Mother Tongue Newsletters 26 (Spring 1996)

7/27/2019 Mother Tongue Newsletters 26 (Spring 1996)

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INTRODUCTION TO MT-26: The Newsletter (Editor th i s issue: H. Fleming)THE HOTTEST AND THE LATEST NEWS.

While the very hot tes t , most recent, news is often fai r ly old forsome scholars close to the act ion, par t icular ly in biogenetics , fo rcolleagues in other discipl ines the news may be absolutely fresh andexci t ing. Indeed for others the news ordinari ly never would havereached them, working in the depths of another f ie ld .The hot tes t , l a te s t news i s not necessarily the most importantnews - - in the wisdom of hindsight it may even be i r re levant to ourcommon enterpr ise . But, since the items are new, they have within themthe potent ia l of establishing something or dis-es tabl ish ing somethingelse . Our t rad i t iona l mode of presentation fea.tures foss i l s f i r s t or a tl eas t archeological developments.SOMEWHAT COOLER NEWS.With some gui l t we include port ions of l a s t year 's hot news,chosen for t he i r newsworthy qua l i t ie s fo r scholars not l ike ly to haveheard i t . Again we remind you tha t cool news may turn out to be ofunreal ized importance. With great grat i tude to Alvah 'Pardner ' Hicks:we are not able to publish large par ts of his heroic effor ts in 1995to abstract the key developments in biogenetics and archeology for us.DELAYED REBUTTALS TO TRASK'S CRITIQUE OF BASQUE contra MACRO-CAUCASICJohn Bengtson and Merri t t Ruhlen have writ ten par t i a l rebut ta l s .We ca l l them par t i a l because both were res t r ic ted to 10 pages. Considering the very ample space Trask had fo r h is cri t ique and rebut ta l , wesee why Bengtson 1 Ruhlen are called par t i a l . The controls on debatedo not mean tha t the Basque business is f inished; ra ther they show thel imits of our space. We include belated Muscovite comments (Nikolaev).->> >>>All below t h i s wil l be in MT-27 (July or August). Space!


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996Reference wil l be made to Alvah Hicks summaries from time to

t ime, labeled (AMH). Given the volume of research being done inarcheology and biogenet ics relevant to our common enterpr ise , we mustbe quite select ive in what we report . Of course, tha t may expose us tothe charge of being biased. We accept tha t charge because we arepragmatic; we t ry to repor t on posi t ive developments but also negativearguments of substance directed agains t some hypothesis . S t i l l we donot think tha t most of the quibbling and niggl ing and doubting - - sansdoute, many scholars do nothing more than tha t - - has much to do withproper fa ls i f ica t ion of hypotheses. So we repor t very l i t t l e of saidbickering. That means we have to ignore 90% of l inguis t ic work. NowTHE HOTTEST & LATEST NEWSMaginot Line Punctured in AffiazonThe f i r s t serious breakdownof the Clovis time l ine occurswithout smashing new dates butra ther via a general probabi l i tytoo strong to be blown away. Atthe same time tha t the Clovishorizon of big game huntersarose in the great p la ins ofNorth America a very di s t inc tforest-adapted small gamehunting horizon existed in themiddle of the Amazon system innorthern Brazi l . Very careful'high t ech ' excavations blockthe usual dismissal of poorlyseparated s t r a t a or geo-factstoo primitive to be cal led humantools . This se t of s i t e s was toowell dug and analyzed to be blown away by scept icism. or soit appears.The major source i s inSCIENCE, vol.272, 19 Apri l /96,p.373-384. A.C.Roosevelt, e t a l"Paleoindian Cave Dwellers inthe Amazon: The Peopling of theAmericas." The abstract says: "APaleoindian campsite has beenuncovered in s t ra t i f i ed pre

cene age contemporary withNorth American Paleoindians.Paintirrgs, t r iangular bifac ia lspear poin ts , and other tools inthe cave document a cul turedi s t inc t from North Americancul tures . Carbonized t ree f ru i t sand wood and faunal remainsreveal a broad-spectrum economyof humid t ropical fores t andr iveraine foraging. The exis t ence of th i s and re la tedcul tures eas t of the Andeschanges understanding of themigrations and ecologicaladaptat ions of early foragers ."Among other things, the spearpoints - - t r i angula r , stemmed &bifac ia l - - hardly look l ikegeo-fac ts .Apropos of the famous NorthAmerican scepticism about preClovis s i t e s , (AMH) repor tsAllan.Bryan (1991) saying t h i s :"In order to cas t doubt on any' p re-Clovis ' repor t , scept icsoperating with the convictiontha t Clovis const i tu tes the onlydemonstrated evidence for Pleistocene humans in the Americas


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s t ra t igraphy, or the report t ha ta r t i fac t s and/or hunan-madefeatures were recovered inproper contexts . In order to puta cloud over any reported ' p re Clovis ' s i t e , scept ics , most ofwhom have never visi ted thes i t e s in question, suggestremote poss ibi l i t i es tha t mightconceivably be t rue , such astha t an object tha t looks l ikean a r t i f ac t might have beenflaked during a flood or anearthquake, or i s the product ofa waterfa l l ; t ha t the radiocarbon samples might have beencontaminated by coal or groundwater containing ancientcarbonates; tha t people mighthave collected old wood to usein the i r f i res ; or tha t thea r t i fac t s might have been in truded from l a te r deposi ts .Although a l l these ' a l ternat ivehypotheses ' might conceivably bet rue , in fac t , the scepticspresent no actual evidence tosupport the i r claim tha t theyare t rue . Nevertheless, thesceptics i ns i s t t ha t as long asa t l eas t one al ternat ive hypothes is has been presented, thenthe original report must be considered as ' equivocal ' . A readerusually in terpre ts th i s s t a te ment to mean t ha t the originalreport i s probably in er ror andtherefore should be dismissed."Bryan also argued t ha t Andeanpeople from 14,000-11,000 BP"appear to have been generalforagers who occasionally tookadvantage of local ly avai lablelarge mammals in addit ion tosmaller mammals." (AMH source i s

Universi ty.Rising Tide Theory Fails Tests .

The multi-regional theoryof anatomically modern humans &the i r world dis tr ibut ion hasbeen batt l ing the 'Eve' or ' outof-Africa ' or 'Noah's Ark'theory for about a decade. Basedon the premise tha t Hoao erectuswas the l a s t global diasporafrom Africa and t ha t regionalvar ie t ies of Hoao sapiens arosefrom regionally-evolved' Ho.aerectus var ie t ies , th is theorydenied an African diaspora ormigration of modern man. One ofi t s key points was tha t moderncrania from China were more l ikeancient local crania than l ikemodern African or European ones.

Biogenetic work has tendedto be c r i t i ca l of multi-regionalproposals. A recent nuclear DNAstudy (from the nuclear autosoaa l genoae) supports the 'Eve 'theory - - or fa i l s to supportthe r is ing t ide and finds tha tthe divers i ty in Africa exceedstha t in the re s t of the world.In th is there i s no support foreas t Asian separateness, sincethe ent i re mass of Eurasians ismore homogeneous than Africa.Thus a blow to mult i -regionalism. (Source: S.A.Tishkoff, e ta l , SCIENCE, vol.271, 8 March1996: 1380-87. "Global Patternsof Linkage Disequilibrium a t theCD4 locus and Modern HumanOrigins".) Their abst ract says:"Haplotypes consist ing ofal le les a t a short tandem repeatpolymorphism (STRP) and an Aludelet ion polymorphism a t the CD4


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996African populations had morehaplotypes and exhibited morevar iabi l i ty in frequencies ofhaplotypes than the NortheastAfrican or non-African populat ions . The Alu delet ion wasnearly always associated with asingle STRP al le le in nonAfrican and Northeast Africanpopulations but was associatedwith a wide range of STRPa l le le s in the sub-Saharan.African populat ions. This globalpattern of haplotype var ia t ionand l inkage disequilibriumsuggests a common and recentAfrican origin for a l l nonAfrican human populations."When did th is biogeneticdiaspora happen? The Tishkoffteam reckoned 100,000 years agoor le ss . Few believe nowadayst ha t such dates are very precisebut the regular clus ter ings ofdates circa 100 KYA i s s t r ik ing .There is an excellentedi tor ia l summary of Tishkoff,e t a l , on page 1364 of the sameissue of SCIENCE by JoshuaFischman. A number of c r i t i c sare quoted: most are not deadlyfocused cr i t iques . They resemblethe Americanist sceptics morethan anything else but JohnClegg of oxford 's team i srunning a t e s t on beta-globingenes which may producedif fe ren t resul t s .. Of more deta i led in teres tto us i s tha t Agau CUshites(Ethiopian Jews) and Somalisseem closes t to the ancest ra lpopulation of the non-African

geography vir tual ly dic ta testha t probabil i ty. The Egyptiansare closer to Middle Easterners(Druze + Yemenite Jews).Also the f i r s t serious genestudy with Caucasic speakers init occurred! The 98 Adyghe folksampled are West Caucasic, mostl ike ly Circassians. Simplementdi t , they are Europeans! St i l l ab i t frus tra t ing because it isnot said whether they ass\Dledthe Adyghe were Europeans orconcluded t ha t it was so.Final ly , it may pot always beuseful to lump Africans togetheras s u c h - - Wolof, Yoruba, Biaka& Mbuti pigmies, Kikuyu & HereroBantu, Khoi & San Bushmen. Theirdifferences are s ignif icant:some of us are in teres ted intha t too!Tishkoff , e t a l , say inthe i r footnote 20 tha t"Information on origins ofpopulation samples, samplingprocedures, and preparation ofDNA samples can be found bychecking from the Kidd Lab HomePage on the World Wide Web a t." Check it out!Multi-regionalism took i t ssecond blow from foss i l -or ientedcomparative study of crania , in cluding faces (natura l ly) . Herewas centered the hard coreresistance to 'Eve' theory andthe anatomists from Weidenreichthru Coon to Aigner to Wolpoff.Marta Lahr 's highly sophis t icated, careful compilation andcomputations concluded t ha t the


