is

hypothes is t ha t the re a re some AA (non-Semit ic) loanwords in

Sumerian which are c los e s t to Cush i t i c . I formulated a s i m i l a r

hypothes is qu i t e independent ly ye t before my f i r s t con tac t withAlexander in 1984 (p . c . ) , r esp . 1985 (personal ly) on the bas i s ofmy proper comparisons . I th ink , t h i s independent convergence ofour views i s a good t e s t fo r t h i s hypothes i s . [D'accord -HF] NowI co-opera te with John Bengtson on Dene-Caucasian comparat ivegrammar and l ex icon inc luding Sumerian. Concerning Cush i t i c

languages, I have found ce r t a i n i nd ica t ions of t he i r presence in

Arabian peninsula before Semites and perhaps even t r aces of a

d i r e c t con tac t with Indo-European ( a f t e r the d i s in t e g ra t i on of AAbut before depar ture of I-E from Near Eas t ) . 1

"You are t rue t ha t Alexander i s my f r i end but it i s not areason why I c o u l d n ' t d isagree with him. He can confirm you t ha tour d iscuss ions have been very sha rp , l a s t ly in Frankfur t (May

1991) when I convinced him before o thers in h is mistake in

i n t e rp re t a t i on of some Chadic words as cognates to Berber(cor rec t ly l a t e loans v ia Kanur i ) . Alexander admi t ted h is

mis in te rpre ta t ion in pub l ic and it i s I th ink s c i e n t i f i c . "

"In fol lowing 4 months (March-June 1993) I wi l l a t t end

language course a t Goethe In s t i t u t e in Bonn. My expected address :

GOETHE INSTITUT BONNFr ied r i ch -Eber t S t rasse 11,D-5300 Bonn 2 (Bad Godesberg)Tel . (0228) 35 80 21 - 22 " (End of quot ing)

1 I f we g r an t a l l of Vac lav ' s unspoken assumpt ions , h is

ana lys i s would be more cogent . However, we are required to

be l ieve t ha t both I-E and Afras ian had t he i r homelands in the

Near Eas t where they could be i n con tac t . However, Diakonoff ,Anthony, Gimbutas, Mallory and I th ink p ro to - I -E never was in the

Near Eas t , but r a the r in southern Russia . Moreover, a number of

Afras ian is t s and I be l ieve t ha t the proto-AA homeland was in

Afr ica ; some say Eth iop ia , some say Egypt or Nubia, and so on.Carle ton Hodge solves th e problem, a t l e a s t fo r h imse l f , bybe l iev ing t h a t p-I -E and p-AA were in con tac t in the Ni le Val leywhich was homeland fo r both of them. Therefore my or ig ina lob jec t ion to Vaclav ' s hypothes is was not because I knew he waswrong - - I d o n ' t know any such th ing - - but r a the r because heignored a l l those o ther be l i e f s . These homelands a re usua l ly

c o n t ro v e r s i a l which most people tend t o fo rge t l

In h is da ta we rendered h is r e t ro f l ex sound as [ t . ] becauset h i s computer cannot do h is [ t ] with a dot under it. Sorry l



-?b --

·SPECIAL APPEAL!

Dear fr iends,

Prof. Dr. ·Marge E. Landsbergt, Shllcmona Strau

Bat·Oallm, Halla :SS014.. , ..

January 12, 1992

I wanted to ask you with a l l my heart whether you would

be kindly willing to consider donating a very urgently

n e e d ~ d small patient monitor to the Department of

Surgery B at the Carmel Hospital here in Haifa. Their need. .

is desperate since they don't even have a one to their name

for cr i t ica l patient care or emergencies •••

for more information you are most heart i ly welcome to

ca l l me collect 04-537722 at ~ n y hour convenient to you, or

fax 972-4-247532.

I am looking forward ver¥ much to ~ e a r i n g from you soon.

Thank· you very much in advanca for your gracious consideration

of my.plea.

~ e s p e e t f u l l y yours,

' ~ ~~ ~ ~ - ~Marge E. Landsberg, NH,MCC,DLitt.

N ~ B . : The monitor f a ~ t o r y ' s nume is MENNEN MEDICAL LTD.I ts address is Kiryat W e i z m a n ~ , PCB 102, Rehovot 76100, Israel .Phone·08-476751; TLX 381335 .M"LTD IL; Fax 972-8-474519.

Any amount t o w a r d ~ the monitor's p u ~ c h a s e is most hearti lywelcome too, a ~ d can be deposited directly by telex - for theDepartment of Surgery B at t h ~ Carmel Hospital in· Haifa -into the factory 's bank account, number: 488870, Bank HaPoalimBranch 615, Bank 12, 179 Herzl Street , Rehovot, I s ~ a e l . '

THANK YOU!!!

·.



ORIENTALISCHES INSTITUTDER UNIVERSITAT WIEN

UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 7N, A-1010 WIEN, OSTERREICH

- ' 8 i -

Dear Colleague Fleming:

26 June, 199?

T h i ~ lo t ter ought to hal'e b ~ e n w r i t t e ~ as soon as I read

in MT of December 1991, pp. 10-12 "Paul Benedict 's views". I read

these elocutions of our great contemporary with ut te r d i s a ~ p o i n t =ment, and this :particule.rly because of the fact that you P.ppar=

ent l : did not r e a l ~ z e thet a l l that h ~ s been s t ~ t e d , as a princ=

iple of his , Benedict 's conceptions, runs counter to a l l funda=

m e n t ~ l ~ adhered to by ~ S L I P as well as MT. Benedict once more

makes effor ts to rejuvenate the nihi l i s t ic i d e a ~ of the great ~ • 2 =oritz' of the structural is ts of the 1940'es - 1960'es that gradi=

a l l ~ - erE' dying o:ilt with thihse who so staunchly propRgated them,

especially in the USA where they had enjoyed a strange but uncon=

scipus 2ndu n i ~ t e n d e d

support by government officeR, primordiallyvia the "Intensive Language Cpurses" under the Depe.rtl'!'1ento::: of the

