Re: Verb order in Montreiano

Yoon Ha wrote:

> > Merritt Ruhlen is a linguist notorious for lumping languages together on
> > the sketchiest evidence -- he is a proponant of the Amerind hypothesis.
> > (Enough said.) But even he has decided that the evidence for connecting
> > Japanese-Korean-Ainu with Altaic is not good enough to accept.
>
>Forgive me ignorance; what's the Amerind hypothesis?  I do recall some
>discussion of some flaky hypothesis? that Amerind languages? were
>related? to something in Europe maybe? but I don't remember details or if
>it is what you're talking about here.
The Amerind hypothesis claims that all the languages of the Americas except
Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene (Athabascan-Tlingit-Eyak(-Haida)) are one family.
The idea is intriguing, especially considering the fact that the biological
evidence (dentition and blood-typing) follows a very similar division.
Unfortunately, the inventor (Joseph Greenberg) was unrigorous and careless
in his methodology, so his data do not actually prove his hypothesis. And
since his quality of scholarship was so shoddy (he includes seven languages
that aren't even real), few people have taken up his proposal and tried to
find better evidence for it. The ones who do follow the same shoddy procedures.

> > I don't know what that's worth, given how little credit I give him on other
> > judgement calls, but I do find it a good indicator of how good the
> evidence is.
>
>Oh dear.  :-p
>
>Speaking of which, where can I find info on what Ainu looks like  (The
>language)?  About
>all I know is that the Ainu exist, they don't look like Japanese (reddish
>hair?) and...yeah.  :-(
The best overview of the language is found in Shibatani's 'The Languages of
Japan', Cambridge University Press. There are some good grammars out there,
but most of them are in Japanese. People who are interested in
non-configurational languages or noun incorporation would probably enjoy
learning more about this wonderful language. (Too bad it's extinct -- I
would have loved to do work on it).


Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley

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