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Highly in teres t ing is theadded (almost casual) findingtha t the antique Africans di f ferfrom modern Africans clear ly - to make the point tha t modernEurasians are not derived frommodern Africans but ra ther fromancient ones. We have known th i sin general terms for years now.By analogy native Americansspeak to the same point. Nearlyuniversally derived from Asia inscholarly minds and most oftenseen as examples of archaic orea r l i e r Mongoloids, these nativeAmericans di f fer from moderneas t Asians in the direct ion ofancient eas t Asians. Some biogenetic s tudies find specif icl inks between Amerinds andPacif ic peoples. Perhaps wisely,multi-regional theory has nott r ied to account for the nativeAmericans in any way other thanmigration from Asia.(Source: Marta Mirazon Lahr,1994. "The Multiregional Modelof modern human origins: a reassessment of i t s morphologicalbasis". JOURNAL OF HUMAN EVOLU-TION 26, 23-56. Her abst rac tsays: "The Multiregional Modelof modern human origins predic tstha t a group of features , recognized as characterizing theevolution of regional populat ions from t he i r archaic regiona l ancestors , wil l consistentlyshow higher incidence in thoseregions. This model also predic ts tha t regional morphologica l pat terns are s tab le ,ref lect ing absence of geographica l i so la t ion . In order to t e s tthese assumptions, the incidence

were f ive recent populations anda foss i l sample of anatomicallymodern Homo sapiens from thes i t e s of Afalou and Tafora l t .For th i s , a scoring system ofgrades was developed, so as toallow quant i f ica t ion and s t a t i s t i ca l tes t ing. These analysesshowed f i r s t , tha t although themajority of the features studiedrepresent a regional pat tern ,th i s pattern does not alwayscorrespond to tha t proposed bythe model; and a second, tha tsome of these features occur inother populations with a higherfrequency. F u r t h ~ r m o r e , the lackof specia l resemblance betweenthe North African foss i l s andrecent Africans suggest highlevels of population differenti a t ion . These resul ts indicatetha t these features do notsupport a multiregional or ig in ,giving fur ther support to theexist ing foss i l , chronologicaland genetic evidence for as ingle African origin of a l lmodern humans."In both ar t ic les Dr. Lahruses a new word ( for me), towit, plesiomorph- or near-form.Normally applied to crys ta l swhich look al ike but which havedif fe ren t chemical bases, itrefers to forms which resembleeach other for some reason butwhich do not necessarily havethe same origin or basis . Thusresemblances between some foss i lfaces and some modern ones maybe due to a shared feature ,e .g . , robust ic i ty , which hassimilar effects on other sharedfeatures . I t reminds me ei ther


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996misled multi-regional theor i s t s .

Marta Lahr has another finepaper on the same subject butfocused on Amerinds. Her conclusions are r ich and thoughtst imulat ing. They are in part ,as follows: "1. The la te appearance of regional morphologicalpatterns suggests tha t the l a s tcommon ancestor between Asianpeoples and Amerindians did notconform to the. typ ica l Mongoloiddescript ion. Furthermore, itshould be considered t ha tea r l i e r typological studies didnot observe character origin andpolar i ty when characterizingpopulations, and instead definedsuch terms as Mongoloids on thebasis of the most typical orderived group. Within anevolutionary framework, suchgroups are the most autapomorphic , and therefore the l eas tl ike ly to throw any l i gh t intopopulation re la t ionships .""2. The populations from Tierradel Fuego and Patagonia, inhabi t ing the southern periphery ofthe Amerindian geographicalrange and showing a very robustmorphology t ha t departs from atypical Mongoloid pat tern , maybe seen as a group t ha t hasretained to a greater degree themorphology of the f i r s t inhabi t ants of the continent . Assuch, they provide evidence ofheterogeneity within nat iveAmericans, and suggest t ha tindependent of the timing off i r s t occupation, it i s notpossible to derive a l l the South

Santa) and recent (Ainu, Fuegian/Patagonian) populations andAustralian aborigines should begiven an interpretat ion in termsof di f ferent ia l retention oflevels of robust ic i ty ra therthan in terms of close phylogenetic dis tances ." End of Lahr.Aut-apo-morph is Greek tome, even knowing what the par tsmean (self-awayfrom-form). Alldict ionar ies fa i led me and mostphysical anthropology tex ts .Michael Day's (GUIDE TO FOSSILMAR) rescued us. The word means"A new morphological featureconfined to one group in anevolving l ineage". An example issevere cold adapted faces of socal led ' specia l ized Mongoloids'of the Arctic, only one l ineagewithin a larger se t of Mongoloidl ineages. This a l l makes Coon aguil ty 'autapomorphophile ' . Heh,heh. (My humor i s o f t obscure.)In MT-27 (hopefully) we shal lreturn to Michael Day's marvelous book and see some f ru i t fu ll inks between biological systemat ics & his tor ica l l inguis t ics .SINO-TIBETAN - - > TIBETO-BURHAN !I t is not routine procedurefor a major l inguis t ic phylum tobe dras t ica l ly a l tered in ternally , especial ly i f reconstructionis well under way. S t i l l it doeshappen from time to time; usually to the benef i t of a l l . Suchrevisions are inevi tably controvers ia l - - a t l eas t a t f i r s t - and the heat often begets l ight .So it may be with s-T (Sino


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That was a half century ago.Since then, Paul 's class i f icat ion has become more or lessstandard; others resemble his .Now George van Driem ofLeiden (PhD from Berkeley) haschanged, one must say to ta l lychanged, s-T. Chinese has beende-throned a t l eas t as much asSemitic has been in Afrasian, i fnot more ~ o . George properlygives credi t for in i t i a l s tepstowards re-classi f icat ion toNicholas Cleaveland Bodman. andDavid Bradley. Their schemes andreferences are in van Driem1995. (Source: George van Driem,1995. "Black Mountain Conjugational Morphology, Proto-TibetoBurman Morphosyntax, and theLinguistic Posit ion of Chinese",SENBI ETHNOLOGICAL STUDIES 41:229-259) I t is nearly amazingt ha t in a phylum noted fo r i t stendency towards word i sola t ionsuch a grammar-oriented studyshould overthrow the standardclass if ica t ion!Here i s the basic taxonomyof his new T-B :T-B --> Western + EasternWestern--> Baric, Sal, KamarupanKamarupan -> Bodo-Konyak, Abor-Miri-Dafla, Kuki-Naga, MikirMeithei (India-Burma borders)Eastern--> Northern + SouthernNorthern --> Sino-Bodic or Bodie

+ Himalayan vs Sini t ic orNorthwestern vs NortheasternSouthern --> sw vs SESouthwestern --> Burmic, KarenicBurmic ---> Lola-BurmeseKarenic --> KarenicSoutheastern - -> Qiangic, RungQiangic --> Tangut, Qiang, PrimiRung - -> Nung + rGya-rong + Naxi

languages and, accordingly, lessto Chinese, but also Karenic.This is very excit ing andwe hope to have a MT*Treatmentof th i s whole question, with thelead a r t i c le obviously going toGeorge van Driem's taxonomy.FIRST DOGS. NOW COWS. WHAT NEXT?Some long rangers wereamused a t the dog genealogies inMT-25, but it was relevant . Morel ive ly information concerns theage of African ca t t le . Bos taurus or roughly the long-hornedhumpless kind sp l i t from westEurasian bovines 22,000-27,000years ago! And from Bos indicusor zebu ca t t l e even ear l ie r . Sowhat? yawned a bored grammarianin Ann Arbor? Well, ca t t l e areinvolved deeply in proto-Afras ian , as well as proto-NileSaharan, and a l l debates onAfrican Neolithics. Dates onprobable domestication di f fer ;African Bos taurus circa 9000 BPand European circa 5000 Bp.Knowing t ha t ca t t l e did not comein with the Levantine Neoli thic+ knowing tha t cat t le herdingmight be older than said agricul tura l revolution, we maylearn something else , to put itmildly. (Source: Bradley e t a l ,1996. "Mitochondrial diversi tyand the origins of African andEuropean cat t le" . PROCEEDINGS OFTHE NAtiONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES93: 5131-5135). Thanks also toAlison Brooks for her personalcommunication and Ofer Bar-Yoseffor a copy of the paper.What next? We hear t ha tsomeone has done the same forsheep, not yet published. They


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 19967700 BP or within the range forthe a r r iva l of Levantine crops.For those reckoning t ha t widerdis tr ibut ions mean older th ingswe put some African fac ts on therecord: Widest (global) = l i ce .Next widest = dogs. Nearly aswide = goats + chickens. Lesswide = sheep + donkeys. Almostas wide = ca t t l e . S t i l l lesswide = fa t - ta i led sheep + Zebuca t t l e . Limited dis t r ibu t ions ;=camels+ horses+ pigs (tame).Given the paucity of sheep anddonkeys in the great fores t s , itseems tha t Bantu crossed therain fores t without them, l a te rborrowing them from residentEast Africans. Thence southward.Jus t to rehearse th i s point- - we can see clear ly tha tshoats came long before ca t t l ein the Levant but ca t t l e camelong before shoats in Africa; interms of domestication. I t i svery unlikely tha t the pastoralNeoli thic (so-called) in Africaderives from the Levant. But the

question of farming &crops fromthe Levant remains quite act ive .REINCARNATION AT ISHAHGO.Three decades ago a promising s i te a t Ishango ( lacus t r ineEast Africa) was denigrated when'contaminated she l l s ' ruined i t sdates . Recently, Alison Brookssolved i t s problems, bringingback a splendid s i te with boats ,harpoons, and mathematical bonesa l l dated to 25,000 BP. Our Ms.Brooks was the one th is wri terforgot to c red i t (MT-25) for her

published formally but was l i s t ed in the Abstracts of the ~ -Some ideosyncrasies of shoulderand arm bones are said to bepecul iar to modern Niloticpeoples to the north.(Addit ionalsource: Alison Brooks, personalcommunication, 1996) This isvery in teres t ing because Ishangoipso facto becomes a major candidate for association with oldor proto-Nilo-Saharan, even i fi t s location is too fa r south tobe completely credible. Aproposof Nilo-Saharan, it seems tha tno tooth evulsion is found withthe skeletons . Evulsion of twoor four lower incisors is widelypracticed by Nilo-Saharanpeoples, as circumcision is byAfrasians. Check it out!AFRICA'S VERY DRY SPELLSAnother valuable communica t ion from Alison Brooks, reinforced by several books, istha t there appears to be areason for the dearth or seeming dearth of African s i t e s withevidence of evolving modernpeople of any sor t . In a word ortwo - - bone dry. During the longperiod from 60,000 to 20,000 BPthere were very ar id condit ionsprevail ing over much of Africa -- in the Sahara, 5000km south inthe Kalahari , and even in thecool highlands of East Africa.These ar id periods were long andextreme, even though some smallperiods of moisture occurredtoo. That they had some effec ton migrations and adaptat ions of


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FINNISH ROOTS DIFFER FROM LAPPS?(Source: Thanks to PaulBenedict for sending th i s to me)A cer ta in willingness to dis tance themselves from Lapps hasbeen observed in the Finns. Yetl inguis t s keep lumping them to gether as Finno-Ugrians. Theirmanifest physical differencesare usually explained by cont ac t s with I-E speakers leadingto the obviously European Finns.

