Rating: 
Summary: response to larry west
Review: West claims that historical linguistics in the 20th Century was largely misguided. This is, of course, a matter of opinion. But his claim would be rejected by the vast majority of contemporary historical linguists, who see their work as building on 20th Century achievements. Even Greenberg's supporters mostly regard Ruhlen's position as badly overstated. And in the mainstream proper Ruhlen is simply not taken seriously; see Trask's review below. My own review was widely perceived as too generous.Can West explain why he regards historical linguistics in the 20th Century as largely misguided? West also claims that genetic evidence mostly confirms Greenberg's thesis. This is an oversimplification/overstatement in that - although the most recent findings do suggest closer links between genetic and linguistic histories than is necessarily to be expected (see McMahon & McMahon in the current issue of TPS) - one cannot assume that linguistic relationships will correspond with genetic relationships between groups of speakers. And even if Greenberg's ideas came to be accepted (and if anything current linguistic thought is heading the opposite way), that would not necessarily afford much comfort to Ruhlenites, whose position, as noted, is more extreme. Ringe and other such researchers do work with the oldest known forms; but in order to examine greater time-depths and wider coverage through mass comparison one must often also work with more recent data. For many language families, this is actually necessary, because older forms are not available or not representative and any reconstructed forms are uncertain. Mass comparison is, of course, used chiefly in just such cases, where there is simply not enough early data to perform proper comparative analyses involving systematic correspondences; where this latter IS possible, one can be much more confident of identifying cognates. This is why it is also used in seeking deep-time relationships between language families - IF the reconstructed proto-forms are regarded as sufficiently well established. West's criticism of Ringe is thus off-target. Actually, during the 20th Century the methods which West criticises were much more typical of the amateur fringe than of real historical linguists, although very few amateurs paid enough attention to the statistical issues. Ringe's work is itself innovative in some respects. We are not embarrassed by the fact that we cannot explain ALL the observed patterns of linguistic evolution. We will continue to study these matters, working with our collleagues in human genetics and other disciplines (Ringe has done just this; see Sykes' 1998 book). But we are not called upon to explain alleged relationships for which there is no good evidence.
Rating: 
Summary: Did all of today's languages have a common origin?
Review: When the Tower of Babel was being constructed, so the story goes, God was so incensed at the presumption of humans that he condemned them to speak a multitude of tongues. Ever since then, we've often needed translators to speak to each other, and imperfectly at that. Many are the battles fought because of misunderstandings caused by language differences. Merritt Ruhlen has a different take on the language schism. In his book, called *The Origin of Language*, appropriately enough, he explains the theory that all of today's languages had a common origin, many thousands of years ago, and that linguistic drift accounts for all the differences we see today. The way that he arrives at this point is fascinating. He allows the reader to play along in the linguistics game, providing sample words that work nicely to group languages together in ever larger categories, until they all tie together in one world glotknot. It's all so obvious that you can't believe that anyone could think differently. Of course people think differently. In fact, a lot of linguists (Eric Hamp at the University of Chicago, for one) think differently. Many of them think that Ruhlen and his sometime mentor, Joseph Greenberg, are kind of nuts. For one thing, picking ten words at a time to group languages together is a risky endeavor. Even if Ruhlen believes he picked the ten words at random, you can't get around the fact that Ruhlen *knows* what conclusion he wants to reach, and that could taint the whole process. Anecdotal evidence is a notoriously bad way to come up with general theories. Furthermore, Ruhlen doesn't really go into the quantitative business of assessing how great an effect phonetic drift has in muddying up the genetic relationships between languages, and when he does do it, the mathematics are misleading or simply wrong. Richard Feynman made a big point of telling his students not to use an observation that suggested a theory as confirming evidence of that same theory, a lesson Ruhlen seems to have missed. All of which Ruhlen probably doesn't worry too much about. He and Greenberg are more concerned about getting the big picture together first, and addressing the details later. Nothing wrong with that, but in his effort to gain converts to the "lumpers" faction (as opposed to the "splitters"), he has an alarming tendency to denigrate the work of others. Like the guy who runs his coworkers down behind their backs, he tends paradoxically to lose a lot of support. It's too bad, because linguists often do seem polarized around this question of origin, and the field really could use a solid, balanced book that looks at what new work needs to be done without ignoring or downplaying work that's already been done. This book isn't it, though. The casual reader will learn a lot about the way that lumpers work, because it's more exciting; more inquisitive readers will hanker for something with more study and less politics.
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