Skeptical Humanities

As I said last time, I’ll now go into further detail on the issues discussed earlier and their significance for ‘fringe’ historical linguistic claims.  Some of the text presented here is based on sections of my forthcoming book on these matters.

The precise probability of accidental (unsystematic) similarity between words in different languages depends upon a number of factors:

a) the degrees of phonological and semantic similarity (phonetic form on the one hand and meaning on the other) required if words are to be seen as prima facie likely to be shared between languages

[Such decisions are often arbitrary to a degree; for example, scholars might disagree as to whether a word san meaning ‘scarlet’ in one language and a word zen meaning ‘orange’ in another language were similar enough in form and/or meaning to be regarded, prima facie, as probably shared (but note that the degree of phonological systematicity across the vocabularies, as discussed last time, will often be helpful in resolving such cases).]

b) the lengths of the words (for example, if two languages not known to be connected share a very short word-form such as [sa] with the same meaning, this could very well be accidental, whereas if they share a form such as [tolpesveblig], again with the same meaning, or with transparently related meanings, this is less likely)

[There are, of course, ‘borderline’ cases involving intermediate word-lengths; and where there is supporting non-linguistic evidence – especially where contact and borrowing are in question – some such cases may be fairly persuasive (even if systematicity cannot be demonstrated).  For example, three-syllable words of the form kumara or umara, meaning ‘sweet-potato’, occur on both sides of the South Pacific, and this vegetable, apparently of South American origin, has long been cultivated in Polynesia.  It is thus not unlikely that the sweet-potato diffused by means of unrecorded transoceanic contact; this would probably have involved intrepid (but non-literate ) Polynesian voyagers reaching what is now Peru/Chile and bringing the plant and borrowed names for it back to their homelands.}

c) the cross-linguistic frequencies of phonemes (speech-sounds) and phoneme-sequences (very widely-shared sounds such as [e], [s], etc. or common sound-sequences such as [til] or [po] are more likely to be shared by chance than sounds and sequences found in relatively few languages)

[I’m restricting myself here to international phonetic symbols (always given in [square brackets] by linguists) which correspond in form and approximate pronunciation with familiar Roman letters; I’ll introduce unfamiliar phonetic symbols only if necessary, and I’ll explain them when I first use them.]

d) the phonological and semantic systems of the relevant languages (these considerations are often rather technical where phonology is in question)

However, in any given case the precise probability of accidental (unsystematic) similarity is easily shown to be much greater than most non-linguists (including ‘fringe’ writers such as those discussed here) imagine.   There are millions of words and word-parts in the several thousand known languages; and there are only so many common sounds and sound combinations.  The calculable probability of pairs of superficially and unsystematically similar words in apparently unrelated languages having very similar or the same senses by chance is in fact much higher than non-linguists – including non-mainstream writers of the kind I’m discussing here – generally imagine.  Therefore, superficial phonetic similarity between isolated words and/or meaningful word-parts taken from different languages is in itself no evidence of cognatehood or of any genuine, non-accidental connection, even if there are many such words or if their meanings too are similar.  If the meanings are not really especially similar, or are merely alleged to be related as part of some writer’s theory, the case is even weaker.  There is vast scope for accidental similarity between the words of unconnected languages.

And indeed, as noted, it is phonological (and also grammatical) systems which are normally decisive in establishing genuine links, not superficially similar words per se.  But few ‘fringe’ writers know enough linguistics to deal adequately with phonology or grammar.  Indeed, the vast bulk of the ‘evidence’ associated with non-standard amateur claims involves vocabulary, which is replete with superficial similarities.  The analysis of vocabulary requires much less understanding of linguistic theory and methodology.

In fact, any major loosening of the standards of evidence for cognatehood, such as are required by claims such as those I’m discussing here, would have the consequence that very many alternative proposals (involving, for example, a whole range of different languages of origin for the same words) would be roughly equally plausible.  But these proposals all contradict each other; only one of them, if any, could be correct.  In that event, the reasonable conclusion would probably be that we could not say much at all about philology or older etymologies with any confidence.  Mainstream linguists would regard this conclusion as a last resort and as not warranted by the actual evidence.

In addition, etymologizing should (for obvious reasons) be based not upon well-known contemporary forms, as often occurs in the ‘fringe’ literature, but instead upon the forms of the relevant words in the oldest available versions of the languages in question – and upon the ranges of known cognate forms in the relevant language ‘families’.

Another issue here involves known or very well-grounded established etymologies for words, involving the often well-established histories of these language ‘families’.  Many of the novel etymological claims discussed here fly in the faces of known or very probable etymologies, which are often very well supported with historical and linguistic evidence.  For example, Michal Tsarion proposes an outlandish etymology for the English word bishop, ignoring the well-established Greek etymology; Gene Matlock advances equally bizarre Sanskrit etymologies for a wide range of words with known etymologies, for instance deriving the modern coining Australia (with its transparent Latin etymology: ‘southern [land]’) from Astralaya, supposedly meaning ‘land of missiles’.

Proposers of such alternative etymologies obviously need to argue that theirs are more plausible than the established ones.  But this is very seldom even attempted; readers are simply invited to accept the alternative etymologies, and the established ones are mentioned, if at all, only to be glibly dismissed.  This renders many of the etymologies offered seriously implausible or indeed impossible.

Other etymological claims deal mainly with the very remote past where the actual etymologies for words and word-parts are obscure and uncertain, or simply cannot be established, at least by current methods.  The point here is not that novel etymologies offered by non-mainstream writers are known to be wrong but that there is no particular reason to believe that they are correct.

In some cases multiple etymologies with different sources are posited for the very same word or morpheme.  For example, Don Smithana offers a double etymology for the –osis suffix in the Canadian lake-name Winnipegosis.  Etymological ‘blends’ of this kind do occur, but are predictably very rare; any such claim must be very strongly supported.

More next time on various special types of ‘fringe’ claim in this area.

Mark