A r ~ Y : t7e Navy, end the Air Force. In their great majority, they

were Americanists who, apart from a number of (ent i rely isolated)

descriptions of .American languages, usually beginning with the

phonological structure and mostly also ending with that , did not,

as a conseq_uence of their principal t11eining, produce any compar=

ative grammar of one of the i r languages studied, and furthermore

no basic wonk in the lexical composition and etymology of those

languages was a ~ p a r e n t l y even attempted. Thus, one easi ly arrivesat 11 results" as Benedict elaborates them in this ar t ic le in MTand, unfortunately but natural ly, also in his books and other wri=

t ings . How can he, with his amorphous s h o v i ~ g back and forth l in=

guist ic ent i t ies or pieces of wordR and morphological elements,

ever reach something l ike a "greatmother tongue"? he might, at the

most, arrive at some 150 s t e ~ m o t h e r pidgin lRnguages produced in

the e t e r n ~ l melting pots of Great Maledict ••• ! I f you envisage the

future of MT or even of a l l ASLIP processed through M ~ l e d i t ' s poi=

son foundry, you soon will get new maledicts who, then, wil l take

Matters into the i r hands - and a new e ~ of l i n g u i s t i c ~ wil l dawn

on mankind. With some, the "ridgins" are already "in" •••••

Well, giving this part of mY l e t te r written non sine i r a

et studio, a more o p t i m i ~ t i c conclusion, I should l ike to c ~ l l io



ORIENTALISCHES INSTITUTOER UNIVERSITAT WIEN

7N , A-1010 WIEN, OSTERREICH

- Ul,) -

YOUR A T T E N T I O N ~ SOME publ ica t ions (not wri t ten by Benedic t ' :

Roy A. MILLER: " ~ a p a n e s e and t h ~ Other AltPic L R n g U R ? ~ ~ " (1971).

Karl H• .fVIENGES: "Alta j i sche S t u d i ~ n I I : Al ta,iisc! ' und J9.:!_1?.niscr-'1 ;

Abhdlg. f . d . Kunde des MorgQnlandes41.3; 1975;

Roy J':.mirew MILI.ER: "The Sino-Tibetan H.Y-p:r>thesis" in The Bul le t in oj

the Ins t i tu tue of History and Phi lology, Academie Sinica ,

Taipei , 1988:

Nelly ! - T . ! . U l v ! ! . ~ : N and Roy .Andrw MILLER in Oriens Ext remus 33/2, 1090:

Ursprtinge der japanischen Kultur,Der B e i t ~ a g v 'n

Sprac:h"' und 'Vot.kspoesie' zur Erforschung der Fr;.ihgeschichte

Japans": !JP• 21 - 55;

Roy Andfew ~ ~ I I L E R : "Japanese and .Austronesian", in : Lct2. Orienta l ie ,

1991, pp. ~ · 148 168, being a thorough review of P. B•=nedic t ' s recJEDt book " J a ; : : ~ £ I . A . u s t r o - ~ 2 - i " , 1990.e

This l a t t e r i t ~ m brings me to your quotat ion of a l e t t e r of

mine to ~ r o u , a}so re fer r ing to Benedict . I did not s a ~ r " I t (i..- e .

J e ~ a n ~ s e . K ~ ~ ) b e l o n g s in or near Alta io" , but I ~ ~ i d - a nd repea t

the.t .Ja::-a!'ese i s .Al t a i c , i! ! which a s t i l l •1nknown amount of Austro

Asia t ic and A i ~ u elements surv ive .

I n P s m u ~ h as Alt2.ic i ~ concernee, it i s with grePt reg re t tha t

I timQ P.nd a g : ~ = ~ . i n see th:::lt even i!1 the LSLIP c o l l e a g u e ~ r:uote an t i

.t..l ~ . i s t i c theses , :pe.ssing, of course, as "Al t ? i s t i c s ' j without see=

ing - or t9.king t h ~ i r t ime to look more c l o s e l ~ a t some work - the

fa l l acy of t he i r a r g u m e ' ! ' l t ~ t i o n . UnfortunatoJ:r: thi.C! f?.ll::o.c;;· i s

not r::>.rol=· a l l too w ~ l l C?J'nouflaged • • • •

With kindes t r e g a r d ~ ~ = ~ n d the bes t w i s h ~ s ,B i , . , c e r e l ~ ,

J)¥1 J! .-/// / ~

Pft011'B8801'C),_, KARL H. MENGES

~ H A U P T ~ ..A•1180 WI8N



-&OJ .... December 11,1992

Dear Hal,

Thank you very much for your kind le t te r and a small token

as you called i t . In fact i t is really a shame to live under these

poor conditions as we are experiencing now.It seems that my generat

ion is the las t being •nvolved in academic studies in this country.

Yesterday I had a talk with a young fellow who is really bright.But

he said that he had to occupy himself with business since he cannotsuoport his family while being a scholar.Of ceurse, i t is very sad.

Meanwhile I woQld like to add some more references to Iren

Hegedus's l i s t (MT,april 1992)

Ilya Pejros and Victor Shnirelman. V poiskakh p r a r o d i ~ dravidov

( In search of Dravidian homeland).-Vestnik Drevnej Is tor i i ,

1992,N 1: 135-148

Victor Shnirelman. Etnokul'tur.nyje zaimstvovanija i linguisticheskij

nrotsess,y: nekotoryje metodologicheskije aspekty (Ethnocultura

borrowings and l inguist ic process: some methodological aspects- Linguisticheskaja rekonstruktsija i drevneishaja i s tor i ja

V o s t o k a . M o s c o w , 1 9 8 9 , ~ a r t 3: 132-134.

Ilya Pejros and Victor S h n i r e l m ~ . Vozniknovenije risovodstva nod ~ mezdistsiplinar.nykh issledovanij (The emergence of rice

cult ivation according to interdisciplinar.y researches).- Ling

uisticheskaja rekonstruktsija i drevnejshaja i s tor i ja Vostoka.

