Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method 1st Edition by Joseph H. Greenberg (PDF)

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This book collects Joseph Greenberg’s most important writings on the genetic classification of the world’s languages. Fifty years ago Joseph Greenberg put forward the now widely accepted classification of African languages. This book charts the progress of his subsequent work on language classification in Oceania, the Americas, and Eurasia,in which he proposed the language families Indo-Pacific, Amerind and Eurasiatic. It shows how he established and deployed three fundamental principles: that the most reliable evidence for genetic classification is the pairing of sound and meaning; that nonlinguistic evidence, such as skin colour or cultural traits, should be excluded from the analysis; and that the vocabulary and inflections of a very large number of languages should be simultaneously compared.The volume includes Joseph Greenberg’s substantive contributions to the debate his work provoked and concludes with his writings on the links between genetic linguistics and human history. William Croft’s introduction focuses on the substance and the development of Professor Greenberg’s thought and research within the context of the discussion they stimulated. He also includes a bibliography of scholarly reactions to and developments of Joseph Greenberg’s work and a comprehensive bibliography of his publications in books and journals.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Greenberg is universally known as the proponent of a sole origin to all human languages. This selection of articles is essential to capture his method and also his controversial and polemical approach of genetic linguistics.He is very careful to trace the history of genetic linguistics which he identifies as having been first, at the end of the 18th century (Sir William Jones) the history of Sanskrit and generally Indo-European languages. He traces that history of the science itself and shows how the Indo-Aryan family was detached from the Indo-European family very early. But he is not so much interested in these details, rather in the method of genetic linguistics as it emerges from that history.His first principle is that pure sound laws and phonological comparison are worth very little. The basic principle is that we have to compare morphemes which means, in Saussurean tradition, a form and a meaning together in the same linguistic sign. His demonstration of this point is essential and well-known. Rare are the linguists who are still trying to find out the genetic connection between languages by only using phonological considerations, either simple sounds or compounds of sounds in the shape of syllables. Note here he acknowledges, without saying it, that the phylogeny of the “word” in any human language has one first step to cross in order to become human and that is the articulation of consonants and vowels into “syllables”, so that the same “syllabic” connections are meaningless in the languages of the world, what’s more he states some are “symbolic” and “universal” like “ma” or “pa”, though he does not see that this symbolism has to do with breast feeding.His second principle is that we must not only compare languages in pairs but always compare one language to many others. His examples are numerous and historically relevant. His best case is that of Hittite that was identified as an Indo-European Language by Knudzton in 1902, but was only accepted as such in 1915 after Hrozny’s publication on the subject because the university and research “authorities” (people in powerful positions in these institutions) opposed Knudzton’s position. Here Greenberg is clearly exposing the negative role of those who have power in the academic world as going against the search for truth.His method is simple. You must concentrate on basic lexical words, though lexical items can be borrowed or culturally influenced, but insist on words that have a similar form and the same meaning (or similar meaning). Those basic words are for example small numbers, parts of the body and pronouns. But moreover you must insist on the syntactic, if not plainly grammatical, elements. Here again order itself is not very pertinent in this comparison. We are supposed to compare syntactic or grammatical morphemes like personal pronouns, nominal declensions or verbal conjugations, if possible as coherent and full systems. And that comparison must be carried out among a multiple set of languages.We must not deny that we start from a group of languages that we already “know” are genetically connected, but the method can be also used for groups of languages determined by their geographical or historical proximity, if not even contact. That implies history and culture are also essential in that search, even if it is dialectical since what we are going to find about the languages will bring knowledge on the culture and the history of the people who spoke those languages. The case of the two Arzawa letters in Hittite though found in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh is typical: they prove Hittite is Indo-European but they bring light on the relations between Anatolia, the Akkadians and Egypt in those centuries when writing was being invented by the Sumerians.In other words he clearly exposes the circularity of many etymologists: they state sound laws that accept no exceptions from the observation of languages and these laws become the proof of the connection between the languages.But Greenberg is a linguist of the word and the sentence. He is very keen on the origin of language. But he does not consider the phylogeny of that language that was invented in Africa by the Homo Sapiens somewhere around 250,000 years ago. What did they start from (the languages of apes or Homo Ergaster, their ancestor) and what were the various steps to reach our modern articulated languages. These steps are the three articulations that enable modern human languages to exist: the first articulations of consonants and vowels, without which no morphemes can exist (and no apes have it), then the second articulation of distance and duration into space and time into spatial nouns and temporal verbs that enables the first syntax of simple concatenation, and finally the third articulation of morphological syntax with morphological morphemes to realize the functions and roles of each linguistic item in a complex sentence.This would have led Greenberg to a higher generalization: the first articulation is the basic articulation of consonantal languages, the second articulation of isolating or character languages, and the third articulation of holophrastic then agglutinative then synthetic and analytical languages. The question is why did these three vast phylogenetic classes of languages appeared? The answer is because they left the nest of humanity at various moments of the phylogeny of language in that primeval human society. That enables us then to capture the Out of Africa migrations as a sequence of migrations using different routes and targeting different territories starting with the Nile valleys, then the southern corridor along the Arabian Peninsula and from there up the Persian Gulf, up the Indus Valley, around or across the Indian subcontinent as far as Australia and China.Archaeology has today accumulated the necessary knowledge to prove that.An essential book though Greenberg lived before the essential archaeological discoveries that support today a vaster vision of his subject, though not without various oppositionsDr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

⭐The Kindle sample was a preface not by the author. I decided to buy anyway. But after purchasing the book, I found that it was a series of essays involving spats between him and other linguists and geneticists. He was defending his own work and criticizing the work of others. I would like to read about the fascinating subject of interaction of language and genetics focused on the ideas themselves rather than academic point-scoring. I’m certain the author could write such a book. I appreciate Amazon’s policy of full no-questions-asked refunds.

