Mother Tongue Newsletter 29 (Fall 1997)

7/27/2019 Mother Tongue Newsletter 29 (Fall 1997)

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RN E W S L E T T E R O F T H E

F O R T H E S T U D Y O F

: I N P R E H : I S T O R V

I s s - u . ~2 9 ( M T- 2 9 )

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EA S S O C : I A T : I O N

L A N C 3 U A B E

F a l l 1 9 9 7


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MOTHER TONGUE : NEWSLETTER o f t h e Assoc ia t ion f o r t h e Study o f

Language In P r e h i s t o r y . I s s u e 29. F a l l 1997

The A s s o c i a t i o n f o r t h e Study o f Language In P r e h i s t o r y (ASLIP) i s an o n p r o f i t o r g a n i z a t i o n , i n c o r p o r a t e d unde r t h e laws o f t h e Commonwealth o fMassachuse t t s . I t s pu rpose i s t o encourage and s u p p o r t t h e s tudy o fl anguage i n p r e h i s t o r y i n a l l f i e l d s and by a l l means, i n c l u d i n g r e s e a r c hon t h e e a r l y e v o l u t i o n o f human l anguage , suppor t ing confe rences , s e t t i n gup a d a t a bank , and p u b l i s h i n g a n e w s l e t t e r and a j o u r n a l t o r e p o r t t h e s ea c t i v i t i e s .

Membership: Annual dues f o r ASLIP membership and s u b s c r i p t i o n t o MotherTongue a r e us $25 i n a l l c o u n t r i e s , excep t t h o s e wi th cu r r ency problems .F or membership i n f o r m a t i o n , c o n t a c t :

Harold c. Fleming , S e c r e t a r y - Tr e a s u r e rA . S . L . I . P.16 Butman AvenueG l o u c e s t e r , MA 01930-1006 USA

OFFICERS OF ASLIP (Address a p p r o p r i a t e cor respondence t o each)

P r e s i d e n t John D. Bengtson 1 1329 Adams S t r e e t NE 1Minneapo l i s , MN 55413, USA 1 Te l . 612-348-5910

Vice P r e s i d e n t Roger Wil l iams Wescot t 1 16-A Her i t age C r e s t 1Southbury, CT 06488 USA I Te l . 203-264-1716

Vice P r e s i d e n t Danie l McCall 1 7 Wigglesworth S t 1 Boston , MA 02114USA 1 Te l . 617-277-1434 1 508-627-5571 (summer)

S e c r e t a r y - Tr e a s u r e r Harold c. Fleming ( see above ) . Te l . 508-282-0603

BOARD OF DIRECTORSOfe r Bar-Yosef (Peabody M, Harvard) Kenneth Hale (M. I .T. )Anne w. Beaman (Brook l ine , MA) J e r o l d Harmatz ( Tu f t s U .)Allan R. Bomhard ( C h a r l e s t o n , SC) John Hutch ison (Boston U.)Ronald C h r i s t e n s e n (L inco ln , MA) J u d i t h Leader (Lexington , MA)F r e d e r i c k Gamst (U 1 Massachuse t t s ) Mary E l l e n Lepionka (Cambridge,MA)

P h i l i p Lieberman (Brown U.)

COUNCIL OF FELLOWS

Raimo A n t t i l a (UCLA)Luigi Luca C a v a l l i - S f o r z a (S t an fo rd )I g o r M. Di ak ono ff ( S t . Pe te r sburg )Aaron Dolgopolsky (UIHai fa )Ben Ohiomamhe Elugbe (UIIbadan)Joseph H. Greenberg (S tan fo rd )Car l e ton T. Hodge (UIIndiana)

Sydney Lamb (Rice U n i v e r s i t y )Winfred P. Lehmann (UITexas)Kar l -He in r i ch Menges (UIVienna)Col in Renfrew (Cambridge U ., UK)V i t a l i j Shevoroshkin (UIMichigan)S e rg e i S t a r o s t i n (Moscow S t a t e UDel l Hymes (UIVirg in ia

Copyr igh t 1996 Aaaoc ia t ion f o r t h e s tudy of Lanquage i n Preh ia to ryISSN 1087-0326 f o r Mother Tongue: The J o u r n a l (an Annual , n o t Newsle t te r )


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INTRODUCTION TO MT-29; The Newsle t te r (Edi tor t h i s i s sue ; H. Fleming)

THE HOTTEST AND THE LATEST NEWS. AS OF MID-OCTOBER. 1997.The h o t t e s t , l a t e s t news i s not n e c e s s a r i l y th e most impor tan t news - - inth e wisdom of h inds igh t i t may even be i r r e l e v a n t to our common en te rp r i se .But, s ince the i tems a re ~ , they have with in them the p o t e n t i a l ofes tab l i sh ing something o r d i s - e s t a b l i s h i n g something e l s e .

This t ime around, th e ho t news i s very b r i e f , y e t highly impor tan t . Aseveryone knows, evidence t h a t confirms an hypothesis i s no t dec i s ive , a tl e a s t accord ing t o l o g i c i a n s and phi losophers of sc i ence , a l though workings c i e n t i s t s a re very fond of conf i rmat ions . What i s more dec i s ive , aga in aseveryone knows, i s c o n t r a d i c t i o n and f a l s i f i c a t i o n . I t remains the case ,however, t h a t th e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f evidence as confirming o r f a l s i f y i n g i sno t so easy - - no t always.

I t would seem t h a t Neanderthal has l o s t h is p a t e r n i t y s u i t . The claimsto Neander tha lo id ances t ry fo r modern humans ev iden t ly have been f a l s i f i e d .Perhaps dec i s ive ly. Moreover th e Afr ican d i s t r i b u t i o n of Hoo sapienssap iens in t h e t ime per iod 125,000 t o 100,000 BP seems dec i s ive ly confirmedby human f o o t p r i n t s i n South Afr i ca . Oh, yeah? We' l l see about t h a t !

NEWS OF MEMBERS' ACTIVITIES. INCLUDING LETTERS OF COMMENT .This r i c h lode o f mate r i a l wa s promised fo r February. So our promises a res t i l l none too good! But some o f i t appears here in . Since t h e wave ofheadl ine-grabbing d i scover i e s and announcements has c res t ed , and probablybroken fo r a whi le , we p r e d i c t t h a t members' a c t i v i t i e s and comments w i l lbecome a more prominent p a r t o f t h i s Newslet ter in the foreseeable f u t u r e .

AMNOQNCEMENTS & ADVERTISEMENTS; THE MEMBERSHIP (PERMITTED) LIST.The l i s t o f members who permi t t h e i r names t o be made pub l i c i s held inabeyance fo r t h i s i s sue . Some few people added themselves bu t i t i s b e t t e rt o wai t u n t i l t h e next i s s u e f o r an update o f reasonable s i z e . Parsimony!

A few adver t i sements o f t h ings a re added on t o the end, pr inc ipa l ly tol e t our members b e n e f i t from book review choices o r t o suppor t someendeavour which one o f our members i s engaged i n .

OBITUARIES; JOHN KERNS, S0ren Egerod, Jan Winter, Mary Haas, R. Stopa.We note wi th personal sorrow t h a t good o le Aimo Murtonen joined t h i s

group. Southeas t Asia took another h i t , as Henri Haudr icour t has died t oo .Then ASLIP's o f f i c e r s , as wel l as Southeas t Asia, took an even l a rg e r h i tt h i s summer, when Paul Benedic t was k i l l e d . Now Afras ian s tud ies has t akeni t s t u r n , qu i t e r ecen t ly ; th e g i f t e d Robert Hetzron has d ied .