Moscow,1989,part 1: 179-195.

Ilya Pejros and Victor Shnirelman. Proiskbozhdenije risovodstva i

problemy mezhdistsiplinarnykh linguoarkheologicheskikh issledvanij (The origins of rice cultivation and problems of the

interdisciplinary linguoarchaeological researches).- Stanovle

nije regiona: integratsionnyje protsessy v Yugo-Vostochnoj Az

Moscow,1989: 27-28

Alexander Militarev,Ilya Pejros and Victor Shnirelman. Metodicheski

nroblemy l i n g u o a r k h e o ~ o g i c h e s k i k h rekonstruktsij e t ~ o g e n e z a(Methodological problems of the ethnogenetic linguoarchaeolog

al reconstructi)ns).- Sovietskaja Etnografija,1988,• 4: 24-38

Alexander Militarev and Victor Shnirelman. The problem of proto

Afrasian home and culture.Moscow: Nauka,1988.

~ l e x a n d e r Militarev and Victor Shnirelman. K probleme lokalizatsi i

drevnejshikb afrazij tsev (On the problem of the most ancient

? r o t o - ~ r a s i a n home).-Linguisticheskaja rekonstruktsi ja i drev

nejshaja i s tor i ja Vostoka.Moscow,1984,part 2: 35-53

I look forward to hearing from you.All the best wishes for the

Christmas and Harpy New Year. c

FAX: 938-J6-'JO E-mail:

Victor Shnirelman

[email protected]



Dear Hal:

J--'-..>LS L - ' . . . ' - - . ' < G ~ l l 5 T l . D O . \ l A ~ , - Y f . : G Y E T £ \ 1Bolcseszettudomanyi Kar

Angol Tanszek

Pees • lfjusag utja 6. • H-7624- ----- ---

Telefon: (72) 27-622/140, 14-714 • Fax: (72) 15-738

November 30, 1992

I am r ea l l y gra te fu l to you and ASLIP fo r sending me MotherTongue desp i te my long s i l ence . Th e fac t t ha t my l i f e has been amess fo r the pas t 2-3 years i s not a good excuse fo r not wri t ing to

you and many o th e r col leagues . But even in t h i s per iod of turmoi lrece iv ing MT was a kind of umbi l ica l cord t ha t kept me within the

genera l c i r c u l a t i on of ideas .

Under separa te cover I am mail ing you a copy of BiblographiaNos t ra t i ca ( the f i na l ve rs ion tha t was publ i shed in Hungary, Ireceived my copies ca . 2 weeks ago) .

Some news:

1. A remarkable book by Janos MAKKAY (Az indoeur6pa i nepekos to r t ene te = The Preh is to ry of Indo-European Peoples) waspubl i shed in Budapest l a s t year (so t h i s i s not ho t news but it maynot be known to those ou ts ide Hungary). This i s th e Hungariancon t r ibu t ion to the IE homeland cont roversy and I th ink t h i s bookmay be the r i g h t approach to the problem. I would l ike to wr i t e areview of it in Engl i sh , I ~ i l l send it to you as soon as it i s

f in ished . A 50-80 pages summary of the book i s forthcoming in JIES(persona l communication from the au thor ) .

2. Another Hungarian pub l i ca t ion in h i s to r i ca l l i ngu i s t i c s :Sandor ROT: Old Engl i sh . Budapest: Macmillan, 1991. (pp .6081.

Includes a survey of IE and Germanic languages and t h e i r diachronic

development and the t he o re t i c a l pa r t i s followed by con t ro l

ques t ions and t a sks fo r analyzing Old Engl ish t e x t s (supported bya g lossa ry ) . I t has a l l the fea tu res of a good handbook fo r exper t s

and those of a good unive rs i ty textbook fo r s tuden ts (both a t theundergraduate and graduate l eve l ) .

3. I got a big supr i se from Aus t ra l i a ! The f i r s t i s sue of a new

l i ngu i s t i c per iod ica l ca l l ed Dhumbadji! launched by the newlyfounded Melbourne Assoc ia t ion fo r the His to ry o f Language (MAHLlwas sen t to me accompanied by a l e t t e r from Paul Sidwell , the

sec re ta ry of MAHL and ed i t o r of the j ou rna l , inv i t ing to become amember and con t r ibu te to th e pub l i ca t ion . I th ink I owe the honourof being known i n Aus t ra l i a to Vaclav Blazek, because he i smentioned in the e d i t o r i a l and i s in t roduced in the jou rna l + h is

review of the Old Church Slavonic Etymological Dic t ionary (Prague:



Cf 11 II

Academia, 1989-1990) i s publ i shed on pp.15-30 . Anyway, I th ink t h i sis something ASLIPers should know about ( i f they do not know it

a l ready!? ) . I f you have no t heard about it ye t , I could send you a

de ta i l ed desc r ip t ion of the f i r s t i s sue (or a xerox copy i f you

pre f e r ) . Or you can con tac t them the fol lowing ways:

Melbourne Assoc ia t ion for the History of Language.Dept. of Germanic Studies and Russian

Babel BuildingUnivers i ty of MelbournePa rv i l l e , AUSTRALIA, 3052

E-mai l : John [email protected]

That reminds me of my own ava i l ab i l i t y on E-mai l , so please

note my number: ihegedus@btk. jpte .huWill you, p lease , l e t me know i f you· are ava i l ab le in the

i n t e rna t iona l network, t ha t would def i n i t e l y ease communication.And you are f ree to publ ish my E-mai l number, I would l ike to havemy co l leagues ' codes as well .

I hope t h a t when you are reading t h i s l e t t e r you are again in

e x c e l l e n t hea l th . I was worr ied by the news of you undergoing anoperat ion and I hope it has worked out a l l f ine . Remember t ha t

s i l ence from ASLIPers does no t always mean i nd i f fe rence to you orto "cosa nos t ra" ! I am ac tua l ly amazed by the amount of work youare able to do fo r th e publ ica t ion of MT and we a l l owe you and th e

temporary e d i to r s a lo t fo r doing t ha t . I would def i n i t e l y f e e l

s o r t of cu t -o f f and profess iona l ly lonesome without ge t t ing MT. So

d o n ' t give up!

