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Amerind languages

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Amerind is a higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in his 1987 book Language in the Americas (ISBN 0804713154). In this book Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three families. According to Greenberg's hypothesis, a minority of the languages, concentrated in northern North America, belong to the previously proposed Na-Dené and Eskimo-Aleut language families. All of the remaining languages, usually considered to belong to dozens of separate unrelated language families, belong to Amerind. Due to a large amount of methodological flaws in the investigation of the relationships between languages the proposal has been roundly rejected by the large majority of historical linguists.[1]

The term is also occasionally used to refer (broadly) to the various indigenous languages of the Americas, without necessarily implying that they are a genetic group. To avoid ambiguity, the term Amerindian is often used instead.

Background

The idea that all the languages of the Americas are related goes back to the 19th century when early linguists such as Peter Stephen DuPonceau and Wilhelm von Humboldt noticed that the languages of the Americas seemed to be very different from the better known European languages, yet seemingly also quite similar to each other. When studies of American Indian languages began in earnest in the early 20th century linguists quickly realized that the indigenous languages were in fact not all that similar, but had a diversity much greater than among the languages of Europe. After a period of uncertainty about whether indigenous languages could be described and injvestigated by the methods applied to European lanaguges the first linguists began the daunting task of trying to classify the languages of the Americas by using the comparative method.

Among the most prolific and gifted linguists of his times was Edward Sapir, who was among the first to apply the comparative method to native American languages. However, contrary to current practice in historical linguistics Sapir also often relied on "hunches" and "gut feeling" when proposing new linguistic groupings. Some of these suggestions have been proven correct while others have not. Sapir entertained the idea that ultimately all languages of the Americas might turn out to be proveably related and such a phenomenon as the apparent Pan-American tendency to have first person forms with a prefixed n- was suggestive for this line of thought.

Since Sapir's death in 1939 linguists have spent their time researching his proposals, and generally there have been two opposing camps in this endeavour: the so-called "lumpers" who are generally favourably inclined towards notions of genetic relationships, and the "splitters" who are generally critical of such proposals expecting successful family relations to be proven by the most rigorous standards of scholarship. Joseph Greenberg worked in the tradition of "lumpers" and following Sapir he accepted kinds of evidence that are not generally acceptable to those who hold that only the most rigorous application of the comparative method can yield reliable proof of genetic relationships between languages. In elaborating his classification of the Amerind languages Greenberg relied heavily on Sapir's early work on the North American languages and the highly impressionist classification of South American languages by Paul Rivet.

Amerind pronouns

The main argument for the genetic unity of most native American languages is an observed pronominal pattern in many native American languages that have first person forms with n- and second person forms with m-. This pattern was first noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. This pattern was also noted by Sapir which caused him to suggest that ultimately all native American languages would turn out to be related. In a personal letter to A. L. Kroeber he wrote (Sapir 1918):[2]

Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us.

The supposed "n/m - I/you" pattern among Native American languages has attracted attention even from those linguists who are normally critical of such proposals. Johanna Nichols has investigated the distribution of the languages that have the n/m contrast and found that they are mostly confined to the western coast of the Americas, and that similarly they exist in east Asia and oceania. This caused her to suggest that they had spread through diffusion.[3] This notion was rejected by Lyle Campbell who argued that in fact the n/m pattern was not statistically significant in either area compared to the rest of the world. Campbell also showed that several of the languages that had the contrast today had not had it historically and that largely the pattern was consistent with chance resemblances, especially when taking into consideration the statistic prevalence of nasal consonants in all the pronominal systems of the world.[4]

Reception

The Amerind hypothesis has been generally rejected as unfounded in scientific method by historical linguists, especially by those specializing in the languages of the Americas[5], particularly because the basis for the proposal is mass comparison, but also because of many other methodological flaws made by Greenberg in the elaboration of the hypothesis.[6] Critics regard this technique as fundamentally flawed, unable to distinguish chance resemblances from those due to a historical relationship among the languages and providing no means of distinguishing resemblances due to common descent from those due to language contact. Many historical and/or Americanist linguists do not believe that it is possible to find relationships or make linguistic reconstructions as far back in time as the Amerind hypothesis would require.