L e t ' s s top the presses! Never mind th e h o t t e r o r coo le r news fo r now!Let us see t o our f a l l e n co l l eagues . Let t h i s be an i s sue pr imar i ly devotedt o t he Ob i tua r i e s . Five o f t hese col leagues were long r ange r s in the f u l lsense of those words, whi le four were wide-ranging an d venturesome with inmore l i m i t e d rea lms . Our bonny b a t t a l i o n o f front iersmen has been dep le t ed .

ASLIP BUSINESSThere i s much:: Our Web S i t e which was in a s t a t e of f lux has now gonecryogenic (deep f r eeze ) , u n t i l we can pay a pro fes s iona l t o handle i t . MaryEl len Lepionka c o u l d n ' t rescue i t : : The "Good Guys" l i s t i s enclosed.

Now i s t ime fo r many ASLIPers t o f i n a l l y pay t h e i r 1997 dues. See th ea t t ached colored shee t . : : And a re t he re an y vo lun tee r s ou t t he re? You mustnominate some o f f i c e r s and d i r e c t o r s . Get involved i n ASLIP governance.

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SOME HOT NEWS. BRIEFLY DISCUSSED

Considerab le publ ic a t t e n t i o n was paid to tw o i tems of preh i s to ry t h i ssummer. The dominant one was the success fu l determina t ion of mitochondr ia lDNA (o r mtDNA) from a very o ld f o s s i l Homo, t r u l y a record-breaking achievement as th e DNA came from a 30,000-100,000 ya Nean4ertbal . As we had pred ic ted , such an event would be viewed as ext raordinary. The b iogene t i c i s t s

- - SvantePaabo

and h i s team a t UfMunich - - were pa ins t ak ing , almost neurot i c a l l y punc t i l ious , checking every th ing l i k e a compulsive-obsessive checksh i s whatever. But th e r e s u l t s obta ined from upper arm bone were worthwhiles c i e n t i f i c a l l y - - t h i s Neander tha l ' s mtDNA was so d i s t i n c t from modernhuman mtDNA t h a t modern humans could not be der ived from i t . The po in t ofcoalescence , i f one could be determined accura te ly, was es t imated t o bec i r c a 800,000 ya, i . e . , th e female ances t ra l t o both Neanderthal and usmust have l i ved dur ing what has been genera l ly regarded as l a t e r phases ofHomo e r e c t u s .

Bas ica l ly, t h i s i s what Rebecca Cann has been saying fo r t h e pas t 10yea r s . In t h i s she appears t o have won b ig because a most c r u c i a l ands t a r t l i n g pos tu la t e of he r theory - - t h a t no evidence of spec ia l i npu t sfrom Neanderthal ex i s t ed - - has been confirmed where i t counts , on

Neander tha l ' s own mtDNA. In cur ren t American usage we might say: " I knewE v e - - and Lady Neanderthal i s no Eve." (Tha t ' s becoming a c l i che remark) .Please r e c a l l what we discussed in MT-29 (p.2 e t seq . )

" .The g i s t of i t i s t h a t around780,000 yea r s ag o ( reckoned by a'new technique ' of geomagneticda t ing ) a d i f f e r e n t kind of hominidl i ved in I b e r i a . I t seems t o bea n c e s t r a l t o Neander ta l bu t no ti t s e l f t h e expected Hoo e r e c t u s .

I I

" h e Spanish team has dec la redt h a t t h e i r f o s s i l men r ep resen t anew spec ie s o f Hominid younger thane rec tus genera l ly bu t o lde r thanneande r tha l o r modern man. They andsome o the r s claim t h a t t h i s newspec ies , t o be c a l l e d Ho.a an tecess o r, i s a n c e s t r a l f o r su re t oneander tha l and very l i k e l y t o Homosapiens sapiens . ...(Then l a t e r - -> ) "Let us ske tchb r i e f l y th e competing schemes proposed t i l now in our phylogeny. LetH. = Homo, n = neande r tha l , s = sapan t = an tecesso r, e r = e r e c t u s ,H.h. = Heide lberg man.(1) H.er - - -> H.n - - -> H.ss(2) H.er - - -> H.n (Europe)

n - - -> H.ss (Afr ica)(3) H.er - - -> H.ant - - -> H.n

" " - - -> H.ss

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(4) H.er - - -> H.ant - - -> H.nH.er - - -> H.er2 - - -> H.ss

(5) H.er - -> H.h - -> H.n--> H.ss

No doubt (2) i s th e dominant modelnowadays. But e i t h e r (3) or (4)should replace i t , i f H.ant holdsup wel l as a t axon . "

(Then Rosal ind Harding e t a l ' sr epor t ) --> "Summary. A 3-kb regionencompassing th e B-globin gene hasbeen analyzed fo r a l l e l i c sequencepolymorphism in nine popula t ionsfrom Afr ica , Asia , and Europe. Aunique gene t r e e was cons t ruc t edfrom 326 sequences of 349 in th et o t a l sample. New maximum-l ikel ihood methods fo r analyzing genet r e e s on t h e bas i s of coalescencetheory have been used. The mostr ecen t common ances to r of the aglobin gene t r e e i s a sequencefound only in Afr ica and es t imatedt o have a r i sen -800,000 years ago.There i s no evidence fo r an expone n t i a l expansion ou t o f a b o t t l e -necked founding popula t ion , . "

I t i s hard t o ignore th e pe rs i s t e n t date of 800,000 more or


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l e s s which i s assoc ia t ed with t heset h r e e t h i n g s , t o wit , the Ibe r i anf o s s i l s , th e new B-globin gene ana l y s i s , and th e new ' coa l e scence 'fo r Neanderthal and us ( H . s . s . ) .Poss ib ly t h i s i s a coinc idence .Maybe i t suppor ts new schemes,

involv ing Homo an teces so r. lQuiensabe? ( /wak 'n i beeka / 'God knows' .Oromo)

What i s no t suppor ted , how-eve r, and t h e r e f o r e o s t e n s i b l yf a l s i f i e d , i s "mul t i reg iona l i sm" o rthe " r i s i n g t i d e l i f t s a l l boats"theory of modern human evolu t ion;o r a t l e a s t th e pos tu la t ed descento f modern Europeans and th e r e s t ofth e Caucasoid Realm from Neandert h a l s . Ah, but was i t t e s t e d ? (Seebelow) Maryel len Ruvolo sa id ( inSCIENCE) "You c a n ' t prove [H.n . ]were a sepa ra t e spec ie s from j u s tt h i s sequence, but i t ' s veryun l ike ly they con t r ibu ted t o th emodern gene poo l . "

The l e s s e r i tem of preh i s to rywas th e s tunning d iscovery o f Eve ' svery foo t p r i n t s on a beach in ext reme southern Afr i ca , nea r th eCape of Good Hope. And dated t o117,000 ya , j u s t about th e r i g h tt ime. Wow! Although we d id haveevidence o f modern humans in SouthAfr ica ( e . g . , Klass i e s Mouth), th eda te s were somewhat d i spu ted andth e c l a s s i f i c a t i o n a b i t wobbly.But now we had c l e a r evidence t h a tEve and he r t r i b e extended from th ebottom of Afr ica t o th e top (Qafzehin I s r a e l ) i n th e mil l enn ia before10 0 kya. That i s a 6000 mile spreadand very hard t o blow away.