DISCOVER magazine in i t sMay 1996 i ssue, under 'Ethnography' ent i t led "Saami I AmNot", reports two biogenetici s t s , Antt i Sajant i la and svanteP&&bo, have found tha t "Finnsare more l ike ly to shareident ical 'mic rosa te l l i te s ' - repet i t ive DNA sequences - - withother Europeans than with theSaami (Lapps). Meanwhile, morethan a th ird of the Saami in thestudy group carr ied three speci f ic genetic 'mot i fs ' tha t werefound in only 1 in 50 Finns andin none of the other Europeansstudied."Instead of making the moreordinary assumption tha t "morerecent European immigrants whomixed with an ancient populaceof eastern origin" , they thinktha t "a be t te r in terpreta t ion ofthe genetic evidence is tha tFinns colonized the land fromthe south some 2,000 to 4,000years ago, adopting a protoSaami tongue in the process."And why would (c iv i l ized)Finns adopt the language ofnomadic herders they had alreadypushed up into the Arctic? Well,"Sajant i la points out tha t theFinns, who now outnumber the

numbers tha t , when the population l a t e r began to expand,resul ted in the spread of rare ,mutant genes. I f th i s bottleneckoccurred during t he i r colonizat ion of eastern Scandinavia,then the Finns might once havel ived as a minority among theSaami.""We know from history tha tthe Finns have been pushing theSaami northward . . so it seemstha t the Finns were more powerfu l . But i f it's t rue tha t theFinns have changed the i r language and obtained it from theSaami, it shows tha t the powergame was not necessari ly sosimple or tha t the Saami werealways the underdogs."Well, Americans alwayscheer for the underdog, but Irea l ly l ike the Finns, so le t uscheer for the t ru th . What is itin th i s matter? From over herethe bias of the two Finns isbreath-taking, while t he i r moralsupport of the Saami i s laudable.The notion tha t the Finnsare rea l ly Europeans but theSaami are not is quaint . Bodiesare more basic than languages?This kind of assumption used toplague Omotic s tudies too.There, since so many Somoticspeakers look more l ike cent ralAfricans than most Ethiopiansdo, European scholars were wontto believe tha t Somotic was

N i l o ~ S a h a r a n or such but surelynot Afrasian. We got the sameres is tance about Chadic. Or howto explain the t a l l handsome'Hamitic ' Fulani speaking aNiger-Congo language.Are north Russia and


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996and Russians for many centuries?Is much of southwestern Finlandnot s t i l l fu l l of swedes? Why dowe need a migration from thesouth anyway? Twas gene flow,mes amis! Sexual folk contact .Is Suomi (Finland) cognatewith Saami (Lapp)? A spuriouscognate?Methinks biogenet ic is ts ares tar t ing to use 'bot t leneck ' asa deus ex machina-, - as a. conven- ien t device to explain thingsthey cannot explain in normalterms. Shouldn' t there be somerules for invoking th is businessof bottlenecks?USA MARCHES INTO LA LA LAND.Onward, Christ ian soldiers!Down with humanists & down withBible-doubting science! Well, itis hot news, and for most of us,deplorable news tha t one giantTV network (NBC) showed a program 'The Mysterious origins ofMan' on 'prime t ime' (when thela rges t audience i s watching)which s tarred Charlton Heston, apatr iarchal f igure who onceplayed Moses in a movie. Whydeplorable? Because the programargued ser iously t ha t there washard evidence t ha t mankind hadco-existed 200 ya with dinosaurs; they even showed giantfootprints purportedly fromthese very very old humans. Theyalso claimed t ha t the los t c i tyof Atlantis was in Antarcticaand t ha t technologicallyadvanced men existed beforehistory began. Dio mio!

logy community was also reportedto be.The amusing aspects of thes i tuat ion disappeared ten weeksl a te r when pol ls te rs measuringAmerican sc ient i f ic knowledge ingeneral found tha t a majority ofadul t Americans believed t ha tmankind had l ived with the dinosaurs . In fac t NBC cannot claima l l the credi t for tha t becauseHollywood has been showing socalled 'B ' movies for scores ofyears now which feature somepoor explorers having to bat t lehorrifying ersatz dinosaurs. Nodoubt Japanese colleagues wil lthink of Godzila-san.VICTOR MAIR'S SUPERB CONFERENCEA most valuable example ofone ASLIP ideal , mutually stimulat ing in terdiscipl inary work,was shown to what I want to ca l lperfect ion in Philadelphia inApril . .The convening of expertson a l l aspects of the prehistoryand ethnology of East Turkestan(Sinkiang) was managed by Victorand his friendly team of Pennsylvanians.A fa i r number of longrangers were there , and it was apleasure to meet some of them,yet the conference was a shortrange one. Rather than focusingon a long range topic , we a l lwere bound by the time l imitsse t by Indo-European and thearcheology of Sinkiang - - 6 kya.Malheureusement, there are toomany excel lent papers to reporton, not even the abst racts which


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semi-debate between Renfrew andMallory over I-E dates and home-lands. Sophisticated but amiableand a t r ea t to the audience, thepair taught us much prehis tory .Their ta lks were separate , notin a formal debate format, yeteach disputed the other ' s pastcommentary on the questions. Noclear victor (save Mair!) buteach scored some heavy points .JPM scored against CR's chronology; CR scored against JPM &Anthony re horses . Great debate!Here are other key points:(1) Tongmao Zhao (NIH) showedt ha t Uighur Turks, now dominantpeople in Sinkiang, were 55%European in blood/serologicalgroups. Kazakh were 35%, Hui 14%and Dongxiang 26%. Someonepointed out tha t such was a l -ready obvious in Uighur faces.We a l l ref lected on th i s' s imple ' t ru th .(2) Paolo Francalacci (Sassari)tes ted DNA from 'Tocharian'mummies, got enough mtDNA tot e l l something, and concludedtha t the mummies were certa inlyEuropeans, adding tha t Euroswere very homogeneous actuallybut included Turks and Lebanese.[Probably Jews too-HF](3) Chinese scholar, AN Zhimin,concluded tha t the Bronze Agecame to North China via theTocharians; th is s ta r t led us.(4) Donald Ringe talked abouthis new 'computational cladis t -i c s ' which frankly mystif iedmost l i s teners . He also made astatement which caused me todoubt h is usefulness to prehistor ians . A rough quote is :"What about a l l is

Indo-Hit t i te to be valid, i . e . ,Hit t i te is the f i r s t sp l i t offor coordinate to the res t of IE.(5) Eric Hamp was a t rad i t iona lmethodological opposite to Ringebut also, unbelievably, foundIndo-Hit t i te to be val id . s tu r t -evant would have loved th i s .Hamp also produced a l e i t motiffor his paradigm. Again a roughquote: "Our job is to produce anabsolutely spotless reconstruct ion of proto-Indo-European;nothing else real ly matters."Does tha t sound l ike the voiceof Nee-Grammarians in the 20thcentury? Nothing in th is abouttaxonomy or preh1story. Andsince the perfec t reconstruct ion is forever eluding ourgrasp, h is brand of l inguis t icslooks more and more l ike theArthurian pursuit of The HolyGrai l . Anyone for Camelot?(6) Michael Puet (Harvard, EastAsian Studies) gave a paper fu l lof wisdom in which he advisedthe 'New Archeologists ' or the'Process Archeologists ' to admitsome diffusion sometimes inthe i r explanations. Local process does not always explainth ings , he sa id . (We hope to getmore of his paper another t ime.)During questions, Colin Renfrewsupported Puet 's main argument.Michael had writ ten h ispaper before a big discussion ofBronze Age metallurgy in whichthe amazingly rapid spread oftha t technology from the Atlant i c to the Pacif ic ( in the' c iv i l i zed ' world) begged forexplanation. During our ta lks , Iwas very surprised to be twiceattacked by i r r i ta ted colleagues


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996problems in it the t rad i t iona ldichotomy of invention versusdiffusion remains val id . Oddlyenough, his tor ica l l inguis t icsi s not confused a t a l l on th i spoint ; nor i s biogenetics orpaleoanthropology. But archeology has allowed i t s children tobelieve tha t only inventioncounts, for i sn ' t tha t what' p rocess ' archeology i s a l labout? (Plus high tech. digs)(7) While no s ingle paper provedtha t the mummies spoke Tocharianor whatever, and while a greatdeal of evidence for an Iranianpresence in Sinkiang surfaced,s t i l l we general ly reached aconsensus - - the i n i t i a l conclusion tha t the mummies spokeTocharian was probably t rue . Andthese Tochari had come from thewest off the great steppes, hadcome from PIE, had great ly in f luenced ancient Turkic folk,l iving on in the modern Uighurs.>> SOMEWHAT COOLER NEWS


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archeological record, for thein tent ional spread of humansfurther across the ocean.""The ancestors of Polynesians and the Lapita complex a t t r ibuted to them appear to be thef i r s t human culture to develop asystem of navigation and two-waysa i l ing suff ic ien t to ensuresuccessful deep-water passageover thousands of miles. Some ofthese passages may have been theresul t of dr i f t voyages, butcomputer simulation (Irwin 1992).and direc t experimentation haverefuted the l ikelihood tha tsett lement was primari ly acci dental (Finney e t a l , 1989)""Their presumed route, basedon archeological and l inguist icevidence, appears to be fromMongoloid centers in East Asiasouth into Australo-Melanesia,then eas t across the Pacif ic .""Lapita-associated skeletonsfrom Mussau and Fi j i are s imi larto Polynesians in nonmetrict r a i t s and are s imi lar to Melanesians in skele ta l dimensions(Kirch e t a l , 1989; Pietrusewsky1989). Although direc t gene flowis a poss ib i l i ty , the Lapitacultura l complex could have beenshared without mate exchange.The expansion of the Lapitapeople from the Bismarck Archipelago to western Polynesia isarcheological ly instantaneous(Kirch and Hunt 1988).""Finally, the SouthAmerican sweet potato i s foundthroughout Polynesia, ra is ingthe question of two-way voyagingfrom Polynesia or d r i f t voyagingfrom the west coast of South

eastern Polynesia & the Americas.Linkage of the DRB1*1,5,0,2and DRB5*0,1,0,1 al le les (Gao &Sarjeantson 1991) which are f ixed in Papua New Guinea Highlanders and Polynesians but are absent in Chinese, suggests a NewGuinea origin of Polynesiangroup I I ." (End of Lum e t a l &AHM report)Ethnologically primitive,but in teres t ing. St i l l Oceanianprehis tor ic studies have nowreached a level above th i s paperand tha t includes much agreement on Austronesian languagegroups and t he i r movements. Theclear in terac t ion with NAN orNon-Austronesian people alongthe north New Guinea coast +Melanesian is lands should not bea mystery anymore and th iss ignif icant t ruth should not beburied under 'Melanesian' a termwhich i s now properly equivocal.See below where the term i sextended to native Australians.MORE POLYNESIAN TIES WESTWARD(AMH) reports on Melton e ta l , 1995. "Polynesian GeneticAffini t ies with Southeast AsianPopulations as Identif ied bymtDNA Analysis". AH.J.HUM.GENET.57:404-409. (with M. Stoneking)(AMH)'s summary: "This 9-bp delet ion i s largely absent in Melanesian populations - - fo rexample, aboriginal groups ofAustralia and highland Papua NewGuinea (PNG) - - while it i spresent in coastal populationsof PNG t ha t are thought to bemore recent arr iva ls to theisland (Hertzberg e t a l 1989;


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996ians ."