In addition, critics have pointed out errors in the citation of data, including erroneous forms, erroneous glosses, unjustified morphological segmentation, attribution to the wrong language, and citation of entirely spurious forms.[7]

A further criticism is that, contrary to normal scholarly practice, no source references are given for the data, which in most cases come from languages for which there is no standard, authoritative source. In addition, Greenberg does not normalize the spelling of the data, so it is impossible without knowing the source of each form to know what the notation actually represents.[8]

Certain groups of linguists working with Mass lexical comparison and Long range genetic relationships have continued to defend the Greenbergs hypothesis. The most vociferous of these is Merritt Ruhlen who has tried to amass more evidence for the hypothesis.[9] He thus also objects to the notion that there are over 200 families among which there is no evidence of genetic affinity.[10] He suggests that there is evidence for a three-way i / u / a (i.e. masculine / feminine / neutral) ablaut in such forms as t'ina / t'una / t'ana ("son / daughter / child").[clarification needed]

More recently it has been suggested that the Almosan languages represent a separate group to the other Amerind languages and a relationship with the Nivkh language and the substratum of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages in a Beringian language group has been suggested. [1] Another suggestion would link the Almosan languages with Dene-Caucasian.[11].

Notes

  1. ^ Campbell 1997, Poser & Campbell 2008, Adelaar 1989, Berman 1992, Chafe 1987, Matisof 1990, Golla 1987, 1988, Kimball 1992, Mithun 1999, Poser 1992, Rankin 1992
  2. ^ See Sapir 1918
  3. ^ Nichols & Peterson 1996
  4. ^ Campbell 1997
  5. ^ See Campbell 1997, Goddard 1996, and Mithun 1999
  6. ^ See Campbell 1988, Goddard 1987, Goddard 1990, Matisoff 1990, Rankin 1992, and Ringe 2000
  7. ^ See Adelaar 1989, Berman 1992, Campbell 1988, Chafe 1987, Kimball 1992, Matisoff 1990, Poser 1992, Rankin 1992
  8. ^ See Campbell 1988, Poser 1992
  9. ^ See Greenberg & Ruhlen 2007, Ruhlen 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1994d, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1995d, and 2004
  10. ^ See Campbell 1997
  11. ^ See Shevoroshkin 1998, Shevoroshkin 2003, and Shevoroshkin 2004