Th e Nat iona l Geographic Soc ie ty (USA) which had funded much ofth e archeologica l work was contentt o say t h a t th e foo t p r i n t s probab ly belonged t o Eve and t h a t t h e i rt roops had l oca t ed th e human homel and . There was very g r e a t pub l i ci t y given t o t hese foo t p r i n t s andth e a l ready very r i c h NGS milkedth e discovery f o r every th ing they

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could g e t ou t o f i t . I t was in f a c tso hyped up, so b o a s t f u l , so modernAmerican, t h a t r eac t ion s e t in a l -most from the beginning of the TVbroadcas ts . ( In a l a t e r e ra the NGSmay want to be ashamed o f t h i swhole episode! The b l a t a n t commerc-

i a l exp lo i t a t ion of an i nhe ren t lyshaky archeologica l s i t e i s su re lyreprehens ib le ; fo r a respec ted' s c i e n t i f i c ' soc ie ty to do i t = no nbuono.)

Ordinary fo lk wondered ~ yo ucould t e l l ~ th e foo t p r i n t sbelonged t o . Walking along th ebeach i n Ipswich, I asked manypeople what they could t e l l fromt he foo t p r i n t s i n the sand ( f i rm,wet a reas ) . Mostly they wonderedp o l i t e l y how such an od d c rea tu re(me) eve r go t on th e beach in th ef i r s t p lace . Some e x c e l l e n t nonverbal communication! My wife wasmuch more e x p l i c i t when I t o l d he rabout th e NGS a r t i c l e . "Pooh!" andthen "Baloney!" was about th e sumof her comments. F i n a l l y, I askeds t a l w a r t & r e l i a b l e David Pilbeam,a f ine paleoanthropologis t , i f welaymen were j u s t too ignoran t t ot e l l an o ld human foot p r i n t fromone made by a H. e r e c t u s o r Neande r t h a l . E s s e n t i a l l y he agreed withmy wife , expla in ing t h a t he hadbeen consul ted on th e mat ter andhad advised NGS n o t t o publ i sh th es t u f f . There i s a l so doubt aboutth e da t ing because t h e r e was almostno se r ious s c i e n t i f i c con ten t amidth e hype. How was th e dat ing done,e t c . ?

Never the less , th e NGS's hypeand hypothes i s may very wel l bet r u e ! could be!

Between th e hypothes i s and theempir ica l t e s t Cdatal s tands theIns t rument .

As i s very well-known inphys ics and astronomy, one has tocons ide r th e ins t ruments whenjudging i f a working hypothes i s i st r u e o r no t . The not ion of the

- - -~ ~ - ~ - - ~ - ~

- - -


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ins t ruments was c a r r i e d f a r t h e r byphi losophers of sc i ence , so t h a troughly th e not ion now means a l lt hose t h ings which can prevent th ea c t u a l ( l o g i c a l ) t e s t of an hypot h e s i s from occu r r ing . These t h ingsinc lude th e mathematics o r l og ic of

der iv ing consequences from a theorysuch t h a t the consequences (o rpred ic t ions ) can be confrontedempi r i ca l ly.

Example: "Our theory, based oncomputer s imula t ions , pred ic t s t h a tt h i s year many hurr icanes w i l l h i tthe Caribbean and e a s t e r n USA,caus ing g r e a t damage." Sorry, i twas a q u i e t season . Theory wasf a l s i f i e d bu t probably due t oe r r o r s i n c a l c u l a t i o n in th ecomputer s imula t ions .

In th e case of Neande r tha l ' smtDNA a hos t of nas ty l i t t l ef a c t o r s , such as contamina t ion byth e Munich team i t s e l f , th e t e s tt ubes , th e measuring equipment,e t c e t e r a e t c e t e r a , and then thegene t i c c a l c u l a t i o n s themselves ,a l l could conceal th e t r u e mtDNAand t he ana lys i s of i t . Smallwonder t h a t team PA&bo was i n av i r t u a l neuros is about t h e i rt e chn iques .

And j u s t because they haveaddressed th e ins t rument problem sohero ica l ly t h e i r col leagues a ret ending t o accep t th e f ind ings . Nodoubt someone even tua l ly w i l le x t r a c t more DNA from anotherNeanderthal and t h a t w i l l be a t e s to f th e ins t rumenta l phase of th ework, as wel l as th e gene t i c . Asboth Ruvolo and Harding mightp r e d i c t , we must no t expec t t h a to the r autosomal o r Y-chroosomet e s t s w i l l give th e same r e s u l t s ,i f we manage t o g e t them fromNeanderthals o r whoever. Yet th ebas i c hypothes is must somehowsu rv ive both autosomal and Y-chromosomal t e s t s , i f we a re t obe l i eve i t , i f we a re t o see i t asconfirmed (so f a r ) . I f mtDNA showst h a t Neanderthals and modern humanshave a common ances to r much e a r l i e rthan our c a l c u l a t e d Eve, bu t

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autosomal DNA f a i l s to suppor tt h i s , then what a re we t o bel ieve?(Probably the mtDNA r e s u l t s a reb e t t e r , as Ruvolo argues . )

Whether or no t t he re i s aspeck of d i r t on our t e lescope doesmake a d i f f e r e n c e .

In the South Afr ican case i ti s c l e a r l y reasonable to supposet h a t foo t p r i n t s t h a t look j u s tl i k e a modern woman's beach p r i n t sdid in f a c t belong t o a modernhuman female . I t i s also reasonablet o suppose t h a t the da t ing i sc o r r e c t s ince r e spons ib l e SouthAfr ican a rcheo log i s t s were named.But s ince none of th e se r ious lys c i e n t i f i c r e p o r t s have come ou t ,one i s a l so being qu i t e reasonablet o suspec t t h a t t h e r e might havebeen an ins t rumenta l e r r o r. We wi l ls imply have t o wai t !

Sources: The e x t r a c t i o n of DNA froma f o s s i l Neanderthal by SvantePaabo and h i s Munich team was r e -por ted mult ip ly, inc luding on Amer-i can TV. For a good w r i t t e n summarysource see "Research News: DNA Froman Ext inc t Human" in SCIENCE vo l .277, 11 Ju ly 1997: 176-77. Theo r i g i n a l d e t a i l e d r e p o r t came ou tin CELL on the same da te , a journa lchosen because of i t s exac t ings tandards , as a way of showing theprec i s ion of the t eam's work.Svante was jo ined by col leagueMathias Krings a t U/Munich and twofrom Penn S t a t e , Anne Stone andMark Stoneking. However, deserv ingmuch c r e d i t fo r i n i t i a t i n g th eprocess and provid ing the f o s s i lwere Hans-Ekhard Joachim (Rheini sches Landesmuseum) and RalfSchmitz (Rhine Sta te Dep ' t . ofArcheology).

Eve ' s foot p r i n t s in SouthAfr ica were repor ted in a f u l la r t i c l e with co lo r p ic tu res in theNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE t h i ssummer (exac t re ference misplaced)and th e world news se rv ices of manys o r t s .