I w i l l t r y to be more communicative in the fu ture (and I hate

breaking promises! ) , And as soon as my sa la ry as a s s i s t a n tprofes so r becomes higher than the minimum 1 i ving s tandard in

Hungary I w i l l s t a r t paying my subscr ip t ion ( th i s i s not sarcasmbut another promise! - a l t h o u g h , to t e l l the t ru t h , my mood becomesmore and more b i t t e r l y sa rcas t i c when it comes to educa t ion andresearch f inancing , you know t ha t i s the P a s i e s t and most innocent

f ~ a _ : y fo r those ~ n • a ~ ~ : r · . , . e s , ' l l • .. . . . . - _ . . . · ' " " ba.d ~ lA.. ys ,

Once again thank you fo r eve ry th ing . I wish you the bes t of

hea l th and s p i r i t s fo r th e fu tu re and send you my s inc e r e s t good

wishes fo r Chris tmas and the New Year.

Best regards from,

--------------- - - - - ~ ~ - ·-- ---



LINGUISTICS RESEARCH CENTER - ?f'd-

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

P. 0. Box7247·Austin, Texas78713-7247·(512)471-4566

em4il: "LRC@ utxvms. cc. utexas. edu"

Dear Hal,

19 May 1993

I was sorry to hear you had been ill . Please take good careof yourself; we need you.

I assume that your pessimism about the contributions ofhistorical linguistics are the result of low morale caused by whateverhit you. In my view, they have been t r ~ e n d o u s . When I was a graduatestudent at the end of the 3 0 ' ~ Ph.D. 1941, I hoped to be able to fillin something of the second millennium B.C. for Indo-European studies.As you may know, Kurylowicz demonstrated the laryngeals in 1927, butideas like that take some time to be accepted. Then in 1935 he andBarweriste both published important monographs, giving strong supportfor their assumption. Still, many didn't accept them. I was lucky tobe able to buy Benveniste's monograph from London; and when Sapir died

I got his review copy--his library was sold, or much of i t. (I also gothis copy of Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar.) Since especially Kurylowicz'sis very difficult, I spent one summer virtually on both. Also pertinent,Sturtevant put out his Hittite grammar, chrestomathy, and lexicon inthe thirties. And Lane did something with Tocharian. As a possible lastbit of pleasure before being swallowed up in the army--and possiblydeeper--! attended the Linguistic Institute at Chapel Hill in 1942,where both Sturtevant and Lane taught, and possibly more important,Goetze, who taught me Sumerian. The rest need hardly be mentioned.By now virtually everyone accepts laryngeals. We not only have a fairbit of Hittite, but also other Anatolian languages. When I got out ofthe army in 46 I tried to relearn stuff; during the war I was in Japanese.And in 1952 I published Proto-Indo-European Phonology. That came to be

the University of Texas Press book that was sold most widely behind theiron curtain.

To go on with important stuff, Ventris determinedin 1957 thatthe Linear B materials were in Greek. So we had another Indo-Europeanlanguage with documentation from the 2nd millennium.

What with one thing and another, we can now reconstruct ProtoIndo-European of the 4th millennium and earlier. Moreover, the archeologistshave developed adequate techniques that their findings can be correlatedwith our linguistic reconstructions. Cf. the stuff by Anthony on the horse.While there are various theories on the home of the Indo-Europeans, I thinkthat Schrader of the 19th century was right, as was Leibniz before him, thati t was in southern Russia.

There's a lot we don't know, but we can ask interesting questions.If you have a few minutes, you might pick up the copy of my TheoreticalBases of Indo-European Linguistics in your library; published this Marchby Routledge i t 's hideously expensive. There are also some things in thethird edition of my Historical Linguistics, also Routledge.

To close this, we have good information, i f restricted, on thethree millennia before 1000 B.C., where we were pretty well stymied inthe period around 1940.

With best wishes,

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



SUOMALAIS- UGRILAINEN SEURA

SOCien: FINNO-OUGRIENNE

Prof. Dr. Harold Fleming

Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory

5240 Forbes Ave., Pgh, PA 15217, USA

Prof. Dr . Ekkehard Wolff

Helsinki, July 29. 1992

Universitat Hamburg, Seminar f i ~ A f r i k a n i s c h e Sprachen und KulturenRothenbaumchausse 67/69, D 2000 Hamburg 13, Germany

Dear Messrs.,

Having jus t received your le t ter , I hurry to send th is statement of my intention

not to quit you.

I t just happens that las t year, when the fees were due, I sent more money than

was necessary at that time, and Hal wrote me that I would not have to pay the

fee for 1992. I have a written document for that .

I am nevertheless enclosing 5 $ (to Hal), and wil l send more, i f you ask. I find

th e Mother Tongue in terest ing reading, and I am not against paying for i t , althoughi t would be a good idea to make i t even more l ike a rea l periodical - without

dismissing the casual tone, which I l ike.

Since I am basically an anti-long-ranger, and many of the members are pro-long

rangers, i t might also be worth while thinking, whether th e profile of th e ASLaPcould be made more neutral with regard to long-range comparisons.

What is essential in your/our work, i s , in my opinion, that a l l of us are operating

with the l inguist ic diversi ty in this world. We a l l agree that this diversi ty is

a clue to th e (pre)history of mankind, so I do not really consider i t so important

where we draw the l imit for genetic comparisons. I just hope that everybody wil lput fact ,before fantasy.

Now that .a t least one half of the world's languages are rapidly d i s a p ~ t a r i n g , Ithink i t ~ l s o important to do something to save th e diversi ty . This should beone of the topics and goals of ASLaP and Mothertongue.

As to my own act iv i t ies , I have been further working on Khamnigan Mongol andKhamnigan Evenki. I just finished a paper on th e genetic posit ion of KhamniganMongol, coming to the conclusion that i t i s a separate (and exceptionally con

servative) Mongolic language. (The paper wil l appear in October, and I will send

a copy for the ASLaP l ibrary.)

