Re: semantics question

Quoting Rob Haden <magwich78@...>:

> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 15:33:47 -0500, Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
> wrote:
>
> ><rant>
> >
> >Might I point out, politely, that as far as conlanging goes
> >I see no problem with using forms from Ryan's putative 'Proto-
> >Language' as an a posteriori source of lexemes.  But I also feel
> >obliged to point out that most of what Mr. Ryan has to say on
> >these pages would be considered by the vast majority of professional
> >historical linguists to be the thoughts of a crackpot. Thus, you
> >should also be warned that many, many people will not take you
> >seriously if you cite him.
> >
> ></rant>
>
> I understand this.  However, might I also add that it is a shame that the
> professional historical linguistic community is not as open to new ideas as
> it could be.  But then again, every field is subject to dogmatism somehow.
That's not the point, though.  Mr. Ryan is not simply a heterodox
practictioner of historical linguistics, as, say Greenberg was. He
is a man who consistently bends (or breaks) all the methodological
principles of historical linguistics to back up his very precise
claims about the nature of this language that he claims was spoken
100,000 (!!!) years ago. For example, in the opening paragraph of the
introduction to this essays, he clearly confuses three separate notions
of ethnic and linguistic communities and genetic lineages. Linguists,
anthropologists have long known, and archaeologists now recognize, that
there is no simple relationship between language and ethnicity, nor
between language and genetics. Yet much of Mr. Ryan's work explicitly or
implicitly makes such direct one-to-one mappings. He's also guilty of
sloppy research:  when you make strong claims, you're supposed to find
lots of other independent research to lay a foundation for your own
analysis.  Yet he cites a single academic for the above claim.  These
are just two of the many truly fantastic flaws in his pages.  I honestly
don't have the time to review his syllabus of errors, but I hope
I can give a taste of why this is not simply a question of orthodoxy
versus heterodoxy.

> I don't agree with everything that Mr. Ryan has to say, and I view some of
> his ideas with considerable reserve, but I do think that it's interesting
> to play around with ideas and see if they work or not.
Like I said, when you're creating a conlang, which makes no claims
about the nature of actual reality, I see no problem with using some
of his source material for building vocabulary and structure of your
conlang.  But literature and art are different from science, and the
two must not be confused.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637