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Stone Tools an d the Evolu t ion ofModern Humans

Gracias , Marta Mirazon Lahr! Avery impor tan t paper by RobertFoley and Marta appeared in th eCAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

t h i s yea r. We nea r ly missed i tbecause we were not scanningj ou rna l s fo r t h i s i s sue , no t withany p a r t i c u l a r system. Thei rs i sf a r more s i g n i f i c a n t than mostpapers because o f i t s scope , i t sau thor i ty, and i t s t r u e syn thes i so f tw o o r t h ree f i e l d s . I t s t i t l ei s "Mode 3 Technologies and theEvolu t ion o f Modern Humans"; i t ' sin CAJ 7:1 (1997) , 3-36. L e t ' s god i r e c t l y t o th e ABSTRACT:

"The o r i g i n s and evo lu t ion o fmodern humans has been th e dominanti n t e r e s t o f palaeoanthropology fo rth e l a s t decade, and much archaeol o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n has beens t ruc tu red around t h e var iousi s sues a s soc ia t ed with whetherhumans have a r e c e n t Afr ican or ig ino r a more anc ien t one. While th ea rchaeo log ica l record has been usedt o suppor t o r r e f u t e var iousaspec t s o f th e t h e o r i e s , and t oprovide a behavioura l framework fo rd i f f e r e n t b io log ica l models, t he rehas been l i t t l e a t tempt t o employth e evidence of s tone t o o l t echnology t o unravel phylogenet ic r e l at i onsh ips . Here we examine th e e v idence t h a t th e evo lu t ion o f modernhumans i s i n t e g r a l l y r e l a t e d t o th edevelopment o f th e Upper Palaeol i t h i c and s i m i l a r t echno log ie s ,an d conclude t h a t t h e r e i s only aweak r e l a t i o n s h i p . In c o n t r a s tt he re i s a s t rong a s s o c i a t i o n between th e evo lu t ion and spread o fmodern humans and Grahame C l a r k ' sMode 3 t echno log ie s ( the MiddleStone Age/Pa laeo l i th i c ) . The imp l ic a t i o n s o f t h i s fo r th e evo lu t ionof Neanderthals , t h e mul t ip l ep a t t e r n o f human d i s p e r s a l s , andth e na tu re o f cogn i t ive evo lu t ion ,a re cons ide red . " [End o f ABSTRACT]

Page 4 o f t h e i r paper has a

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marvelous summary of "The modernhuman or ig ins debate - - th e s t o r yso f a r " . Small p r i n t and an amazingamount of in format ion on one pagesums up t h e p a s t decade very wellindeed; and t h a t i s only backgroundfo r the r e s t of t h e i r a r t i c l e ! Now

t o b r i e f l y summarize t h e i r conclusi ons , immediately i n s i s t i n g howevert h a t one should consume th e wholea r t i c l e . I t i s t h a t r i c h . Br ie f ly,th e core o f t h e i r conclus ions :"From the po in t o f view of theor ig ins o f modern humans debate ,th e key conclus ion we would draw i st h a t the development o f MiddleStone Age t echnologies in Afr icaaround 250 Kyr i s of g r e a t e r un iversa l s ign i f i cance than the o r ig ins o f t h e Upper P a l a e o l i t h i c . Theformer may mark a major cogn i t ivedevelopment assoc ia t ed with th eb i o l o g i c a l changes l ead ing t o th eevo lu t ion o f modern humans; thel a t t e r i s merely a r eg iona l s h i f ti n behavioural p a t t e r n s . Contras t sbetween the Middle and Upper Palaeo l i t h i c should no t be underes t imated; they r ep resen t a s i g n i f i c a n td i scon t inu i ty in the archaeologica lrecord . But a t a g loba l sca le cont i n u i t i e s of Mode 3 i ndus t r i e s a l sooccur. Rather than undermining th e"Out o f Afr ica" model o f modernhuman o r i g i n s , t hese c o n t i n u i t i e si n f a c t provide f u r t h e r suppor t byso lv ing var ious anomal ies . " Enoughsa id fo r now. (See below: MartaMirazon Lahr)

Once Again: Thosestunning Ear ly pa te s from Aus t ra l i a

As we repor ted in MT-27:2-3,th e s i t e o f Jinmium in nor thernA u s t r a l i a i s c r u c i a l t o most hypot heses concerning th e evolu t ion ofmodern humans. To rehearse the g i s tof i t i s t o rehearse the unprecedented da te s o f more than 11 5 kya,poss ib ly as much as 17 5 kya. Suchda tes would n e c e s s a r i l y s h i f ta t t e n t i o n from Afr ica t o Aus t ra l i aand by imp l i ca t ion t o Southeas tAs ia . But we s a i d : "Key ques t ions


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which a r i s e a re t h ree : (a) werethey r e a l l y moderns?, (b) was i tr e a l l y a r t ? , and (c) above a l l , a reth e da tes r e a l l y t rue? . Sincet he da t ing i s by thermoluminesence,a sometimes unsure procedure, thenperhaps th e ' w i l d ' da tes of 116-176

kya a re bogus? I t has happenedbefore t h a t such da tes were o f f bya l o t , always too too o l d . Yes, bu tthey have a l so been r i g h t ! And wedo no t know which i t i s t h i s t ime -- r i g h t o r wrong!"

So, one year l a t e r , a f t e ri n t ens ive s tudy by s e v e r a l teams,i t i s now qu i t e c l e a r t h a t - - wes t i l l do no t know! The problem, ort h e exqu i s i t e t e c h n i c a l i t i e s ofthermoluminescence (TL) da t ing , hasindeed spread l i k e some purplefungus t o o the r well-known archeol o g i c a l s i t e s , espec ia l ly t o someo f our most va luab le l i k e Qafzeh inI s r a e l and Katanda in Congo. Thel a t t e r tw o a re assoc ia t ed with OferBar-Yosef and Alison Brooks r e spect i v e l y who have bu t t r e s sed t h e i r TLda tes with e lec t ron sp in resonance(ESR) da tes and o t h e r s . As everyoneknows, t hese can be cor re la ted withrad io-carbon (C 14 ) only up t o 40kya a f t e r which th e C1 4 da tes a reu n r e l i a b l e .

The f a c t t h a t TL d a t e s o f 50-60 kya in s i m i l a r rock s h e l t e r s innor thern Aus t ra l i a have been obt a ined by Richard Roberts (La TrobeU.) sugges ts t h a t very pa ins t ak inguse of TL da t ing can produce morecogent r e s u l t s . Nigel Spooner (Aust r a l i a n Nat iona l U.) has even sugges t ed t h a t th e Jinmium da tes maybe a s lo w as 10 kya, al though t h eC14 da tes appear t o v i t i a t e t h a tconclus ion s ince 10,000 yea r s i s ar e l i a b l e da te in rad io-carbont e rms .

So yo u see t h a t th e TL da t ingin Aus t ra l i a i s no t r i v i a l mat ter !

sources : For a long c a r e f u l d i scuss ion see Ann Gibbons "Doubts overSpec tacu la r Dates" in SCIENCE, v o l .278, 10 October, 1997:220-222.