I hope to find some time to prepare a report for Mothertongue about th e basic lexicon of Khamnigan Mongol (and Khamnigan Evenki). The problem is that th e Mongolic

languages are a l l so closely related with each other, so that you cannot expectto find anything really amazing. The special posit ion of Khamnigan Mongol is

more transparent when you look at the phonological innovations (and their ab

sence, as compared with other Mongolic languages).

Please note my new permanent home address:

Juha Janhunen

Lil la Robertsgatan 4-6 K 5500130 Helsingfors 13Finland

sincerely yours,



o.u- ' - ' / I -

Dear Hal,

743 Madiscm street NEMirmeapolis, MN 55413April 1, 1993

This is specifically in response to your le t ter to ASLIP members

(March 10, 1993).I t will be no surprise that I agree with you that much of today •s

historical linguistics is "dull and l i fe less . 1 You have used themetaphor of "l i t t le fiefdoms, 11 where the various lords tend to thei rIndo-European, or Iroquoian, or Munda, weeding out a l l the irregularcorrespondences and loanwords, and making sure that thei r turf remainspure and untouched by other f iefdans. I f anyone attempts to show thatthere may be relationships between certain fiefdoms, they protest thatsane of their vassals and serfs (read 'words • and 'affixes •) have been

treated carelessly by the generalist in question. This is enough, formany o f them, to dismiss the entire hypothesis!

For example, there is a praninent Indo-Europeanist who proposed,

em the basis of the etyma of English hound an d Russian pes, aproto-Indo-European '*peJ[uca- 'dog'. I t is a l l very ingenious, ands tr ict ly fran an internal IE standpoint, there seems to be no reason todoubt this solution. However, Nostraticists and other paleolinguistshave proposed a different possibili ty. E¥ looking outside of IndoEuropean, they find forms such as Uralic *kiijDii 'wolf •, or, fartherafield, in Amerind: (Hokan) Tonkawa ?ekuan, Yurimangui Jaran, (Tanoan)Taos Jarf.cme-, (oto-Manguean) Popoloca Jami:ya, (Jivaroan) Esmeralda Jd.ne,etc. (al l 'dog'). I t would then appear that IE *k1al - is ardhaic residuefran an old word that f i r s t referred to the wolf (canis lupis) and later

to the domesticated Canis familiaris. The presence of words of the form/bitsu/ 'dog' around the world (Ruhlen, "Global Etymologies," 1987)leads one to suspect that Slavic '*plsil may be residue of that etymon,

and uncormected with IE *Jalal-.The Indo-Europeanist in · question, of course, dismisses theNostratic solution, as proposed by Il l ich-svi ych, because "they •replaying fast and loose with the semantic content." To him, an exactcorrespondence of meaning is required, even i f most people would readilyaccept the association of 'dog' and 'wolf ' .

E¥ trying to be •safe •, sudh linguists ignore a dictum that should

becane one o f the basic theorems o f prehistoric l inguistics: "Externalcanparisan is the only way to t e l l which internal reconstruction is

correct. 1 (This was phrased by Aharon Dolgopolsky at the InternationalSymposium em language and Prehistory, 1988.)

As a corollary to this theorem, another of our founding fathershas this to say:

• • • [ S]ane l inguists have wanted to work as i f each levelof relationship had to be fully reconstructed before a deeper

level o f relationship could be broached • • • I believe thisapproach to be demonstrably wrong. Certainly i t was not the way ofworking o f sapir and SWadesh who mved back and forth between theiDmediate and remote levels of prehistory, finding the twomutually illuminating. (Dell Hymes, in Morris SWadesh's book.!!!!.Origin and Diversification .2f language, 1972, p. 265.)

---



This ca n be an antidote to the dull, l i fe less , and stultifying historicall inguist ics whiCh s t i l l has a chokehold an the full flowering of our

science.I t is high time to re-s tart prehistoric l inguist ics (of which

swadesh was the f i r s t and only professor). He may not have been r ight in

every deta i l , :but that is not important. "There was jus t too muChevidence that the paths he blazed did go sanewhere, and tha t one would

eventually have to followthem

out." (Hymes, op. c i t . , 265-66) Let us. goback to his works, and those o f the other founding fathers andmothers. We can formulate more theorems, not as unalterable dogma, :butas guides to "drawing conclusions fran the tota l i ty of evidence," asswadesh advocated.

I t is good to have you back an the job!

Best wishes,

John D. Bengtson



The CollegeOf

WILLIAM&MARY

Department ofModemLanguages and litendures

Washiogton HaD

P.O.Box8795Williamsburg,Vnpia 23187-8795

Hal FlemingEdi to r - nother Tongue

c /o A. W. Beaman

ASLIP Secre ta ry

P.O. Box 583Brookl ine , MA 02146

Dear Hal,

APR 3199

March 29, 1993

I am wri t ing t h i s l e t t e r to you d i r e c t ly because it was you <I

bel ieve> who posed th e q u es t i o n s on th e back of Le t t e r to Members

<No. 2; 3/10 /93) and t h a t you a re still th e e d i t o r : referred to on

th e first page. I • m glad to h ea r o f your s u c c e s s fu l bout withi l l n e s s ; s ince I ' v e been h o s p i t a l i z ed t h r ee t imes dur ing t h e p a s t

s ix months <twice fo r very s e r io u s matters> I can sympathize mored i r e c t l y .

Pl eas e pass my check on to Ms Beaman.

With : regard to your ques t ion on page 2: I would l i ke to br ing youra t t e n t i o n to my : recent book The n e t a p h o r i c a ~ Bas i s o£ Language: A

S tudy in C r o s s - C u ~ t u r a ~ Lingu i s t i c s <Edwin Mellen Press , Lewis ton,NY>. This book i s , I be l i eve , prec i se ly of th e type you a re

c a l l i n g fo : r !h i s to : r i ca l l i n g u i s t i c : research which i s n o t j u s t of th e

s t anda rd <tiddlypush> v a r i e ty . Indeed, I am a t t empt ing what youc a l l "p re h i s t o r i c l i n g u i s t i c s " by seek ing new consonantt r a n s fo rm a t i o n s "Beyond Grimm" <as my l a s t ch ap t e r i s e n t i t l e d > .