See also

References

  • Adelaar, Willem F. H. (1989). [Review of Greenberg, Language in the Americas]. Lingua, 78, 249-255.
  • Berman, Howard. (1992). A comment on the Yurok and Kalapuya data in Greenberg's Language in the Americas. International Journal of American Linguistics, 58 (2), 230-233.
  • Bonnichsen, Robson; & Steele, D. Gentry (Eds.). (1994). Method and theory for investigating the peopling of the Americas. Peopling of the Americas publications. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University, Center for the Study of the First Americans. ISBN 0-912933-09-7.
  • Campbell, Lyle. (1988). [Review of Language in the Americas, Greenberg 1987]. Language, 64, 591-615.
  • Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
  • Campbell, Lyle; Poser, William J. (2008) Language Classification, History and Method, Cambridge University Press
  • Chafe, Wallace. (1987). [Review of Greenberg 1987]. Current Anthropology, 28, 652-653.
  • Delbrück, Berthold (1880), Einleitung in das Sprachstudium. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Methodik der vergleichenden Sprachforschung, Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, OCLC: 3961260
  • Goddard, Ives. (1987). [Review of Joseph Greenberg, Language in the Americas]. Current Anthropology, 28, 656-657.
  • Goddard, Ives. (1990). [Review of Language in the Americas by Joseph H. Greenberg]. Linguistics, 28, 556-558.
  • Goddard, Ives. (1996). The classification of native languages of North America. In I. Goddard (Ed.), Languages (pp. 290–323). Handbook of North Americans Indians (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
  • Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-048774-9.
  • Goddard, Ives; & Campbell, Lyle. (1994). The history and classification of American Indian languages: What are the implications for the peopling of the Americas?. In R. Bonnichsen & D. Steele (Eds.), Method and theory for investigating the peopling of the Americas (pp. 189–207). Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University.
  • Golla, Victor. (1987). [Review of Joseph H. Greenberg: Language in the Americas]. Current Anthropology, 28, 657-659.
  • Golla, Victor. (1988). [Review of Language in the Americas, by Joseph Greenberg]. American Anthropologist, 90, 434-435.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (1960). General classification of Central and South American languages. In A. Wallace (Ed.), Men and cultures: Fifth international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences (1956) (pp. 791–794). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas: Author's précis. Current Anthropology, 28, 647-652.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (1989). Classification of American Indian languages: A reply to Campbell. Language, 65, 107-114.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. (1996). In defense of Amerind. International Journal of American Linguistics, 62, 131-164.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H.; Ruhlen, Merritt (2007), An Amerind Etymological Dictionary (PDF), 12, Corvallis, Oregon: Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, retrieved 2008-07-22
  • Kimball, Geoffrey. (1992). A critique of Muskogean, 'Gulf,' and Yukian materials in Language in the Americas. International Journal of American Linguistics, 58, 447-501.
  • Matisoff, James. (1990). On megalo-comparison: A discussion note. Language, 66, 106-120.
  • Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-23228-7 (hbk); ISBN 0-521-29875-X.
  • Nichols, Johanna (1992), Linguistic diversity in space and time, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226580563
  • Poser, William J. (1992). The Salinan and Yurumanguí data in Language in the Americas. International Journal of American Linguistics, 58 (2), 202-229. PDF
  • Rankin, Robert. (1992). [Review of Language in the Americas by J. H. Greenberg]. International Journal of American Linguistics, 58 (3), 324-351.
  • Ringe, Don (2000). Some relevant facts about historical linguistics. In: Renfrew, Colin (Ed.), America Past, America Present: Genes and Languages in the Americas and Beyond (pp. 139–62). Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (1994), "Evolution of Language", in Macey, Sam (ed.), Encyclopedia of Time, New York: Garland Science, ISBN 0815306156
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (1994), "Linguistic Evidence for the Peopling of the Americas", in Bonnichsen, Robson; Steele, D. Gentry (eds.), Method and Theory for Investigating the Peopling of the Americas, Corvallis, Oregon: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Oregon State University, pp. 177–188, ISBN 0912933097
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (November 1994), "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", Mother Tongue Newsletter (23), Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP): 72–73, OCLC: 35315526
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (1994), "Review of 'Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time' By Johanna Nichols", Anthropos, 89, Anthropos Institute: 640–641, ISSN: 0257-9774
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (1994), On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804723214
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (March 1995), "A Note on Amerind Pronouns", Mother Tongue Newsletter (24), Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP): 60–61, OCLC: 35315526
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (March 1995), "Proto-Amerind *QETS' 'Left (Hand)'", Mother Tongue Newsletter (24), Association for the Study of Language In Prehistory (ASLIP): 69–70, OCLC: 35315526
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (1995), "On the Origin of the Amerind Pronominal Pattern", in Chen, Matthew Y.; Tzeng, Ovid J. L. (eds.), In Honor of William S-Y. Wang, Taipei: Pyramid Press, pp. 405–407, ISBN 957926855X
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (January 1995), "Proto-Amerind Numerals", Anthropological Science, 103 (3), Tokyo: Anthropological Society of Nippon: 209–225, ISSN: 1348-8570
  • Ruhlen, Merritt (2004), "On the Amerind Origin of the Proto-Algonquian Numeral Suffix *-a:šyeka", in Jones, Martin (ed.), Traces of ancestry: studies in honour of Colin Renfrew, Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, pp. 139–142, ISBN 1902937252
  • Sapir, Edward (1984), "Letter to A. L. Kroeber (1918)", The Sapir-Kroeber correspondence: letters between Edward Sapir and A. L. Kroeber, 1905-1925, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, OCLC: 17922146 {{citation}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
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