6

S t i l l Arguing OverDogs. Genes. an d Dates

An exchange of l e t t e r s inSCIENCE recent ly showed t h a t sharpdisagreements s t i l l e x i s t amongs tudents of th e canine domest ica

t i o n of humanoids (o r i s i t v iceversa?) Pr imar i ly t he i s sues comedown t o th e r e l a t ionsh ip withwolves, also t roub le t e l l i n g thed i ff e rence between wolf bones an ddog bones in t h e f o s s i l record . Wes t i l l see dates as lo w as 14 ky aand as high as 135 kya fo r pro todog (domest ica ted) . One c l e a r argument i s t h a t t he re i s a dog ' c l a d e 'd i s t i n c t from t h a t of wolves an dcoyotes , such t h a t t he re was bas ica l l y only one domest ica t ion , poss ib ly of a Middle Eastern var i e ty ofwolf , r a t h e r than mul t ip l e domest ica t ions as some have proposed. Ano the r argument which s t r i k e s me ass ingu la r ly uninformed was t h a thuman s o c i e t i e s around 5000 t o12,000 years ag o "would no t thenhave been capable of keeping dogssepa ra t e from wolves " Yet i twould have been qu i t e easy in manyt r o p i c a l a reas because dogs wouldnot have found any wolves t o keepaway from! Like most of Afr ica andAus t ra l a s i a .

Source: Let t e r s in SCIENCE,vol .278, 10 October, 1997. Unt i lt he r ecen t proposa ls fo r proto-dogof 13 5 kya, t he re was a gross lackof f i t between b io log ica l cum a rcheo log ica l e s t ima tes of canine dome s t i c a t i o n an d th e conclusions ofl i n g u i s t i c r e sea rch showing ancest r a l names fo r dogs in l a rge t axal i k e Nos t ra t i c , Amerind, an d probably Borean. The conundrum i s t h a tl i n g u i s t s cannot prove th e ex i s t ence of o ld dogs merely because theyhave words fo r such, while archeol o g i s t s cannot deny the ex i s t enceof o ld dogs merely because t hey 'veno t found t h e bones y e t . A love lypuzz le ! . But no problem, s inceth e language evidence i s usual lyignored in th e m a t e r i a l i s t bent ofmodern b i o l o g i s t s & a rcheo log i s t s .


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MEMBERS' ACTIVITIES & COMMENTS:LIMITED AND PRELIMINARY NEWS

Gyula Decsy (U/Indiana) went t oP a r i s t h i s summer t o a grand assemb ly of l i n g u i s t s . At t h a t meetinghe de l ive red a p e t i t i o n from both

ASLIP and LOS (Language Orig insSocie ty) t o th e French assoc ia t ionand read papers about t h e i r a c t i v -i t i e s t o a s p e c i f i c ses s ion of th emeet ings . His r epor t i s t h a t th ep e t i t i o n s f a i l e d t o r ece ive enoughvotes t o pass . He does no t wish tod i scuss th e mat t e r fu r the r i n publ i c . We cannot escape th e conclusion t h a t organized French l i n g u i s t -i c s , o r more prec i se ly one i n t e r -na t iona l panel o f l i n g u i s t s meetingi n France, re fused t o l i f t th e banon d i scuss ions o f language o r i g i n s ,e s t a b l i s h e d c i r c a 13 0 years ago.Mon d ieu , c ' e s t fromage!

Jan Vansina (U/Wisconsin) . I mustr e p o r t t h a t Jan , one o f our g r e a t -e s t h i s t o r i a n s , s t rong ly d i sag reeswith th e p i c t u r e of t h e Lemba p r esented in MT-28. Not only does heb e l i e v e t h a t th e Lemba can be exp la ined qu i t e adequate ly i n o rd inary h i s t o r i c a l t e rms , qua Bantus.The Lemba a re not a c a s t e nor a rethey 'Venda ' , being "ord inarypeople from th e Zimbabwe p la t eauc.1400/1450+ who became Muslim during th e E.Coas t t r ade ( a t Sena mostl i k e l y ) and as t r a d e r s spread a l lover th e p la t eau but p o s t c .1560 /1600 were shunned + r e t r e a t e d t o -wards th e Limpopo. so I am not toog u l l i b l e r e Y-Chromosome and wai tfo r more. As t o Jews in Eas t A f r ican c o a s t pre-1500 , S.D.Goi t e in ' sGeniza which t r a c e s Jewish t r ade toInd ia and Somalia has no t r a c e ofthem a t l e a s t fo r c.960-1250+. No timposs ib le (absence o f source i sno t proof o f absence) b u t no t l i k e -l y , given t h e weal th o f th e Geniza.Moreover t h e r e i s no s ign a t a l lt h a t any o f t h i s has ANYTHING t o dowith th e r i s e of o ld Zimbabwe(c .1250) o r i t s ances to r Mapungubwe." There i s no g r e a t e r Bantu i s t

7

than Jan Vansina, al though I suspec t t h a t he has underes t imatedwhat we can l ea rn from th e Y-Chromosome. Never the less the Lemba s to ryi s now in l imbo. Or purga tory?

on th e mat ter of th e Pygmieso f th e r a in f o r e s t : "Blench r e -

covers Hiernaux, bu t given paleoc l i m a t i c h i s to ry of th e fo res t s(qu i t complex + seerefuges) [ s i c ]d i spu te of whether t he se peoplecould l i v e i n th e f o r e s t s (poorbiomasses) o r a t i t s f r inges only,one has (a) t h e r e a r e people t he rewel l before say 2000/3000 BC, (b)perhaps in f o r e s t s , perhaps onf r inges and (c) they most l i k e l yd id NOT form on e s i n g l e popula t ion(demog.) o r a s ing le language groupb u t d i f f e r e n t ones a l though (d)t h e r e were c o n t a c t s apparent lyranging from Ubangi to Uele - I tu r i ?FINALLY, modern hunter ga the re r sca l l ed ' pygmies ' a re NOT a l l descendants of those o l d i e s . A goodnumber of them a re farmers whoabandoned t h e i r f i e l d s o r perhapsf i sh ing people , e t c . This s t u f f r equ i re s someone t o r e a l l y s i t downand work th e a l t e r n a t i v e s o u t . "[Apologies t o Jan fo r not g iv inghi m a chance t o t i d y up th epunc tua t ion . ]

Apropos our discuss ion ofborrowing in MT-28: "This d i scuss ion misses th e t e r t i u s a l i q u i d :i n t e r n a l innovat ion , th e mostimpor tan t b i t fo r h i s to r i ans !'Borrowing ' of course i s a kind ofinnovat ion , bu t i t i s probably nomore common than t h a t o t h e r kind oinnovat ion : i n t e r n a l invent ion ofe i t h e r new forms der ived from o ldeones + new meanings o r o ld formswith new meanings. This r e a l l y doeno t need t o be s t r e s sed much more .. . . I t i s th e innovat ions r a t h e rthan th e borrowing which a re mostprec ious fo r cu l tu re h i s t o r y a tl e a s t i n th e s h o r t e r range ( l a s tfew m i l l e n n i a ) . "

F ina l ly : "As to family t r e e ssee Bantu today ( Journa l of Afr icanHis tory 1995) where in f a c t a wavemodel does much b e t t e r than a t r e e


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because i t i s such a d i a l e c t cont inuum. That does no t mean t h a tt r e e s a re use le s s but t h a t theyshould be tempered by wave modeling , which i s not done much by longrangers . Yet wave models accountfo r obvious cases where one l angu

age has more than one ances tor(Horror! Mischsprache! ! ! ) whichoccurs in s i t u a t i o n s where th eances to r s a re both c lose t o eacho t h e r in a d i a l e c t continuum (Goodcase in Bantu and modernEngl i sh) . "

Zowie! Jan sa id a l o t which i sworth d i scuss ing a t l ength . Butl a t e r !But I must po in t out t h a t we d idcover, indeed s t r e s s , h i s i n t e r n a linnovat ion bu t under a d i f f e r e n tl a b e l . In MT-28:16 read: "St rangelyenough, e thnology ' s r e a l counterp a r t t o d i ffus ion was INVENTIONwhich has been th e c h a r a c t e r i s t i cs t ance o f so much of th e 'newarcheology ' and th e many ' e cof r e a k s ' who see every th ing der iv ingfrom systems and con tex t s . Anotherl o g i c a l a l t e r n a t i v e was HERITAGE o ra l l t he gene t i c t r a i t s of body andlanguage. And c u l t u r e ( e . g . , r e l i gion , song s t y l e , games, common law,e t c . ) . " Does invent ion not equali n t e r n a l innovat ion?