I draw h eav i l y on th e work o f Greenberg <he has :read my book andc a l l e d it "very s t imula t ing"> and from t h e p a s t few y ea r s of M-T.I hope you g e t an oppor tun i ty to :read it and w i l l f e e l f r e e to

co n t ac t me if you have any comments.

Since re ly ,

< P r o £ . 0 J . ~ n Kel ley



Dr. Harold C. Fleming

5240 Forbes Ave.Pittsburgh, PA 15217

Dear Hal:

1106 6th St.Las Vegas, New Mexico 87701(505) 454-1902February 6, 1992

Thanks for your letter of Jan. 31. I do have an adjunct appointment at NMHighlands U., though I don't teach much. Am directing one M.A. thesis right now. Ialso am a Senior Research Associate at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum ofNew Mexico and spend a fair amount of time in Santa Fe at the Lab Anth.

At the moment I'm working on a book on the upper (Pueblo) Rio Grande from

Paleoindian times through the early Spanish period and so have been concerned withthe interpretation of the early man data. I wouldn't call myself a total skeptic. Forexample, I am probably the first southwestern expert to push for the Greeenberg's newAmerind formulations (in a book entitled The Frontier People, U. New Mexico Press,1987). But, to date, a mgjor peopling of the Americas at the time of Clovis seems thebest idea to me. Provisionally accepting the Greenberg point of view doesn't seem tome to necessitate an earlier occupation - that is, I think 12,000 years might well beenough time for the linguistic diversity we find in the Americas.

However, I grant that the mtDNA evidence seems to p o i n ~ to an earlieroccupation. If so it was likely a very scanty one and the Clovis population

explosion[??] might be tied to a series of technological improvements (spear throwerwith superior dart points, new hunting strategies •• whatever) that took place in 1b§.

Americas. In this case Dillehay, MacNeish, etc. may be right (m4s o menos).

Hope you are able to drop by Las Vegas. It might be wise to give a call first,just to be sure I'm home. For example, this weekend I am in Las Cruces giving alecture.

Cheers,

Carroll L. Riley



A VERY BRIEF EDITORIAL

As we have argued before severa l t imes American l i ngu i s t s asa t r ibe in the 2nd hal f of the 20th century may be charac te r ized

in c u l tu r a l terms as having methodology worship. Admittedly much

of t ha t changed in the f i na l quar t e r of the century as the new

fa i th of mental ism spread among the young. But the spec ia l clan

ofh i s to r i ca l l i ngu i s t s r e s i s t ed t r ans fo rma t ion , c l ing ing to

t he i r Bloomfieldian i cons . Thei r worship of methodology was sa id

to have been due to accu l tu ra t ion , too much con tac t with one kindof phys i c i s t , which encouraged them to borrow opera t ioni sm or theprimary phi losophy behind methodology worship. So it was.

Later on the Americanis t branch of t h i s t r i be sought tocomprehend the maverick pr i e s t who had achieved grea t success inAfr ica and t r i ed to succeed in the New World. They knew t ha t th i sde v ia t i on i s t taxonomy-venerater might corrupt the young in theNew World, so they mounted a grea t campaign to d i sc red i t him.

But they never were able to expla in h is Afr ican success .

Nowhere in t he i r methodological dogma was there a rec ipe fo r

r e f l ec t i on , th inking , judgment or what we of ten c a l l i n t u i t i on .

Any i d i o t could look a t a bunch of s i m i l a r i t i e s and f indfa l sehoods . This deviant looked a t the same th ings and in ad i s tu rb ing number of cases he found taxonomic t r u ths . Whose

manual was he fo l lowing anyway? Who t aught him to do t h i s?

The mother church fo r methodology worship in l i ngu i s t i c s was

or has been Yale. My Yalee f r iend Paul Black once to ld me t ha t Idid h i s t o r i c a l l i ngu i s t i c s i n tu i t i ve ly , not by proper methods.True enough. S t i l l t h i s caused me to wonder about JosephGreenberg. True, he could exp l i ca te h is methodology but somehow

it made a d i f fe rence whether he used h is methods or someone e lse

did . Why should t ha t be? Who knows? But Greenberg has becomefamous or a t l e a s t noted by h i s Afr i can i s t c r i t i c s fo r h is

uncanny knack fo r se lec t ing the good s i m i l a r i t i e s and throwing

out the bad. I c a l l s da t i n t u i t i on , savvy or j u s t p la in goodluck .

But it i s a fac tor . I t makes a d i f fe rence . And you cannotf ind it in the operat ing manuals of A m e r i c a n ~ s t h i s to r i ca ll i ngu i s t s . Can you?

Perhaps it i s t ime fo r Greenberg ' s c r i t i c s to begin lookinga t h is taxonomies , a t h i s c la s s i f i ca t ions , to see i f they are

t rue or no t , ins tead of wast ing t h e i r t ime examining h is r i t u a l s .

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



- o;q_

BRIEF EDITORIAL

The way th ings go in sc ience it i s a rare event fo r a

d i s c ip l ine to admit t ha t it has grown near ly po in t l e s s , havingl o s t most of i t s elan v i t a l , and has s ubs t i t u t e d mindlessmethodological r i t u a l fo r se r ious inves t iga t ion of hypotheses . Orsimply to admit tha t it has been mistaken. Once as a gradua te

s tudent I remember being t h r i l l e d a t the courage and hones ty ofthe school of anthropology ca l led Kul tu rk re i s l eh re , a Viennese

and German Cathol ic d i s c ip l ine pr imar i ly , when it announced t ha tit had been mistaken! My profes so r a t the t ime (G.P.Murdock) to ld

h i s c l a sses about it, speaking with deep admira t ion fo r the

plucky Aus t r i ans . We never heard of any o th e r d i s c ip l ine s doingt h i s , even the many con t inen ta l European ( rea l ly na t iona l )

schools of anthropology whose s c i e n t i f i c roo t s c l ea r l y were in

German or Austrian vers ions of Kul tu rk re i s l eh re .