" I t i s in teres t ing tha t thes ix southern Indians with the9-bp dele t ion found in th i sstudy share t he i r mtDNA typesmost closely with those fromChina and Borneo, suggestingt ha t migration from theseregions west to India and SriLanka may be a poss ib i l i ty .""We observed tha t the Poly-.nesian mo.tif, t h i s t r io of nucleot ide changes in the controlregion a t p o s i t i o n ~ 16217,16247, and 16261 (CGT), occurredexclusively on the background ofthe 9-bp dele t ion. This motif,seen in 79.2% of Samoans and73.9% of coasta l Papua New

Guineans, was observed in 20% ofeas t Indonesians with the 9-bpdele t ion. These east Indonesianswere from the islands of Alor,Flores , Hir i , Ternate, andTimor. Remarkably, it was notobserved elsewhere in SoutheastAsia ( including Borneo and Javain Indonesia) , except in 1 of 81Malays and probably 1 of 176Fil ipinos ." (End of Melton e ta ! )When wil l biogenet ic is t spay some at tent ion to taxonomiesother than t he i r own? Three ofthe eas t Indonesian is lands haveIndo-Pacif ic languages on them(Timor, Alor, Ternate) and theother two are in the same area.That these should be connectedto coas ta l New Guinea and thePolynesian route eastward i s tobe expected. Melton e t a l havefound a specia l area l genetict r a i t , probably an i n i t i a l

ancestra l Oceanic branch of theEastern Malaya-Polynesian subphylum of Austronesian. one alsowonders when and what wil l befound when mtDNA i s taken fromAndamanese and not-so-old foss i lTasmanians.We also record tha t (AMH)believes the 9-bp deletion beganamong native Americans who boreit to Polynesia and beyond.MAYBE NOT OUT OF AFRICA?(AMH) reports L.B.Jorde e ta l , 1995. "Origips and Aff in i t -t i e s of Modern Humans: A Comparison of Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genetic Data". AM.J.HUMANGENETICS 57: 523-528. (includesT.Jenkins, AR Rogers & 7 others)This i s not simply quibbling buthas substance. (AMH) summarizes:"An evolutionary t ree based onmtDNA displays deep Africanbranches, indicating greatergenetic divers i ty for Africanpopulations. This f inding, whichi s consis tent with previousmtDNA analyses, has been in ter -preted as evidence for an African origin of modern humans.Both se ts of nuclear polymorphisms, as well as a th ird se t oft r inucleot ide polymorphisms, arehighly consis tent with one another but fa i l to show deepbranches for African populat ionsThese resu l ts , which representthe f i r s t direc t comparison ofmtDNA and nuclear genetic datain major cont inental populations, undermine the geneticevidence for an African origin


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for an African origin of modernhumans [references deleted -HF].The non-African populations havecomparatively shor t branch lengths and the nodes separat ingthese populations are very closeto one other...."The HVS-2 data analyzed hereshow a similar departure fromneutra l i ty in Asians and Europeans, although it is not s ta t i s t ical ly s ignif icant . These departures may r e f l ec t the act ion ofnatural select ion, or they couldbe the resu l ts of past population expansions (Rogers & Harpending 1992). Since there is norecombination in the mitochondr i a l genome, natural select ionon a coding gene wil l exer t asubstant ia l genetic 'h i tchhiking ' effec t , even on polymorphisms in the non-coding D loop.I t i s thus possible t ha t thedifferences seen here in mtDNAand nuclear DNA may be producedby natural select ion ra ther thanpopulation his tory.""Increased mtDNA divers i tyin Africans has been a l inchpinof the argument tha t modernhumans originated in Africa andthen replaced exist ing archaicpopulations on other cont inents .Proponents of t h i s view arguetha t since Africa is more diverse genetical ly, i t s populationmust be older (Stoneking 1993).However, divers i ty can bestrongly affected by events in apopulation 's his tory , such asthe t iming of major bott lenecks,and therefore does not necessari ly r e f l ec t a population 's age(Rogers & Jorde 1995). our f ind

ement hypothesis. However, theyweaken the genetic evidence ini t s favor." (End of Jorde e ta l )In another summary (AMH)gives th i s l ive ly & quotablethought: "Eve is from Kansas!"The reader i s referred backto Tishkoff e t al (above t ) whobasical ly refute or at leas trebut Jorde e t a l .THE PARAMETERS OF CAUCASOIDS(AMH) reports AntonioTorroni e t al ( incl DC Wallace),1994. "mtDNA and the Origin ofCaucasians: Ident i f icat ion ofAncient Caucasian-specific Haplogroups, One of Which is Proneto a Recurrent Somatic Duplicat ion in the D-Loop Region".AH.J.HPM.GENETICS 55: 760-776."Consequently, though humanevolution is br ie f , a large number of mtDNA variants dis t inguish the major rac ia l groups,yielding powerful genetic markers for inferr ing the ethnicbackground of human subjects .For ins tance, 70%-100% of themtDNAs from sub-Saharan Africanpopulations belong to an mtDNAgroup defined by a Hpai s i te a tnucleotide pai r (np) 3592 . . ,which is found a t very lowfrequencies outside Africa andonly in Caucasian populationstha t h is to r ica l ly have admixedwith Africans . . Approximately60% of Asian Mongoloid mtDNAshave an Alui s i te a t np 10397 .. which is absent in Africansand Europeans.""Parsimony analysis suggesttha t a l l Caucasian mtDNAs aregrouped into two major l ineages


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996large majori ty of the haplotypeslacking the 10394 Ddei s i t e . The10394 Ddei s i te i s found in26.3% of the Caucasian mtDNAs, alower frequency than e i ther the66% observed in Asians . . orthe 91% observed in sub-SaharanAfricans . . This polymorphismi s probably very ancient, s inceit also subdivides Mongoloid .and African phylogenies into twomajor l ineages.""All Native American mtDNAsbelong to one of only fourhaplogroups defined by a Haeiiis i t e a t np 663, a 9-bp delet ionin the COIItRHALYs intergenicregion, an Alui s i t e a t np 13262or the absence ofan Alui s i t e a tnp 5176 . . These Native American mutations and the associatedhaplotypes have never been observed in Africans and Caucasians but are found in northeastern Asia and Siberia , from whichthe ances t ra l Native Americansderived ."Our survey revealed tha t64% of European mtDNAs fe l l intofour Haplogroups: H-K. Sincethese haplogroups are characterized by Caucasian-specif ic mutat ions , they probably originateda f te r ancestral Caucasians separated from the ancestors ofmodern Asians and Africans.Hence the ages of these haplogroups could provide lower andupper l imits to the age ofmodern Europeans." (End of Torrani e t a l ) . [Note: a l l references are deleted. See the source]

from the Late Middle Eocene ofShanxi Province, China".SCIENCE 272: 83-85.) Theirabstract reads:"The complete lower denti t ion ofa new species of the basalanthropoid genus Eosimias showsa combination of primitive andderived t r a i t s unknown in otherl iving or foss i l primates.Although cer ta in dental t r a i t sare decidedly-more.primtive inEosimias than in other basalanthropoids, numerous derivedaspects of jaw and dentalmorphology support the anthropoid af f in i t i es of Eosimiidae.Eosimiids document an earlys t ructural phase of the evolut ion of higher primates. Phylogenies t ha t derive early anthropoids from c e r c ~ m o n i i n e adapiforms are inconsistent witheosimiid anatomy. Because earlyfoss i l anthropoids are knownfrom both Asia and Africa, thefoss i l record i s presently in suf f ic ien t to specify the cont i nent on which th is clade originated." [End of Abstract]NEW AQSTBALOPITHECUS FROM CHADThe range and number ofspecies of Australopithecus wasincreased considerably by thediscovery of a jaw in Chad. Thejaw was found l a s t year by Dr.Michel Brunet (U/Poitiers) incentral Chad Republic and namedAustralopithecus bahrelghazaliaf te r the province in Chad. Thename i s somewhat confusing,since the main r iver system -


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evolved human t r a i t of molarswith the three-root tee th typica l of chimpanzees and otherapes."David Pilbeam added tha tth is one also had fa ir-s izedcanines. And tha t i t s presencein Chad showed a character is t icof normal wide-ranging animals,speciat ion in a large region. Noone mentioned any pecul iart r a i t s t ha t would suggest tha tth is was close to the l ine tha tdeveloped Ho.a habi l i s and us .(Sources: THE BOSTON GLOBE, May21, 1996, p.2. And David Pilbeampersonal communication. He alsohad remarks in NATURE in January.THE EMERGING SYNTHESIS: WE EBREDShucks, we got caught by ahis tor ian of science! I t seems,says Roger Wescott, tha t ourfe l ic i tous term 'emerging synthes is ' is not so new and avantgarde a f te r a l l . We borrowed itfrom Colin Renfrew who may havehad a disclaimer about i t s history in h is ar t ic le . In any casethe term was used in the 1940sby theoris ts of the new synthetic theory of evolution. I t i snot quite appropriate for us touse because of the heavy f re ightof prior meaning attached to i t .Our 'emerging synthesis ' meansonly the col laborat ion o ~ threediscipl ines pursuing a jo in tgoal .