Wil f r i ed Schuhmacher. (Dated January 1996, one o f th e o l d e r messages . The argument i s important t oSoutheas t Asia and Bened ic t ' s work.We w i l l l e t Southeas t A s i a n i s t' p r o s ' respond o r no t , s ince Paulcannot answer now.)

"Pro to-Aust ro-Tai *p+l , L, rFact o r Fantasy?

Paul K. Benedic t , on t h e b a s i s ofevidence from Southeas t -As ian mainland languages ( e spec ia l ly Kadai ,a l so inc luding Ta i ) , has pos tu la t edfo r h is , o r PAT,t he ex i s t ence of var ious consonantc l u s t e r s with *1 /L / r as second e l ement (where th e two l i q u i d s d i f f e rin place o f a r t i c u l a t i o n , v i z .' f r o n t ' versus ' b a c k ' ) , which havebeen s impl i f i ed (and un i f i ed ) i n

8

proto-Austronesian (PAN) (and o the rlanguages) .

The fol lowing remarks arecentered around th e 'unusual soundchange ' of PAT *p l , p r > PAN * t .E.g . , PAT *(m)lalaq ' e a r t h ' >PAN*tana? ; PAT *mapra ' e y e ' > PAN

*mata. (As fo r PAT *PL > PAN * t , adevelopment pL > p l > t may be a s sumed.) Regarding the Sapi r d i s c i p le ' s (PKB) recons t ruc t ion ofp+sonorant > t , keeping th e s topfrom the p an d corona l i ty from thesonorant , from a pure ly phonetic( a r t i c u l a t o r y ) po in t of view -r e c a l l i n g a l l what my esteemedt eache res s (Professor E li FischerJoergensen) t aught me about 30years ago - - such a sound changesounds susp ic ious . "

(Schuhmacher, c o n t i n u e d : Ed.)"Adding Aus t roas i a t i c (AA), i . e . ,t ack l ing t he i s sue with Aust r ic -th e supers tock f i r s t proposed byWilhelm Schmidt in 1906 and r ecen tly dug up aga in by I .T.Pe j ros andLa Vaughn H.Hayes - - does not giveu s , i t seems, new i n s i g h t as recons t r u c t i n g Proto-AA c l u s t e r s i s nota s t r a igh t fo rward and easy mat ter :In many cases , a l so AA has t , o rwhat we see as c l u s t e r s in th emodern languages were probablyCV+l,L.r sequences a t th e proto-AAl e v e l .

Therefore , though not asu l t ima r a t i o n [ s i c ] , I want t opo in t t o th e p o s s i b i l i t y of a combina tory sound change:

PAT (Ben) PAN' d i e ' *(aa - )p lay *matay' e y e ' *mapra *mata' l i v e ' *qubr ip *?u[d] ip' e a r t h ' * ( a ) p l a l a q t ana?

PAT{Sch) a a t l a y*matra*qudrip

a t l a l a q(?)

I . e . , in the case of th e presenceof a PAT (Schuhmacher) i n i t i a l If i n a l l a b i a l consonant , progressi ve / r eg ress ive ass imi l a t ion wouldexpla in th e occurence of anotherl a b i a l s top in Kadai (and maybeeven th e d i f f e r e n t AA r e f l e x e s )whereas th e second ( sonorant ) e l ement would have been l o s t in PAN.Quod demonstrandum e s t in Macro-

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


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Aus t ra l i c : Cp., e . g . PAT (Schuhmacher *matra ' e y e ' and Aus t ra li an : proto-Paman *maari ; IndoPac i f i c : Tasmanian (ME) *mongte(na)' e y e ' - - with no l a b i a l involved .The ' unusua l sound change ' t h e r efore would t u r n o u t t o be r e a l i t t e r[ s i c ] a combinatory sound change ."[End of Schuhmacher quote . ED.]

Del l Hymes (U/Virg in ia wrote a longand very h e l p f u l l e t t e r about th eproblems r a i sed in MT-28 about th ef o s s i l man of 9000 ya and Umat i l lat r i b e of Oregon t h a t wished t o prot e c t th e f o s s i l as one of t h e i r anc e s t o r s . Del l i s a world a u t h o r i t yon Oregon and i t s neighborhood. Toth e ques t ion of what l a rg e r l i n g ui s t i c group th e Umat i l la belongedt o , Del l r e p l i e d t h a t Sahapt in wasth e answer. This makes th e Umat i l laa member of t h e g r e a t - - and n a t u ra l l y c o n t r o v e r s i a l - - Penut ianbranch of t h e North American subphylum o f Amerind. As Sahapt in th eUmat i l la could genera te a decentclaim of long long r e s idence inOregon o r t h e a r e a s around i t .Eschewing t h a t cont roversy, Del lgave a g r e a t dea l more in format ionabout t h e Umat i l la and t h e i r r e l a tions with whi te s , e t c . Too much toreproduce here b u t h i s l e t t e r canbe copied fo r i n t e r e s t e d members.(I 'm su re he has no o b j e c t i o n t ot h a t ; i f he does , h e ' l l t e l l me!)

Marta Mirazon Lahr has long s inces e t t l e d in t o Braz i l , th e g i a n tcount ry border ing her na t ive l andof Argent ina . Since Marta has g ivenus such valuable m a t e r i a l befo re ,and hence members may wish to wri t et o her, we give her address here .MM L 1

Departamento de Biologia ,I n s t i t u t e de Biocienc ias 1 Univers idade de Sao Paolo 1 Rua do Matao,Travessa '15 , N321 I 05508-900,c iudade Univers i t a r i a 1 Sao Paolo 1Braz i l .

We j u s t bare ly go t he r a r t i c l ebe fo re p r i n t i n g t h i s Newsle t te r, sowe had no t ime t o g e t permiss ionst o reproduce from Cambridge. We

9

hope to do so i n t he near fu tu re .Sub jec t t o th e b les s ing of ou rPres iden t and V.P. s , we would wishto have a MT*Treatment of t h i spaper as soon as poss ib le .

I t needs a l so t o be sa id t h a t(a) much of t h e i r hypothes i s wasan t i c ipa ted in Ofer Bar-Yosef ' s r emarks made in MT-23, (b ) t h e i rfocus i s on 'human o r i g i n s ' , no t o' l anguage o r i g i n s ' an d (c) i t i sf a i r to say t h a t language evidenceplays v i r t u a l l y no p a r t i n t h e i rev iden t i a ry base . This i s b a s i c a l l yhow th e p a s t decade of human o r i gin s r e sea rch has proceeded; language i s subsumed under a genera lcogn i t ive /behav iou ra l t r a i t a longwith c u l t u r e , bu t th e conclus ionso f l i n g u i s t s tend t o be ignored ,desp i t e Renfrew & LL C-S. Clea r ly,th e b e l i e f of most l i n g u i s t s t h a tthey have l i t t l e t o say about deeppreh i s to ry i s fundamental ly respon s i b l e f o r t h i s cogn i t ive c a v i t y.Our f r i ends in archeology and p a l eoanthropology do no t know what t odo with us - - and many a re f r i end lyand i n t e r e s t e d - - because of ourse l f - imposed t aboos . Oui, encore ,c ' e s t fromage!