I once asked an as t ronomer in Boston how h is col leagues

dared to invent the u l t imate h y p ~ : t h e s i s of a l l preh i s to ry - - theBig Bang theory - - when there was no good da tab le f o s s i l evidencefo r an event supposed to have happened 15 to 20 b i l l i o n yearsago. Afte r a l l such a theory would t e r r i f y l i ngu i s t s who were notused to propos ing anything more than a few thousand years o ld and

only then i f the proofs were near ly mathematica l in t he i rce r t i t ude . So how do astronomers dare? "We have ba l l s , " answeredmy col league. "One has to have ba l l s to be an ast ronomer." "Oh,do you mean c rys t a l ba l l s?" , I quer ied , playing the fool asusual . "Crys ta l ba l l s might help us a little b i t but you know

pe r f e c t ly well what kind of ' b a l l s ' I mean," sa id he. Even females t a r gazers have ba l l s because the express ion rea l ly means' bo ldness ' and ' cou rage ' .

Well , sa id I to a f r i end in phys ics , i s it t rue? But wheredo they g e t t h e i r arguments from? "Phys ics !" , he r e p l i e d , "they

ge t t h e i r arguments from phys ics . Astronomy i s r ea l l y p a r t of

phys ics anyway." So astronomers can der ive many usefu l th ingsfrom the powerful and complicated t heor i es of phys ics . This mustgive them courage! And then t h e i r data and d i scover i es bounceback and a f f e c t the t heor i es of phys ics .

It seems t h a t physics - - the very model of a mature and r i chsc ience - - has a s ubs t a n t i a l investment in diachrony which paysit div idends . Unlike so many s oc i a l s c i e n t i s t s who seem to haveconcluded t h a t th e ' phys ics model ' demands synchrony or a-chronyphys i c i s t s consor t with ast ronomers . Indeed every s t rong andd i s t inc t ive na tu r a l sc ience , espec ia l ly geology and biology, hasan impor tan t diachronic aspec t , where s ubs t a n t i a l research i s

c a r r i e d on and, yes , scho la r s have ba l l s . Try to imagine biology

without Darwin or sys temat ics . Try to imagine modern geologywithout Wegner 's con t inen ta l d r i f t or the h i s to ry of the e a r th .

(Oops, I made a mistake. Methinks chemis t ry l acks d iachrony. )

S c i e n t i f i c t e s tos te rone i s r a the r l imi ted in contemporaryh i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s . So determined are h is opponents to crush

Greenberg t ha t they seem to fo rge t what it a l l means. (What d id

he do to deserve such t rea tment? ) When they have f in i shed

'p rov ing ' t ha t h i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s cannot dea l with



- 1Do-

preh i s to ry se r ious ly , tha t a l l taxa outs ide of obvious onescannot be r e l i ab l e , t ha t only the most copious and met iculous ly

ga thered da ta can be used, and t ha t only orthodox Indo-Europeanprocedures can be fol lowed, whatever i s l e f t to be in te res ted in?Theore t i ca l synchronic l i ngu i s t i c s ! What else?

Do we need to invent a new d i sc ip l ine? After a l l , thosepeople are k i l l i ng h i s to r i ca l l i ngu i s t i c s or r a t h e r f reezing it

in i t s presen t p i t i f u l s t a t e . So f r ightened i s t h i s young

pr i e s thood t ha t they cannot al low a f a i r and open discuss ion ofthe i s sues . So they choke o ff long rangers in the j ou rna l s . So

dishones t have some of them become t ha t they deny t ha t theys t i f l e deba te .

Four members responded to my c r i t i c i sm of contemporaryh i s to r i ca l l i ngu i s t i c s in the March l e t t e r . M.L.Bender thoughtt ha t Donald Ringe of Pennsylvania had advanced the f i e ld grea t lyby h is mathematics which show conclus ively t ha t Indo-European i sthe l imi t . Bender thought he would apply Ringe ' s wisdom to Nile

Saharan. Oh, l o rd , the re goes Nilo-Saharan tool Morgan Kelly(William & Mary) mentioned h is own work to show t ha t the re i ssome ac t ion in h i s to r i ca l l i ngu i s t i c s (see THE NEWS). Winfred

Lehmann pointed to the growth in Indo-European as a good s ign .John Bengtson found much to c r i t i c i z e in the s t a t us quo.

Persona l ly , I would love to see the presen t r i g o r mort i s o r

r i g o r r a t i on i s (hardening of the a t t i t udes ) loosen up so we canregain some of the v igor (not r igo r ) of 19th century d iachronic

l i ngu i s t i c s . No one wants to be bothered with se t t i ng up a new

d i sc i p l i ne . Besides some of us do not even have a un ivers i ty to

base the d i s c ip l ine in . But the re must be some a l t e rna t i ve to

nincompoop-is t ics l

I f you do no t be l ieve t ha t the re i s any cause fo r alarm, or

any reason fo r one to b e s t i r he r s e l f to r e s i s t , then cons ider the

fol lowing falsehoods which are being used to t h ro t t l e long rangehypotheses . They abound in the Network (computer) where t echnopoops are most numerous. (Thanks to Grover Hudson and Me rr i t t

Ruhlen fo r shar ing t h i s informat ion . ) I wi l l s t a t e them j u s t asf a i r l y as I can. No au thors are c i t ed because t h i s ' pa radigm' hasmul t ip le or ig ins and it i s widely bru i t ed about - - qu i t e

thought less ly - - among American l i ngu i s t s . Mind you, no t a s ingle

one of the fol lowing s ta tements i s t r ue . Not one! They can eas i lybe shown to be fa l sehoods . You can do it yoursel f in the q u i e t of

your own s tudy. Forge t your gradua te t r a in ing . Think! Regardezl

1) It i s necessary to have a complete grammar and a lex icon

of a t l e a s t 2000 words of a language in order to c l a s s i fy it.2) One cannot c l a s s i f y a language on the bas i s of sh o r t word

l i s t s or poor f i e ld da ta . (This i s t rue i f the language has no

reasonably c lose r e l a t i v e s - - l i ke Basque, Burushaski or Nahal i . )3) Two o r more languages cannot be c la s s i f i ed as r e l a t e d

unless ' e x a c t ' sound correspondences can be es tab l i shed betweenor among them. This i s su re ly Indo-ba loney ' s prime pr inc ip l e .