⭐Greenberg is universally known as the proponent of a sole origin to all human languages. This selection of articles is essential to capture his method and also his controversial and polemical approach of genetic linguistics.He is very careful to trace the history of genetic linguistics which he identifies as having been first, at the end of the 18th century (Sir William Jones) the history of Sanskrit and generally Indo-European languages. He traces that history of the science itself and shows how the Indo-Aryan family was detached from the Indo-European family very early. But he is not so much interested in these details, rather in the method of genetic linguistics as it emerges from that history.His first principle is that pure sound laws and phonological comparison are worth very little. The basic principle is that we have to compare morphemes which means, in Saussurean tradition, a form and a meaning together in the same linguistic sign. His demonstration of this point is essential and well-known. Rare are the linguists who are still trying to find out the genetic connection between languages by only using phonological considerations, either simple sounds or compounds of sounds in the shape of syllables. Note here he acknowledges, without saying it, that the phylogeny of the “word” in any human language has one first step to cross in order to become human and that is the articulation of consonants and vowels into “syllables”, so that the same “syllabic” connections are meaningless in the languages of the world, what’s more he states some are “symbolic” and “universal” like “ma” or “pa”, though he does not see that this symbolism has to do with breast feeding.His second principle is that we must not only compare languages in pairs but always compare one language to many others. His examples are numerous and historically relevant. His best case is that of Hittite that was identified as an Indo-European Language by Knudzton in 1902, but was only accepted as such in 1915 after Hrozny’s publication on the subject because the university and research “authorities” (people in powerful positions in these institutions) opposed Knudzton’s position. Here Greenberg is clearly exposing the negative role of those who have power in the academic world as going against the search for truth.His method is simple. You must concentrate on basic lexical words, though lexical items can be borrowed or culturally influenced, but insist on words that have a similar form and the same meaning (or similar meaning). Those basic words are for example small numbers, parts of the body and pronouns. But moreover you must insist on the syntactic, if not plainly grammatical, elements. Here again order itself is not very pertinent in this comparison. We are supposed to compare syntactic or grammatical morphemes like personal pronouns, nominal declensions or verbal conjugations, if possible as coherent and full systems. And that comparison must be carried out among a multiple set of languages.We must not deny that we start from a group of languages that we already “know” are genetically connected, but the method can be also used for groups of languages determined by their geographical or historical proximity, if not even contact. That implies history and culture are also essential in that search, even if it is dialectical since what we are going to find about the languages will bring knowledge on the culture and the history of the people who spoke those languages. The case of the two Arzawa letters in Hittite though found in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh is typical: they prove Hittite is Indo-European but they bring light on the relations between Anatolia, the Akkadians and Egypt in those centuries when writing was being invented by the Sumerians.In other words he clearly exposes the circularity of many etymologists: they state sound laws that accept no exceptions from the observation of languages and these laws become the proof of the connection between the languages.But Greenberg is a linguist of the word and the sentence. He is very keen on the origin of language. But he does not consider the phylogeny of that language that was invented in Africa by the Homo Sapiens somewhere around 250,000 years ago. What did they start from (the languages of apes or Homo Ergaster, their ancestor) and what were the various steps to reach our modern articulated languages. These steps are the three articulations that enable modern human languages to exist: the first articulations of consonants and vowels, without which no morphemes can exist (and no apes have it), then the second articulation of distance and duration into space and time into spatial nouns and temporal verbs that enables the first syntax of simple concatenation, and finally the third articulation of morphological syntax with morphological morphemes to realize the functions and roles of each linguistic item in a complex sentence.This would have led Greenberg to a higher generalization: the first articulation is the basic articulation of consonantal languages, the second articulation of isolating or character languages, and the third articulation of holophrastic then agglutinative then synthetic and analytical languages. The question is why did these three vast phylogenetic classes of languages appeared? The answer is because they left the nest of humanity at various moments of the phylogeny of language in that primeval human society. That enables us then to capture the Out of Africa migrations as a sequence of migrations using different routes and targeting different territories starting with the Nile valleys, then the southern corridor along the Arabian Peninsula and from there up the Persian Gulf, up the Indus Valley, around or across the Indian subcontinent as far as Australia and China.Archaeology has today accumulated the necessary knowledge to prove that.An essential book though Greenberg lived before the essential archaeological discoveries that support today a vaster vision of his subject, though not without various oppositionsDr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

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