IOBITUARIES

II t i s with a s u b s t a n t i a lsadness t h a t I w r i t e t hese b r i e fn o t i c e s . In most of th e cases f u l lb i b l i o g r a p h i e s and biographies havebeen publ i shed e l sewhere . Or th ein format ion was s imply no t a v a i lab le t o us t o i t s f u l l e s t e x t e n t .Consequent ly, t hese no t i ces a rew r i t t e n c a s u a l l y, with l e s s a t t e nt i o n to th e more formal t h ingsusua l ly pu t i n to o b i t u a r i e s , such

as good b i r t h / d e a t h d a t e s , mar r iages , educa t ion and such , bu t morea t t e n t i o n t o th e s i g n i f i c a n t fromour s t andpo in t . The major except ionw i l l be John Kerns whose ob i tua rywas w r i t t e n by Allan Bomhard.

We do i n v i t e ASLIPers to sendcomments smal l o r l a rge t o augmentwhat we say here about our goodco l l eagues .


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Paul K. Benedic t . A pr ince of aman. To say - - gentleman andscho la r - - i s not t o be t r i t e ; het r u l y was both . PK or PeeKay as h isfamily c a l l e d him made major cont r i b u t i o n s t o Southeas t Asian preh i s t o r y in s e t t i n g up Austro-Thai ,

a c r u c i a l taxon fo r th e r eg ion . Hisunravel ing of Siamese (Thai) fromChinese in p a r t i c u l a r and SinoTibe tan in gene ra l was one of theg r e a t enabl ing hypotheses in h i s to r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s , f r ee ing a mist aken c l a s s i f i c a t i o n from t h e bondsof deep o ld borrowings and i n f luence . The b io -gene t i c s of the Chinesenor th - sou th c l i n e s which madel i t t l e sense e a r l i e r became muchmore i n t e l l i g i b l e when i t was r e a li zed t h a t th e south Chinese p a t t e rns were no t based on myster iousa l i en abor ig ines bu t on a l a rge andvigorous absorbed people - - bothformer an d cur ren t Daic speakers -who had made many va luab le c o n t r ibu t ions t o e a r l y Chinese i t s e l f .

His con t r ibu t ions t o SinoTibetan s t u d i e s were se r ious . HisConspectus or r econs t ruc t ion o fproto-S-T has remained a s t anda rdr e fe rence book. His i deas on t h ei n t e r n a l c l a s s i f i c a t i o n of S- T havea l so been i n f l u e n t i a l . I t was ont h i s sub jec t t h a t I most se r ious lymisread h is message l a s t yea r whenI thought he was favor ing Georgevan Driem's complete r eo rgan iza t ionof S-T. Afte r I presented th e vanDriem r ev i s ion t o ASLIPers withenthusiasm - - because Paul had t o l dme about i t - - some months passedbefore Paul mentioned t h a t he wasr a t h e r miffed t h a t I had rep lacedh is taxonomy with George ' s . I tseems he s t i l l thought h is own was

b e t t e r , bu t being t he b ig -hea r t edfel low he was, he had a l so hera ldedGeorge 's work.

That a happy man, f u l l of jo iede v iv re , respected by co l l eaguesa t th e many conferences he a t t ended, comple te ly recovered from e a r li e r h e a r t su rge ry, loved by fami lyand f r i ends , t h a t such a man shouldbe k i l l e d in a s tup id automobile

- - - - - - - - - -

10

acc iden t (not h i s f a u l t ) seems adamned bloody shame!He had j u s t tu rned 85 and was onh is way t o the v a s t wide beach ofDaytona t o have a good walk an d aswim. No doubt capr i c ious Fatepoin ted i t s f i c k l e f inge r a t himt h a t day, Ju ly 24, 1997. F-- -ed bythe f i c k l e f inge r o f Fate .

ANYWAY, l e t us move on. Suchwould be P a u l ' s a t t i t u d e . Anyway,what e l s e t o say? Like a minor i tyof l i n g u i s t s and long r ange r s , Paulthought of himsel f as an anthropol o g i s t f i r s t an d foremost . He wast r a ined in t h a t f i e l d by Americani s t s ( e . g . , Edward Sapi r ) who inc luded both l i n g u i s t i c s and h i s to ryin t h e i r purviews. Bu t t h a t was the1930s when 4 - f i e l d approaches s t i l lex i s t ed and were ac tua l ly fol lowed.I t was t h e anthropologica l viewp o i n t t h a t made Paul t o l e r a n t oflong ranging when he f i r s t encounte red us . That o r i e n t a t i o n plusP a u l ' s own exper iences in SEAsianh i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s where mightyconcepts l i k e Aus t r i c and MalayaPolynes ian were s tandard f a r e .

Yet in many ways Paul was af a i r l y conserva t ive long ranger,more l i k e t h e Muscovites in h isprede l i c t ion fo r recons t ruc tedforms and sound laws. His bes tbuddy in a l l t h i s was the conserva t i v e Matisoff of Berkeley, t o whomPaul l e f t h is l a rge language da tabase . In a sense Paul was also t o rnin r ecen t years between Mat i so ff ' si n c l i n a t i o n s and those of the ASLIPlong rangers . Paul f i rmly r e j ec tedth e Aus t r i c hypothes is because hebe l i eved t h a t th e few l e x i c a l looka l i k e s incorpora ted in th e evidencefo r Aus t r i c could be accounted fo r

by borrowings. In t h i s r e spec t hebecame more of an obs tac le t o f u rt h e r progress than anyth ing e l s e ;h is b a s i c s t ance was more l i k e t h a tof campbell o r Trask . In due courseh is younger co l l eagues , espec ia l lyBlus t , Hayes, and D i ff l o t h , had towork around him t o g e t t o Aus t r i c .But we must remember t h a t i t wast h e a t t e n t i o n t o borrowings t h a t


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had led t o h is f i r s t major breakthrough, t he sepa ra t ion of Thaifrom S-T.

S t i l l the boldness , aga in ak into th e Muscovi tes , prope l l ed himtowards th e ' J apanese i s Aust roThai ' hypothes is . Like grabbing

honey from an a l e r t h ive , Paularoused p len ty of oppos i t ion fromA l t a i c i s t s who had j u s t s e t t l e ddown t o i nco rpo ra t ing Japanese andKorean in t h e i r l a r g e r concept ionof A l t a i c . They went a f t e r hi m froma l l d i r e c t i o n s , s t ing ing mild lyhowever. What i s good t o no t i ce i st h a t Paul went about Japanese andAustro-Thai i s h i s t y p i c a l manner,depending pr imar i ly on pro to- formsand c a r e f u l reasoning about th eh i s t o r y of Japanese . Most r ecen t lyhe aga in conf ronted th e borrowingproblems of which Japanese i s asupreme example, having decidedt h a t th e A l t a i c i s t s had a po in t -t h e r e was a l o t o f Al ta i c inJapanese - - bu t dec id ing f u r t h e rt h a t those Alta ic i sms were borrowings o r sub-s t ra tum, whi le th eAust ro-Tha i - i sms were proper o ldcognates .