We therefore abandon thelabel 'emerging synthesis ' r igh tnow. Forthwith. While we hopeour members wil l suggest a termof our own to replace i t , wepropose a new label - - jus t for

origins study. We added on Greek'metra ' (womb) (Latin 'matrix ')jus t to see i f anybody salutesi t .FURIOUS TALK ON THE INTERNETWe do not intend ever tot ry summarizing events on theever-expanding electronicavenues of communication. Muchof it i s a waste of time. Someof the problems were reviewed byJoe Pia years before ' e -mai l ' &'Web s i t e s ' became buzz wordsand the t e r r ib le socia l pressure to ' ge t with it' becameapparent. More than half of ourmembers did re jec t , and s t i l lre jec t , the opportunity to chatelect ronical ly with half theworld.But we do have a place onWWWeb where people can read thenewsletter and we have an e-mailaddress for those who wish towrite to us. All th is courtesyof two nice young women who didpity the fa ther ' s backwardness.Yet some members have beenalarmed by recent In ternetskirmishs among l inguis ts . Quitebi t t e r exchanges, eventuallybecome hateful in one case, havecaused some sectors to shut downand cr ies of protes t from otherl inguis ts to be ' heard ' .Some long rangers were engaged: Allan Boahard was heavily attacked by Alexis M-R, whileLV Hayes had a long poli te exchange with Sasha Vovin over thevalidi ty of Paul Benedict 'sAustro-Thai and other matters .Patr ick Ryan took on Alexis andLarry Trask in a debate t ha tbecame so furious tha t Patrick


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996sacred Comparative Method bya l l . I t i s used l ike a club byconservat ives to beat longrangers into l ine and used l ikea shield by long rangers to showtha t they real ly are orthodoxand not wild radicals . C.M.? I tgoes unquestioned, nicht wahr?So e i ther there are a lo t oftimorous long rangers who fearsaying unorthodox things or theyrea l ly bel ieve themselves tha ta l l questions re la te to recons t ruct ion and therefore thesacred C.M., ra ther than taxonomy, and cannot be conceived inany manner other than via IndoEuropean orthodoxy. In otherwords by people who haven ' t doneany s ign i f ican t taxonomy in manymany moons. Why don ' t they, hmm?We have been nat ter ing onabout these issues for almost adecade now but apparently fewlong rangers, so-cal led, haveheard what the core long rangershave sa id . So I wil l repeat jus tone key point . Indo-baloney wil lnever ever get us back to MotherTongue, so there i s no point inworshipping i t . I f you neverwant to transcend 10,000 years,then s t ick with Indo-baloney. I fyou want to get back to MotherTongue, then you ought to followthe taxonomy f i r s t scholars .Period.Wait! one may say. Whatabout Nostrat ic? I t i s probablya t l eas t 20 kya and yet was madeby Indo-baloney devotees, e .g . ,Muscovites + Bombard. Surely iti s looking very strong? Yes, it

applied the Comparative Methodsuccessfully in searching foraddit ional cognates. However, iti s unlikely tha t the originalse ts of etymologies were obtained by reconstruction-drivenapproaches; ra ther much simplercomparisons of words and grammemes found in a number oflanguages gave bir th to theetymologies to which the C.M.could then be applied. One mustnot entire ly bel ieve the Nostrat i c i s t s in t he i r protesta t ionsof orthodoxy. Those are the i rshields!Moreover in some etymologies C.M. reconstruction methodslead to dis tor t ions in theetymologies: (1) based on faul tyor premature proto-forms and (2)excessive re l iance on happenstance his tor ica l work, e .g . ,the grossly excessive use ofSemitic forms in Afrasian to theneglect of most of Afrasian.Even though (1) i s a greaterproblem in Dene-Caucasic thanNostra t ic , s t i l l many s tarredforms in etymologies are qui tequestionable ( to be pol i te ) .I t i s also necessary topoint out again tha t the socal led rigorous sound laws areno be t te r than the etymologiesupon which they are based. Asthey say, "garbage in , garbageout". There i s also the usuall i ngu i s t ' s cry for greater andgreater precis ion, r igor , e tc .These cr ies seem to be par t ofthe anal i ty res ident in the


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DELAYED REBUTTALS TO TRASK'S CRITIQUE OF BASQUE contra MACRO-CAUCASICPreliminary Note: We maintain our use of Caucasic as a word for thegreat phylum of languages spoken north of Kartvelian in the Caucasus.There i s no other term tha t does not get confused with 'Caucasian' asused in biogenetics for both 'white people' in general and peoples ofthe Caucasus in par t icu la r ; and the same goes for newspapers & novels.The Russian spec ia l i s t s on the Caucasus ought not dicta te such a termas Caucasian to English, even i f they do know more about the caucasus.Their own Russian word i s more l ike caucasic!

For the record: the short statements which follow below cannot beunderstood without reference to ~ : THE JOURNAL, Dec.1995, becausethe ent i re cr i t ique of Basque as a Macro-Caucasic language i s foundthere , including John Bengtson's f i r s t reply to Trask, Merri t t Ruhlenthe same, and Larry Trask's long rebut ta l to them and others . However,the l e t t e r from Sergei Nikolaev i s his f i r s t comment on Trask'scr i t ique and also the only response yet forthcoming from the Muscovi t e s . We wish to s t ress tha t Nikolaev 's l e t t e r was writ ten in Russian,thus enabling him to express himself most ful ly in his native codewithout the t roubles given by an al ien one. We wish to thank MarySibbalds (Rockport, MA), a re t i red US Foreign Service person, andMerr i t t Ruhlen, well-known to a l l , for t he i r hard work in t ransla t ingNikolaev 's l e t t e r . I t was not thankless work because we are thankingthem now. But it was unpaid! I f Nikolaev 's comments seem a ~ i t murkya t t imes in English, it was also the case in the or ig ina l Russian, saythe t rans la tors . We note also tha t S.N. 's l e t t e r took 3 months toreach us! Transla tors ' footnotes mostly are omitted, save a few.Moscow, 2 September 1995Dear Hal!Today I received your ' c i rcular l e t t e r ' regarding discussions betweenBengtson and Trask, and decided (despite some reluctance, the reasonfor which i s explained below) to say a few words about the topic ,which in and of i t s e l f i s important (especia l ly in perspect ive) butwhich for now needs nursemaids more than bodyguards.The fact i s tha t l inguis t ic comparison (when a l inguis t ic re la t ionshipi s assumed) i s comprised of two factors 1 1) claim to discovery: ademonstration of general consensus for form's sake which must win overthe sc ient i f ic public to the problem proposed (I 'm sure the re ' s goldh e r e - l e t ' s dig!) : 2) evidence of the relat ionship by means ofclass ica l appl icat ion ( in the sense of being tes ted by time andbrains) as opposed to his tor ica l procedures which necessarily demandcomparison by means of phased-in reconstructions (as would be the case


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996Caucasic": This i s my occasional facetious term, so to speak, inmemory of the Swadesh's bizarre "Dene-Finnish" theory, but it caughtShevoroshkin's fancy; I prefer the term "Sino-caucasic". Thus:

1. Suff ic ient ver i f iab le North Caucasic Material - the same withEastern caucasic, Western caucasic = the Abkhazian-Adygei language i scompletely destroyed, and i f it i s possible to share with them, thenonly sign 2 t he i r data to the Eastern Caucasic. There i s a great dealof material on the North Caucasic; phonetically it i s archaic, recons t ruct ion i s in g e n e r a ~ not bad (although I , l ike an ' anc ient ' , see init a pi le of ra i s ins ) as far as su i t ab i l i t y for externa l comparison i sconcerned. But of course there is. no benefi t from '"exclusive ' ' comparison of such languages as Abkhaz/Adygei (especia l ly without the recons t ruct ion of t he i r phrases 3 ) , with the languages of the Basque, Burushaski , Athapaskan, Etruscan, and other i sola ted peoples ? whatevert he i r re la t ionship with Caucasic languages. Slava Chirikba in his time simply compared head on the nat ive Abkhazlanguage (Abkhaz-Adygei reconstruction did not exis t ) with the Basquewhich was very l i t t l e known to him; the re su l t was nonsense. The eldergeneration were real ly taken with him (Chirikba), natural ly having inmind general Caucasic "phonics" and reconstruction. I have no doubttha t something exis t s in common (most l ikely a kinship) between theBasque and Sino-caucasic languages, but to determine the place ofBasque within Sino-caucasic (or possibly "para-Sino-Caucasic") familyi s simply impossible and discussions (based) on a contemporary leve lof knowledge i s to ta l ly absurd: what i f we were to begin to strugglewith the hierarchical re la t ions within the Nostrat ic family, when a l ltha t remained were languages of the Finno-Ugric family, Semitic,French Creole on some a to l l , Korean and Somali? This also appliesequal ly to a Sino-Caucasic-Burushaski comparison: yes, the ci tedmaterial most probably speaks in favor of a genetic re la t ionship(dis tant? - - we cannot even measure the distance: there are no etymologies, no glot tochronology!) , but the t rue evidence to add. Burushaskidi rec t ly into t h i s macrofamily i s lacking and, I fear , for the timebeing wil l remain so .Where even i s the reconstruction of Basque? ( there are Basquedia lec ts , as well as early Latin loans, and in the Ibero-Romance

2 "assign" would make more sense but it i s not a meaning ofthe word as fa r as I know. Transla tor 's note.


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languages there are many old borrowings from Basque and other ext inct"Iberian" languages - - it is possible , you see, to "archaicize" theBasque mater ia l ! ) . I t seems to me tha t the relat ionship of Basque toSino-Caucasic (or i t s admission into th i s macrofamily) wil l , a l l thesame, one day be possible to prove.

2. The Sino-Tibetan material i s vast (but on the whole lessarchaic than Caucasic, although who knows it a l l? ) . To prove a SinoCaucasic re la t ionship one must be fu l ly prepared since there are suchexcel lent "uni ts of comparison" as Staros t in ' s reconstruction of Old(Proto-) .Chinese, writ ten Tibetan, quite archaic "mountain " languagesof the Burmese-Lolo group, e tc . Unfortunately, Ilya Peyros andStarost in (and not jus t for these reasons) did not have the time tocomplete t he i r Sina-Tibetan.reconstruction, but even t ha t which iscompleted i s suf f ic ient for external comparison. The hypothesis of are la t ionship between the North Caucasic and Sino-Tibetan families wasproved on the basis of enormous materia ls , including the establishmentand publicat ion of regular sound correspondences.

3. Staros t in ' s Yeniseian reconstruction is completely correct ,even though many data are lacking. For a l l tha t the Sino-YeniseianCaucasic comparison of s taros t in seems to me aethodologically andfactual ly irreproachable (I 'm not ta lking about a few debatable lexica l and phonological correspondences and the i r in terpre ta t ion) .

