Re: Rotokas (was: California Cheeseburger)

Date:    Sun, 20 Jun 2004 11:40:41 -0500
From:    "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>
> Andreas Johansson said:
> > Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>:
> > > Thomas R. Wier said:
> > > > I'm jumping in here, and don't much of anything about Rotokas, but
> > > > how can it have a (C)V syllable structure when the name of the
> > > > language itself has a coda? Is there some constraint allowing word
> > > > final codas but not word internal ones?
> >
> > > I must have been mistaken about Rotokas being (C)V.
> > >
> > > Clearly, those who don't know much of anything about Rotokas are in the
> > > majority here, so I'm outvoted hands-down.
> >
> > I'm quite convinced that Mr Wier was asking a honest question.
>
> So you're saying that, knowing not much of anything about a language, it
> makes perfect sense to question primary sources on the basis of a single
> form for which you have no particular reason to believe (due to the
> widespread occurrence of external language names) that that single form is
> even native to the language in question.
It's one thing to point out that many languages have names that are
given to them from outside the speaker community, which is true.  However,
because there ARE languages where word-internal codas are illicit
but which allow codas word-finally, it's not obviously the case that
a general claim about a language usually having CV syllables and the name
of the language having a coda are contradictory facts.  That's what I was
trying to get out of this discussion.

> Where I come from, that's not how linguistics is practiced. But we all
> know that I come from a different planet. :)
Why should we assume that the name of the language is not derived from
the language?  If we have no other information about the language (or rather:
I have no other information, a point I made explicit in my post), I would
suggest that the default position must be to assume it is native unless
we have strong reasons to believe otherwise.  As I just said, a language
with CV internally but final codas is quite possible, so it is not a priori
obvious to me that the name must be from outside the speaker community.

> It's one thing to be disbelieved when there's no source in play. What
> astounds me is that I am so often disbelieved (usually by the same handful
> of people) even when there *is* a source and all I'm doing is repeating
> what it says. Something of a gunslinger mentality, I reckon: youngsters
> trying to see who's quicker at the draw than the aging, retired gunslinger
> who's really just in town to visit the saloon. You could say that the
> aging gunslinger brought this upon himself by the choices he's made, and
> you'd be right. New choices are in order, then.
This isn't about young v. old or any such thing, though.  It's about
the generalizations that people bring up in their descriptions of the
language.  Anyone who's worked on a language documentation first hand
knows that the number of people working on (or who have worked on) most
languages is quite, quite small, and in many cases are done not by
professional linguists but by individuals with quite different motives
(e.g., missionaries or anthropologists).  This is not to say that these
people are ignorant or stupid, only that primary descriptions of a great
many languages are inadequate because their work was directed elsewhere.
Moreover, for any number of reasons (e.g., deadlines, wars breaking out
requiring one to leave the country, etc.), vague impressions are often
put into print without being noted as such, and thus can lead to situations
precisely like those we are discussing.  These are commonplaces of linguistic
description which occur especially frequently in older works from the
late 19th and early 20th centuries when the level of linguistic instruction
for field researchers was shockingly low indeed, which are often not to
the level of distinguishing phonemic versus phonetic contrasts.  The
point of all this is that you simply cannot take primary sources at
face value, and that there's no substitution for actually working with
the language in detail oneself.  Only then will you be able to get a
feel for how a language works, through experience.

As it turned out, there was a simpler answer, but I don't see what harm
there was in asking the question as such. I am slightly disturbed by
the attitude that asking questions is somehow inappropriate when there
is some citation that can be made. As we all know, appeals to authority
are generally considered the weakest form of evidence for a given argument.
Asking questions about such authorities is how all knowledge advances,
by putting earlier propositions to the test, and proving or discarding
them.  Otherwise, we as a civilization are no better (or worse) than
the medieval scholastics who faithfully handed down the traditions of
the ancients, whatever the validity thereof, because they didn't trust
their own doubts.

 =========================================================================
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

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