4) 'Mere l e x i c a l s i m i l a r i t i e s ' cannot se rve as a bas i s fo rc l a s s i fy ing two or more languages as r e l a t e d .



- 1 0 1 -5) I f a proposed c lass of languages has sub-d iv i s ions , then

the ances tor of each sub-d iv i s ion must be recons t ructed beforethe common a n c e s ~ o f the whole c l a s s can be r econs t ruc ted .

6) The same as (5) except t ha t each sub- taxon must berecons t ructed before the whole taxon can be accepted as such.

7) "You can throw mud a t a barn and some of it wi l l s t i ck . "(He probably meant cow dung.) This means t ha t you can always f inds imi l a r i t i e s between two or more languages j u s t by accident dueto spur ious s i m i l a r i t i e s . So seeking s i m i l a r i t i e s i s s i l l y .(Cont ras t t h i s oxymoronical ly with the next one . )

8) Two daughte r languages of the same ances tor wi l l lose

more and more of t he i r common fea tu res as t ime goes by. So theybecome l e s s and l e s s s imi la r . Unt i l f i na l l y the evidence of t he i rcommon or ig in disappears . So long range comparison i s f ru i t l e s s .

9) Professors Bender, Oswalt , and Ringe have shown by exac t

and r igorous mathematics tha t the evidence of re la t ionship of twolanguages becomes s t a t i s t i c a l l y meaningless a f t e r severa l

mil lennia or roughly the same t ime depth as Indo-European. Somewould make t h i s somewhat o lder , perhaps even as o ld as 10 kya,but t ha t i s an unpr incip led extens ion of t h i s axiom.

10) Ergo, re la t ionships o lder than Indo-European ones cannotbe de tec ted or a t l ea s t cannot be demonstra ted s t a t i s t i c a l l y .

(Some say tha t Indo-Hi t t i t e i s o lder than r egu la r Indo-European)11) Double ergo . Indo-European obviously cannot be r e l a t e d

to any o ther family of languages. Nor can Semit ic! Not ever!

12) A taxonomic hypothes is can be f a l s i f i e d s imply by

ques t ioning i t s a t t en d an t methodology. I f you say tha t I r i s h i sre la ted to Welsh but you did not inquire in a proper way, thenI r i s h i s not r e l a t e d to Welsh. You can undo h i s to ry ! It's fun!

12a) The above was akin to the famous fa l l acy of arguing ad

hominem. Suppose t ha t a drunken fool proposes t ha t the ea r th i sround. " I f it was f l a t , I ' d be able to s tand up s t r a i g h t . " Well ,h is hypothes is cannot be t rue because he i s a drunken foo l .

Therefore the ea r th i s f l a t .

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \

ASLIP BUSINESSMT-19 i s l a t e r than we expected it to be because the

computer decided to break down a t the c ruc i a l moment. The

appropr ia te response i s probably to shoot it. Ah, technology! An

unre len t ing batch of d i f f i c u l t i e s .

Th e ed i t o r wishes to thank the many f r i ends and co l l eagues who

wished him well! I t i s l i ke having your l imbic system s t roked

with ve lve t fea the rs . Thank you, thank you!

While the edi tor sh ip wi l l change i t s personnel fo r a s p e l l ,

t h i s has nothing to do with anyone ' s hea l th . Rather it involves aneed to publ ish on Omotic languages. Allan Bombard wi l l takepr imary r e spons i b i l i t y fo r producing MOTHER TONGUE but the

presen t ed i t o r wi l l con t r ibu te var ious ly to fu tu re i s sues , moreon phys ica l anthropology and archeology than o ther t o p i c s . Allanhas s t a r t ed h is own publ ish ing business (SIGNUM, P.O.Box 6398,



-]()d.-

Boston, MA 02114, USA. Tel. 617-227-4923) and he promises to make

many changes in our du l l & f eck les s format . From what he hasshown us so fa r you a l l wil l be very pleased.

< < < < < < ------- > > > > > >

ELECTION OF FELLOWS: The Resul t s :

Ms. Anne w. Beaman, Secretary of ASLIP, informs us t ha t the f i na l

resu l t s* of the e lec t ion of new permanent Fellows to the Counci lof Fellows a re , as fo l lows , sub jec t to t h e i r accept ing the honor

and s t a t us :

Luca Luigi Caval l i -Sforza (S tanford Univers i ty , b iogenet ics )

Igor Diakonoff (S t . Pete rsburg , Orien ta l Studies)

Ben Ohiomamhe Elugbe (U. of Ibadan, l i ngu i s t i c s )

Del l Hymes (U. of Virg in ia , anthropology & l i ngu i s t i c s )

Sydney Lamb (Rice Univers i ty , l i ngu i s t i c s )

Karl-Heinz Menges (U. of Vienna, Columbia Univers i ty ;

Centra l Asia Studies & Alta ic languages)

Colin Renfrew (Cambridge Univers i ty , archeology)

* Exact numbers and ru l e s can be known. Write/phone Ms. Beaman.

The Annual Meeting of ASLIP and the Board of Direc to r s of ASLIP

was held in Boston, Massachuset ts on the 21st of Apri l a t theAfr ican Stud ie s Center of Boston Univers i ty . Copies of the Agendaof the Annual Meeting may be obta ined from Ms. Anne Beaman.

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Mother Tongue Newsletter 19 (Spring 1993)

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