4. The reconstruction of Proto-Na-Dene (whether Haida i s insideor beside it I don ' t know - - jus t a month ago I received DimyLeshchiner 's dict ionary of th i s language) i s not nearly a t the samelevel: I did what I could on the basis of scanty materials, but sincethen I have not returned to i t : I didn ' t have the time because of mymain concerns - - Indo-European, especial ly accentology, sometimesCaucasic, and my Amerindian studies - - a l l in a l l Proto-Na-Dene isjus t a sc ient i f ic hobby or re laxat ion. In sp i te of a l l th is the Denecaucasic relat ionship i s obvious to me. I t has been shown("announced") ra ther than proved, although I have no doubts t ha t Na-Dene is to be included in the Sino- ("Dene-") caucasic macrofamily.The Sino-caucasic re la t ionship i s already for a long t i ae not jus t anhypothesis: a l l the objections come e i ther from the "principles" ofthe scept ics , or - - and th is is the majority - - from not having accessto the primary data on the languages of the peoples. I t is for th isreason t ha t Starostin and I brought out our COMPABATIVE DICTIONARY OFNORTH CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES in English, so tha t we can play th is gamewith our cards on the table , face up. However, the "Dene-Caucasic"re la t ionship i s not proved, but an hypothesis. Whether I wil l proveth i s hypothesis, or someone e lse , it wil l be done in t ime, but for the


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996So consul tat ion regarding "accidents" with Bengtson and Trask, unfortunately i s doubtful: Some say the pat ient l ives , others tha t he i sdead, but they can ' t prove it to each other because they don ' t see thepat ients a t a l l . To show the re la t ionship (a t t rac t ive ly enough) ispossible for many dis tan t languages: for Algonquin (and other nativeAmerican languages) with Chukchi-Kamchatkan and Nivx [Gilyak -HF](which we did with Oleg Mudrak), for Amerind, for many African (Greenberg) but for proof one needs to work: col lec t suff ic ien t relat ivematerial (not ten but One hundred comparisons), to establ ish regularconformity, 6 e tc . Unfortunately - - alas! Both Bengtson's resu l ts andChirikba's resul ts ( l ike our comparison done with Mudrak and to alarge extent my "Dene-Caucasic") a l l are only in teres t ing claims. WhenI recorqed Russian dia lec t material in one vi l lage a t an old woman'shome, she kept asking me "why do you need th is - - for pract ical use 7or to break a head? I f it was for use, it was fine with her - - with mealso . But to break a head over dozens of resemblances?? half of whichclear ly play the ro le of "f i l l e r " i s of course in teres t ing but ofdoubtful promise in the long run and even unprofessional.Regards! /pr ive t / ! Sergei Nikolaev[ I f one has data to send Sergei , contact Bernhard,Bengtson, Ruhlen or Shevoroshkin to get Staros t in ' s e-mailaddress= quick access to Nikolaev. Go send the s tuf f ! ]

REPLY to TRASKby Merri t t Ruhlen,Palo Alto, CAIn my original cr i t ique of Trask's "demolition" of Dene-caucasian Imade a few simple points tha t seemed to me to ca l l into serious question Trask's conclusion t ha t Basque i s an i so la te - - a language without percept ible re la t ives . F i rs t , Trask's capricious and arbi trarydecisions to ignore evidence from two of Dene-caucasian's six branches- - sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene - - rendered his paper not an appraisal ofDene-Caucasian, as the t i t l e of his paper seemed to promise, butsimply a judgment of the evidence connecting Basque with three otherfamilies - - Caucasian, Burushaski, and Yeniseian. Second, in somecases the evidence from one of the two omitted branches i s strongly

6 Editor 's note: the thought occurs tha t real long rangers,i . e . , those apt to make taxonomic advances, habitual ly s i f t throughvery large amounts of data. Put another way, it seems t ha t in th is


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supportive of an etymology (e .g . , Basque odol 'b lood ' and Proto-Athabaskan dehl 8 'b lood ' , and possibly Burushaski del ' o i l , contents of anegg ' ) . Third, even i f one were to eliminate a l l the Basque evidence towhich Trask objects - - which would not be a wise decision, as Bengtsonhas shown - - there i s s t i l l abundant evidence connecting Basque withthese part icular families ra ther than with others . Fourth, i f Basquei s not more closely re la ted to the other members of Dene-caucasian,then one should be able to come up with equal evidence for the AustroBasque hypothesis, which would connect Basque with Australian, Khoisan, Gilyak, Algonquian, and Quechuan. I t i s in teres t ing to see howTrask addresses each of these cr i t ic isms - - or ra ther fa i l s to addressthem.

(1) Despite the inaccurate t i t l e of his paper, Trask now pleadsex post facto. that . he ran out of. space for Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene!Jus t poor planning, I guess, but it did enta i l ignoring the data onthese two families t ha t were contained in the very papers he wascr i t i c i z ing .(2) Furthermore, according to Trask, these addit ional familiescannot save etymologies t ha t have already been dismissed on othergrounds. But what about Proto-Athabaskan *dehl 'blood'? For Trask,th is resemblance between Basque and Athabaskan i s jus t an accidentalcoincidence, of the kind one supposedly finds between any two languages. So too apparently would be the s imilar i ty between Basque gose'hungry' , Proto-caucasian *ggasi10 ' hunger ' , Hruso (Tibeto-Burman)

k ~ s s i 'hungry' , and Galice (Athabaskan) gas 'become hungry' . So toothe fact t ha t Basque jus t happens to share the Dene-caucasian in terr ogative pronouns in N and s. And so on. The question Trask never asksis why a l l of these "accide-ntal" resemblances constantly fa l l amongthe same se t of famil ies, ra ther than a dif fe ren t se t of families .(3) With regard to the 68 etymologies tha t I ci ted as survivingTrask 's demolition, Trask i s s i l en t . No doubt they are a l l jus taccidents . In fac t it i s clear tha t any proposed Basque comparisontha t cannot be dismissed on other grounds wil l be eliminated by appealto accidental resemblance. In a bizarre twis t on normal comparativel inguis t ics , accidental resemblance, ra ther than evolution from acommon source, i s taken as the defaul t explanation, a pract ice tha thas been aptly r idiculed by Vince Sarich (1994).

8 [hl] i s the la te ra l f r ica t ive , writ ten as something close to[ l ] in the original , i . e . , an [1] with a be l t on.9 Editor 's note: although it was unprecedented in mostjournals , MT-1 placed no l imi ts on the s ize of Trask 's contr ibut ion . In terms of journal pages, including his rebutta l , Trask was


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996(4) Trask assures us tha t he i s "confident" tha t he could, i f he

were so incl ined, come up with evidence for Austro-Basque equal ly asgood as tha t which has been offered for Dena-caucasian. This i s reminiscent of Goddard and Campbell 's claims tha t the M/T ' I ,you ' 11pronoun pat tern i s jus t as widespread as the N/M pat tern in theAmericas. When asked to produce t he i r evidence for th i s claim, nei therGoddard nor Campbell could come up with any, in s tark contras t to theevidence I presented for the N/M pat tern in Amerind. This greatpronoun hoax turned out to be l i t t l e more than bluff and blus te r(Ruhlen 1995). Surely no one should consider the Austro-Basquehypothesis any dif fe ren t ly . Science does not involve weighing whatscholars from Trombetti to Bengtson have done with what Trask says hecould do i f he were so incl ined.

In the f inal analysis , Trask ' s defense of splendid i sola t ion forBasque i s the work more of a lawyer than a sc i en t i s t . Like O.J 'slawyers he has chosen to defend the indefens ible , and, l ike O.J . ' slawyers, he has to manufacture evidence to but t ress his arguments,while dismissing the DNA evidence as accidenta l . The manufacturedevidence i s the following: on page 189 of his rebut ta l he asser t s tha t"a f ine example of th i s [ i . e . , the importance of considering a widercontext] i s Basque gorotz ' dung ' , which i s expl ic i t ly singled out byRuhlen as a case in which the data from Sino-Tibetan and Na-Dene wouldprop up the comparison. But . . it i s hardly l ikely tha t gorotz i s anative Basque word. And, i f the Basque word i s borrowed from Romance,who cares what the Tibetan or Apache words for 'dung' might lookl ike?" The reader who bothers to go back to my paper wil l find (page154) tha t no evidence from Tibetan or Apache i s adduced, exp l ic i t orotherwise. In fac t , t h i s t r iconsonantal root - - apparently res t r ic tedto Basque, Caucasian, and Burushaski - - i s a strong piece of evidencein favor of Macro-Caucasian, Bengtson's proposed subgrouping of thesethree families within the l a rger Dane-caucasian complex. I haverecently argued tha t Yeniseian and Na-Dene should also be groupedtogether as another branch of Dena-caucasian (Ruhlen 1996). The th i rdbranch of Dene-Caucasian would then be Sino-Tibetan. 12

11 Editor 's note: One would prefer to ca l l t h i s ' I / t hou ' , since'you ' remains ambivalent and ' thou ' i s the proper cognate. 'Thou'apparently s t i l l survives in one vi l lage in New Hampshire.12 Editor 's note: always on the look-out fo r taxonomic change,whether external or in te rna l , we see here tha t one of the principal


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ReferencesRuhlen, Merr i t t . 1995. "A Note on Amerind Pronouns," MOTHER TONGUE 24:60-61Ruhlen, Merri t t . 1996. "The Origin of the Na-Dene," ms.Sarich, Vincent M. 1994. "Occam's Razor and Historical Linguist ics ,"in Matthew Y. Chen and Ovid J.L.Tzeng, eds. , IN HONOR OFWILLIAM S.-Y. WANG: INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES ON LANGUAGEAND LANGUAGE CHANGE. Taipei , Pyramid Press , 409-430.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -A FINAL (?) RESPONSE TO THE BASQUE DEBATE IN MOTHER TONGUE-1by John D. Bengtson I 743 Madison Stree t NE .Minneapolis, MN 55413 I USA I t e l . 612-331-5461 1e-mail = [email protected][Edi tor 's Prefatory Note: it i s character is t ic of the group oflanguages, here called Dene-caucasic, tha t they contain some of themost exotic or ' harsh ' consonants on Earth. caucasic by i t s e l f hasalready s t ra ined in ternat ional t ranscr ipt ion conventions maximally;proto-Caucasic with i t s proposed 180 consonants i s simply over theh i l l , outside the bounds, or what-shall-we-call- i t . For the purposesof the Internet and our WWWeb s i te most of proto-Caucasic is out-ofs ight . I f someone thinks tha t Na-Dene i s re la t ive ly easy, she shouldlook hard a t Haida, Tlingit and many other Northwest Coast.languages!We simply cannot share the exotica with you the same way in which wecan simply zerox the strange t ranscr ipt ions to send you a copy. Not onthe Web! What to do about th is?We reach a compromise by te l l ing you what the exotic sound iss imi lar to . But sometimes we do not even know what art icula toryprinciples underlie a symbol used. So we describe it - - l i t e ra l ly . so,for example, in the f i r s t paragraph we write [gh] to show tha t thesound is l ike a voiced velar f r ica t ive . Then we put a A next to it toshow t ha t the original had a dot over a Greek gamma sign.For a l l th i s we use footnotes . As sparingly as possible. We doalso beg writers on Dene-Caucasic to show a l i t t l e mercy and give us asc r ip t which vast ly improves on Starost in & Nikolaev's incrediblecomplexity. You cannot imagine what wil l happen when we come to putmuch Khoisan on the Web. Caucasic wil l look re la t ive ly simple! - - HF]

Shed No Tears - - for the Vasco-caucasic HypothesisAfter a l l the dust has se t t led , what i s the upshot of the "GreatBasque Debate" in the f i r s t issue of Mother Tongue ( the Journal)? Inour sports-minded world, the f i r s t crude question would be 'who won?'I f the objective was to prove tha t paleo- l inguis ts l ike me, Chirikba,


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996and Vasco-caucasic (Macro-Caucasic) hypotheses, I believe Trask hasl os t t ha t ba t t l e . A prominent hi s to r i ca l l inguis t recently wrote me(March 13,1996) t ha t "I bel ieve you came out very well in the exchangewith Trask and the others ... I am accustomed to a t tacks by specia l -i s t s who find a few rea l er rors , a number of imaginary errors andnever ask what 's l e f t over." Some of the other respondents asked thesame question: even assuming t ha t a l l of Trask's and Jacobsen's object ions are correct (which we do not) , how can they to ta l ly overlook thecomparisons t ha t are l e f t over?As an example, I wil l discuss one comparison here tha t , as fa r asI can see, was passed over without comment by Trask (p.55) and theother vasconists . I t begins with a Basque word, negar - nigar , t ha tcan be general ly t rans la ted as 'weeping, t ea rs ' , Spanish ' l l an to ' ,French ' p leurs , larmes' according to Azkue (1905). Thee form (negar)predominates in western dia lec ts , and the i form (nigar) in easterndia lec ts . One Bizkaian community (Ubidea) also has the odd meaning' r ennet 1 cuajo 1 presure ' , and there i s a curiously s imi la r wordnegal - negel - negelar ( in some eastern dia lec ts) with the meaning. ' rash, scurf , herpes, skin erupt ion ' ( ' sarpul l ido , herpe, erupci6n dela cara ldar t re , herpes, eruption de la peau' in Azkue).As far as I know, Trombetti (1925: 249) was the f i r s t to comparethese Basque words with s imi lar Caucasic words for ' t e a r ' (or ' pus ' ) ,found in every branch except Khinalug and West Caucasic (NCED 848-49).Some of the words have i n i t i a l n-: Dargwa nerghAw ' t e a r ' , Lezgi naghAwTabasaran niwq 1 niwghA, Archi nabq, (oblique) nibqi- (a l l ' t e a r ' ) ,Chechen not ' q ' a ' pus ' , Batsbi not ' q ' ' pus ' (but plura l na t ' q ' a j r i

' t e a r s ' ~ some have i n i t i a l m-: Avar ma9u ' t e a r ' 14 , Akhwakh maq'a,Lak maq', and others . Nikolaev and Starost in reconstruct a protoformwith i n i t i a l n-: * n ~ w q ' U (from which the m- forms derive by ant ic ipa-tory ass imi la t ion) . They also propose t ha t t h i s * n ~ w q ' U had an ablautvar iant in the oblique form reconstructed as *niwq'V-, ref lect ing anal ternat ion which i s preserved in a few languages, e .g . , Bezhta maq'o1 miq'a- ' t e a r ' , and possibly Archi nabq 1 nibqi- ' t e a r ' . ThisCaucasic e j i ablaut reminds us natural ly of the e / i al ternat ion inBasque, though in the l a t t e r the morphological al ternat ion was apparent ly general ized as dia lec ta l var ia t ion .Thirdly, l e t us look a t some in teres t ing words in Burushaski,recorded by Colonel Lorime_r (1935-38) as nagei ' a boi l 115 ( i . e . , asept ic skin erupt ion) , which has the var iant magei in the Nagirdia lec t . The njm al ternat ion reminds us of the Caucasic words, and the

13 The f ina l vowel Iii i s writ ten as [ i] with a wedgie over it


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meaning cal ls to mind the meaning in Chechen, Ingush, and Batsbi( 'pus ' ) , and also Basque negal ' r a sh ' e tc . , another form of erupt ion,apparently seen by the ancients as the skin 'weeping' . (This wouldalso explain the Ubidea Basque negar ' rennet ' [above], seen as ' t ea rs 'of gas t r ic juice excreted in the fourth stomach of a ca l f ) . So theBurushaski words are ful ly in the Basque-caucasic t radi t ion , excepttha t the meaning ' t e a r ' (of the eye) has been l os t to the gain of'pus ' > ' bo i l ' . Though I have not found th is word in any of the otherBuushaski dict ionaries (Berger, Morin, Pesot, Tiffou, Zarubin), Isuspect a more phonemic t ranscr ip t ion might be j n age / - ;mage/ ' bo i l ' ,which can.be derived from Proto-Burushic *naqwe ' pus> boi l ' , withregressive labia l iza t ion in the Nagir dia lec t , exactly as in Lak,Bezhta, etc .But we s t i l l have a " le f tover element" - - t h e ...:.r in Basque. Herele t me reca l l the oargwa *nerghAw ' t e a r ' , real ized as nerghA (uvularghA) - nirghA, and even merghA - meghA in the diverse dia lec ts . Nikolaev and Starost in , without any reference to Basque, p ~ o p o s e tha t theDargwa form probably comes from "an original p lura l form in *-r , " thusnerghAw from *neghAw-r- ' t e a r s ' . Thus, I suggest, we now have an explanation for the whole Basque word:Basque niga-r - nega-r ' t e a r s '

= Pre-Proto-Dargwa *neghAw-r ' t e a r s 'The old plural - r in Caucasic i s preserved in some languages, such asHunzib: koma 'k idney ' , p lura l koma-r I ap 'a 'paw', plural ap 'a- r , andelsewhere only in foss i l ized remnants, as in the Dargwa word for' t e a r ( s ) ' , and some of the Lezgian words for 'ear . ' : Rutul ubur, Kryzi b i r , Budukh ib i r ' e a r ' < ' *ea rs ' (NCED 240); and Khinalug culoz' t ooth ' < cul-or ' t e e th ' 16 (NCED 326). There are also a number ofBasque words with a " lef tover element" when compared with Caucasic,e.g . :Basque an-tz iga-r ' f r os t 'Basque hama-r ' t en '(from '*handfuls ' )Basque bulha-r ' ches t ,breas t , mother 's milk'Basque ziga-r 'mite '

caucasic *3'igV ' ha i l , r a in ' 17(NCED 1102)Lezgian *XXama 'handful ' (NCED 819)caucasic *GwllHe 'udder, breas t ' 18(NCED 376)caucasic *c'alkw@ ' b i t ing insec t ' 19

16 The editor suspects tha t culo-r would be more convincing.In Kryz the [ i ] stands for 'barred i' or high mid unrounded vowel.17 our [3 ' ] represents the or iginal ' s [z] but with a t a i l oni t , giving the appearance of a [3] par t ia l ly sub-scr ip t . This i susually read as [zh] as in French ' j e ' but the [ ' ] modifies tha t .


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996Basque e- lhu-r 'snow'

(NCED 376)Caucasic *hliwV : Chechen lo 'snow'(NCED 684)

I suggest tha t a t l eas t some of these " lef tover r"s could befoss i l ized remnants of an old plural form tha t los t product ivi ty inearly Basque. This hypothesis helps solve not only the ' t e a r s ' etymology, but also several others. All of these words are consistent witha plural o r col lect ive meaning, e .g . , '*snowflakes> snow', '*handfuls> 10 ' , e tc .So in sum, we have :Basque n e g a ~ r , - niga ..r ' tears , weeping' (? nega-1 ' rash ,scurf ' )Caucasic * n ~ w q ' Q 1 *niwq'V- ' t ear(s ) - pus 'Dargwa nerghA , Lezgi naghAw, Bezhta maq'oBurushaski nage - mage ' boi l < pus'

This is an etymology t ha t explains the whole Basque word, tyingtogether lexicon and morphology (cf . the Basque-Dargwa comparison,above). I have also shown t ha t the words from a l l of these languagesform a semantic continuum. As with many other of the s t rongest Vascocaucasic comparisons, the more facts we gather, the more the etymology i s cross-confirmed.Do you see now why a l l the vasconists to ta l ly ignore th is etymology? Because it i s a powerful witness to Vasco-Caucasic unity, theyt ry to sweep it under the rug by not mentioning i t . I t i s th is kind ofin tent ional neglect of promising evidence t ha t shows Trask and someother vasconists do no proceed as sc ient is ts , in terpre t ing facts in anobject ive manner.As one of my colleagues reminded me, "science i s not a footbal lgame" - - a debate is not decided by who writes the most pages, or howmany scholars gang up against other scholars. I t i s ult imately decidedby the in terpre ta t ion tha t best explains the fac ts . I think we havegiven a good in terpre ta t ion of the facts in th is ' t e a r ' etymology, andin many others t ha t demonstrate and cross-confirm the original unityof Basque with Caucasic and Burushaski.So I am not rea l ly in teres ted in who i s thought to "win" theBasque debate. I f the reader i s content to accept All of the phonological assumptions and etymologies put forward by Trask (who assumesa to ta l ly i so la ted language), by a l l means join him, and Jacobsen andZabaltza, as they endlessly speculate (see "Pre-Scientif ic Etymology",below), with no poss ib i l i ty of external comparison.But i f the reader i s in teres ted in a sc ient i f ic approach to the


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comments in MT-1). When they confidently proclaim tha t " x i s transparently a compound of y and z," reca l l tha t nothing can be taken forgranted as "transparent" in his tor ica l l inguis t ics (see "Pre-Scient i f ic Etymology," below). And when they dismiss .all Basque-caucasic andBasque-Burushaski comparisons as mere "chance resemblances," yetaccept vi r tua l ly a l l Basque-Latin comparisons (see my "Is I t Romance"in MT-1), it becomes clear tha t th is is not object ivi ty , but ideology.My debate with Trask has now continued for over a year , duringwhich I have spent countless hours working on rebutta ls , time I otherwise could have spent doing posit ive research and writing. I couldhave spent much more t ime, had I chosen to defend a l l the twelve-scorecomparisons I s t i l l consider worth defending (MT-1, p.94). As can beseen in the ' t e a r ' etymology, a proper discussion of a comparison cantake a page or two of space; or more. I never intended to writeseveral hundred pages of rebut t ing arguments tha t a l l too often seemto me to be patently specious and even sophomoric, and furthermore,the time and space const ra in ts of MT-1 did not permit th i s . Instead, Iurge anyone who i s interested in pursuing th i s discussion to (a) readcarefully my responses to Trask (Bengtson 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1996;

B l a ~ e k & Bengtson 1995), and (c) contact me personally, by conventiona l mail, e-mail , or telephone, to discuss general or specif icquestions.so shed no tears for the Vasco-caucasic hypothesis! In sp i te ofTrask's negative ef for t s , it i s al ive and well . In fac t , Trask hasunwittingly helped us by eliminating some of our weakest evidence (inthe few cases where we agree he is r ight ) , and also by informationtha t in many cases actually strengthens our case. To that extent I amgrateful for th is debate, but it i s time to move on. We are going tocontinue work on Basque and i t s Dene-caucasic cousins, because webelieve th is i s a viable, indeed a robust , hypothesis. The SplendidIso la t ion of Basque, l ike Stalinism in Eastern Europe and Apartheid inSouth Africa, is an idea whose time has run out. I believe it i s onlya matter of time (though perhaps not in my l i fet ime) before Vascocaucasic i s as widely accepted as Sapir ' s Algie or Jones ' IndoEuropean are now. PRE-SCIENTIFIC ETYMOLOGYYou may reca l l reading about the s ta te of etymological science inancient t imes, when "a Roman could imagine t ha t vulpes ' f ox ' , genitivevulp- is , rea l ly was ' f l y - foo t ' , compounded of volo 'I f ly ' and pes' foo t ' , genit ive ped-is ; and t ha t lepus ' hare ' . was ' l ight foot ' ,from lev is ' l i g h t ' and pes ' foo t ' . I t did not occur to the Roman tha tthe stems were ent i re ly d i f fe ren t in these words. And he would nothave understood tha t there could be any objection to th is procedure"(Pedersen 1962: 3-4).


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Mother Tongue: The Newsletter. Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996Basque i s to ta l ly i so la ted (as Zabaltza, Trask, and Jacobsen do),there i s no poss ib i l i ty of external comparison, and th is kind of'etymology' is a l l one can hope to propose. With those assumptions,the examples given by Zabaltza are perfect ly logical , and thesevasconists , l ike the ancients , do not understand " tha t there could beany objection to th i s procedure."But Zabal tza 's solut ion ra ises more questions than it answers. I f-be l - rea l ly is a discrete element, what then are sa - (in sabel' be l ly , stomach') , g i- (in g ibe l ' l i v e r ' ) and - tz (in bel tz ' b lack ' )?This is l e f t unanswered.

Similarly , when Trask analyzes Basque ukondo (- ukhondo, ukhundo,ukando) 'e lbow' as *uk(a)- ' a rm' + ondo 'bottom' 1 it a l l seems perfec_ly logical from the point of view tha t Basque is to ta l ly i sola ted.But again, more problems are ra ised. (See my discussion, p.87)My procedure, on the other hand, and t ha t of Cirikba, B l a ~ e k , e ta l . , accepts tha t B a s q u e ~ demonstrably re la ted to other languages,and tha t comparison with them allows us to formulate real etymologies.Thus the solut ion for Basque ukhondo i s to compare with other DeneCaucasic languages, and most immediately we come across some caucasicwords tha t mean 'e lbow' or 'knee ' in the Lezgian and Tsezianlanguages. Note especial ly:Basque ukhondo (Basse Navarre) 'e lbow'Lezgi q'fintu- (oblique form) 'e lbow'The meanings are iden t ica l , and phonetic forms easi ly correspond in as tr ik ing fashion. Any his tor ica l l inguis t who is ignorant of the' cor rec t ' vasconist analysis would probably accept th i s as a plausiblecomparison, the more so since there are other basic para l le ls betwenBasque and the same languages (see my Table 1, MT-1, pp.96-97). Butthe vasconists t e l l us it cannot be r igh t : they already have a predetermined solut ion.I shal l not take the space to discuss the al ternat ive etymologiesfor a l l the words discussed above, but as to sabel ' be l ly , stomach', Ipropose the segmentation sabe-1 and connect it with words such as(Caucasic) Bezhta sebo ' l i ve r ' , e tc . , Tibeto-Burman ~ a p ' l ungs ' , andYeniseian words of the type tvp-Vl ' sp leen ' (Bengtson 1991b: 131),where we come to a possible para l le l to Basque -e l as well:Basque sabel ' be l ly , stomach'

Kott tebe l 'a ' sp leen 'I suggest t ha t it i s rea l ly the i sola t ionis t vasconists who "chopwords up" arb i t r a r i ly . In most cases the Dene-Caucasic etymologiesexplain the whole word.Whenever Trask uses the phrase "x is t ransparent ly a compound ofy and z," I counter with "yes, jus t l ike crawfish. crayfish i s t rans


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kume cannot possibly have anything to do with caucasic words l ikeArchi Xom 'woman', Lak qami 'women', etc . I simply offe r an al ternat ive solut ion, i . e . , tha t comparison with Caucasic offers semanticallyand phonetically plausible para l le ls for the element -kume 'woman',and t ha t Trask's analysis may well be a sophist icated folk-etymology,l ike English bridegroom, which i s "transparently" a compound of brideand groom. (In fac t the element groom was original ly *guma, an oldword for 'man'. Comparison with re la ted languages, e .g . , GermanBrautigam, swedish Brudgum, confirms tha t the second r in bridegroomis secondary, and influenced by groom, of di s t inc t origin .) Thingst ha t seem t ransparent a t the synchronic level may not necessari ly bet ransparent diachronically!

We are well aware tha t we often ca l l t rad i t iona l vasconist etymologies into question, and not out of ignorance. I have. noted severaldisagreements with t rad i t iona l etymologies in my responses to Trask.I t should go without saying tha t when external comparison i s correctly applied, a t l eas t some "universal ly accepted" vasconist etymologieswil l be found to be fa lse . This i s the natural outcome of sc ient i f icetymology.Trask wil l no doubt s t ick with his segmentation of uk-ondo, andZabaltza with his sa-bel , e tc . , and it i s of course t he i r r igh t tocling to those pre-sc ien t i f ic ideas. I would hope t ha t sensiblehis tor ica l l inguis ts wil l see tha t external comparison combined within ternal evidence can, and do, lead us to correct solut ions in Basqueetymology. HALF EMPTY - - OR HALF FULLAs we follow Trask's arguments it becomes clear tha t Trask makess t r ingent demands on the pioneer paleolinguists: not only must theymaster a l l the languages they survey without making mistakes, theymust also have every deta i l of the phonetic correspondences workedout , and have explained every grammatical feature in a l l the languagesbeing compared. Anything shor t of th i s is "worthless", or "zero evidence", according to Trask.I t would indeed be wonderful i f paleol inguists were specia l i s t sin a l l the languages they compared, and were so supremely talentedtha t they could minutely analyze and explain every l a s t deta i l of theproto-language (whether it be Dene-caucasic, Nostrat ic, Austric , etc . )and i t s daughter languages. But in the world I l ive in (and Chirikba,and Bla!ek, e tc . ) , one has to se t t l e for mere mortals, who make somemistakes (not nearly as many as Trask al leges!) , and do not yet claimto have a l l the answers about Dene-caucasic.One's overal l assessment of the Basque debate may depend onwhether one sees the Vasco-caucasic and Dene-Caucasic hypotheses ashal f empty or half fu l l . Trask and Jacobsen see only the errors andpoints tha t conf l ic t with t he i r models of proto-Basque, so for them


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Mother Tongue: The Newsle t t e r . Issue 26 (MT-26) May 1996Much of what th e c r i t i c s f a u l t i s found in the Dene-Caucasic workof s ix to twelve years ago. Since then we have l ea rned a g re a t dea labout Basque as well as the o ther Dene-caucasic languages. our stock of Dene-Caucasic etymologies and paradigms i s cons tant ly growing aswell as being corrected and amended.For s t a t e - o f - t h e - a r t Dene-caucas ic , I sugges t t ak ing a look a tour l a t e s t pub l ica t ion , "Lexica Dene-caucasica" ( B l a ~ e k & Bengtson1995, though mostly wri t t en in 1992-93). This a r t i c l e f ea tu res thef i r s t synop t ic t ab le of p rov i s iona l phone t ic correspondences between

and among Basque, Caucasic , Burushaski , Sino-Tibe tan , Yenise ian, andNa-Dene, bui ld ing on St a ros t i n ' s (Sino-caucasic) phonology. Of the 219comparisons, 126 involve Basque. As always, we expect a ce r ta in numberof t he se etymological proposals to be a l te red , corrected , conf la ted ,s p l i t apar t , and even "des t royed" , as Trask puts it. But we be l ievemost w i l l s tand. Dene-Caucasic has matured.Table 1 No Evidence a t All?

meaning Basgue A 1;! Q .Q E .f." I ' n i nu na' t hou ' h i Hu Ho ox hu-n'we ' gu xxa tx o ki-n uxu ja -n' you-p l ' ZU ssa su zu- r zu u ~ v u wa-n'wha t? ' ze - r se s t e (n ) -' two ' b i k 'wi k 'u k ' i - a q 'u 20 ppa_ 21'fire' su 22 t s ' a t s ' e ~ ' a t s ' u t s ' a a -' hunger ' gose gas i kkas i gasHere we have l ined Basque up with s ix "mystery languages." The t ab lei s Basque-cen t r i c , and a dash ( - ) ind ica tes t h a t th e language inques t ion has a word (with a meaning in th e l e f t column) t h a t i s judgednot comparable with th e Basque word.Note t h a t the e igh t meanings a re a l l highly bas ic , and among th emost h i s t o r i ca l l y s t a b l e . I f the re i s any realm of the Basque lexicont h a t i s l e a s t l i ke ly to be sub jec t to borrowing and neologisms, it i sj u s t these words. And i f the mystery of th e c l a s s i f i ca t i on of Basque

20 The (q ' ] has a wavy l i ne , l ike a nasal iza t ion s ign , underit. We've no idea what t h a t means.

21 The o r i g i n a l has (a] with a wavy l ine under it. This


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i s ever going to be solved, it wil l be with these words, or with a fewother suff ic ien t ly stable words (such as ' no t ' , t ea r [lacruma], water,n i t , hand, night ' : Bengtson 1994b).Now jus t look a t these 42 words as i f they were ci ted from sevenAfrican or Southeast Asian languages. I think some his tor ica ll inguis t s would waste l i t t l e time in proposing tha t these sevenlanguages belong to the same family, possibly even "an obvious family"on the basis of these eight words. I t seems unlikely tha t such at igh t ly woven table could be drawn up for some accepted families , suchas Afro-Asiatic or Nilo-Saharan.Others, perhaps not so impetuous, might a t leas t stop to pondertha t there are qui te a few basic resemblances here, and some are

s t r ik ing ly patterned, e .g . , Basque ni : hu and language A n u : Hu withthe same meanings ' I : t h o u ' . Should th i s not, a t the very l eas t , beinvestigated further?So why do so many l inguis t s s t i l l believe tha t there i s no answerto the genetic c lass i f ica t ion of Basque? I could mention a t leas t tworeasons, (a) the geographic argument, tha t Basque i s "too far" fromother languages being compared, and (b) the circumstance tha t one ofthe languages concerned (Basque) has a coter ie of spec ia l i s t s , thevasconists , many of whom operate under the assumption tha t Basque i sforever i sola ted, or a t l eas t tha t the l inguis t ic re la t ives of Basquecan never be detected .The geographic argument, tha t Basque i s located too fa r from agiven language being compared, i s the eas ies t to refute . We need onlypoint out the geographic range of Indo-European, Austronesian, andother language families . Recall also the case of Algonquian, comparedby Edward Sapir with the dis tan t Wiyot and Yurok on the Pacific Coast,a re la t ionship now accepted by even the most conservat ive Americanists

The 'mystery languages' are (A) Dargwa, (B) Chechen, (C)Khinalug, (D) Lak, (E) Tabasaran, and (F) Udi, a l l languages of theEast Caucasic family, a family accepted by even the most conservativeCaucasic spec ia l i s t s . The eight Caucasic etymologies are also generally accepted East Caucasic etymologies. The c i ta t ions here followNikolaev & Staros t in ' s NORTH CAUCASIAN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY (1994 =NCED).To the i sola t ionis t ideology, the paleol inguists (Bengtson,B l a

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Mother Tongue Newsletters 26 (Spring 1996)