No doubt Japanese w i l l e n t e rth e 3rd mil lennium as a Mischsprache , much l i k e Mbugu (Ki-Ma7a)of Tanzania , with roughly equa lp a r t s from each of two g e n e t i c a l l ydivergent super-phyla . Contrary t oPaul , however, some of us scho la r sreckon t h a t Japanese en te red th ei s l ands as an E u r a s i a t i c languagewith s i s t e r Korean near by, bothakin t o A l t a i c , where JapaneseRyukyuan met a s t rong popula t ion ofAinu and sou the rne r s o f Austro-Thaipersuas ion who were absorbed even tu a l l y. Of course , Ainu i t s e l f i s

another problem b u tw e ' l l

sk ip t h a tfo r now. This i n t e r p r e t a t i o n basesi t s e l f more on archeology than anyt h ing e l s e ; many Japanese scho la r sagree .

P a u l ' s working methods wereno t s t u p i d , incompetent , misguidedo r p e c u l i a r, as some l i n g u i s t s a rewont to say. Paul was supremelyi n t u i t i v e even i f he could crank

11

ou t the r econs t ruc t ed forms andsound laws t o s a t i s f y th e pures tAryanology. His methods a re muchl i k e mine and, in l e s s e x p l i c i tways, very much l i k e Greenberg 'smass comparisons. Paul c a r r i e d inh is head a mass of da ta . When work

ing on a problem, he inspec ted moremasses of d a t a , formulated hypot heses , t e s t e d them i n t e r n a l l y,then s p a t ou t the conclus ions n icel y formulated in th e proper IndoEuropean manner.

He was very quick a t analyses ,even on data new to him. Once on av i s i t I showed hi m some comparat iveNomotic da ta which he promptly r educed t o a p r e f i x and a fol lowingbase ; roo t . For example, a s e r i e sfo r ' bone ' in th e forms ;mega ts ,muk'a t s , m i k ' i c , e t c . ; he immedia t e l y found a p r e f i x m- and a baseprobably in * k ' e t s . Before he go tf a r in comparing t h i s t o Aust roThai , I had t o t e l l him t h a t wea l r eady knew t h a t *mak ' -e t s wasc l o s e r t o th e t r u t h , based on compara t ive evidence fo r ' bone ' andt he ex i s t ence o f an o ld glued-ons u f f i x in ; - t s / . Some o the r s havemade the same mistake us ing t h i sOmotic d a t a , even some Afras iani s t s . so P a u l ' s quickness i s th epo in t of t h i s , no t h i s a b i l i t y t omake mis takes .

The above a l so i l l u s t r a t e sP a u l ' s marvelous conf idence . Oncehe had examined the da ta c a r e f u l l y,made up h i s mind, and formulatedth e theory he was very hard todissuade . P o l i t e l y, with humor,never offens ive ly, he s tood h isground calmly. On the ' bone ' d i scuss ion above Paul and I argued fo ran hour, with me f i n a l l y l o s ing mytemper and shout ing , before he conceded t h a t I probably knew moreabout Omotic than he d id . He nevereven r a i s e d h i s voice . A pr ince ofa fel low - - bu t with i ron on thei n s ide !

Paul could argue very capably.He once reminisced about h is c h i l dhood fami ly, b a s i c a l l y of 1920sweste rn New England, say ing t h a t

- - - - ~


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h i s f a the r h e a r t i l y encouraged th efami ly members t o debate t h ings a tsupper. The a b i l i t y t o debate wascher i shed by th e fami ly, a long withth e a b i l i t y t o s t ay reasonable andeven-tempered dur ing th e debate .What a r a t i o n a l background! Thisreminds me t h a t Paul was what th eGermans c a l l 'Landsman' t o me. Wecame from th e same a rea (west Conne c t i c u t ) , same e t h n i c i t y (Yankee)even probably r e l a t e d by marr iage ,same d i a l e c t , b u t not th e samer e l i g i o n as P a u l ' s family weref r ee - th inker s whi le mine weredevout P r o t e s t a n t s . We were no tencouraged t o debate o r s ing o renjoy ourse lves dur ing supper.

P a u l ' s wife : Mari lyn Benedic t ,104 River Lane, Ormond Beach,Flo r ida 32176, USA ( t e l . 904-441-2694) would love t o hear yourcomments, memories.

Rober t Betzron . Recent and unexpect e d . Robert wa s born in Budapest onNew Year ' s Eve, 1937. His wife t obe , G a b r i e l l a , was born on NewYear ' s Day. He died t h i s summer ashe approached age 60. He had beeni l l fo r seve ra l years and r e t i r e dfrom U/Cal i forn ia @ Santa Barbara,b u t h i s i l l n e s s had no p a r t i c u l a rmorbid i ty expec ta t ion a t t ached t oi t . So i t was not exac t ly a s u r p r ise bu t th e unexpec ted ly expec ted asi n many men in t h e i r 50s .

Think o f a mild-mannered manwith a s o f t Hungarian accen t , t a l king t o you p o l i t e l y in a f r i e n d l yway. Imagine t h a t he can hold t h a tsame conversa t ion with speakers ofmany o t h e r l anguages . I once go t acount o f h i s language s k i l l s andwas very impressed . Forgot how many

the re were.Robert had s tud ied in P a r i samong o t h e r p laces and had l i v e d i nI s r a e l among o the r p l aces , endingup as a pro fes so r o f Germanic a tth e Unive r s i ty o f C a l i f o r n i a @Santa Barbara. For t hose who haveno t v i s i t e d t h a t c i t y on t h e P a c i fi c s u f f i c e i t t o say t h a t Robertwas not unlucky t o l i v e i n t h a t

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12

beau t i fu l spo t .Unlike Paul Benedict and h is

robus t good cheer, Robert exuded asadness which was sometimes pa lpab le . Not n e c e s s a r i l y because hewas a Hungarian, al though Hungaryi s a l ead ing count ry fo r su i c ider a t e s , s ince tw o of our Hungariancol leagues a re hea r ty and cheery.But i t had not always been so ;memories of a much happier Hetzronp e r s i s t from th e 1970s.

Fundamental ly, Robert was aSemi t i c i s t and grounded in th et r a d i t i o n a l Semi t i c i s t e r u d i t i o n ;Hebrew and Arabic , of course , bu tmany othe r s . However, he was u l t ima t e l y seen as a c u s h i t i c i s t and anemerging expe r t on th e whole ofAfras i an . His Semi t ic work includedmuch se r ious change i n t r a d i t i o n a lSemi t ic s u b - c l a s s i f i c a t i o n , mostpoin ted ly perhaps h i s moving Arabicfrom i t s assoc ia t ion with Eth iopicand Sabean i n South Semi t ic to anew membership i n t he ' c e n t r a l 'group, which inc ludes Canaani te an dHebrew. In th e case of th e f a u l t yye t e s t ab l i shed 'Gurage ' group ofEth iop ic , Hetzron presented a newscheme fo r South Ethiopic which r es t r i c t e d Gurage t o a smal l group oflanguages around Chaha and recogni zed t h a t s o - c a l l e d Gurage ( theo r i g i n a l er roneous one) conta ineda t l e a s t t h r e e d i s t i n c t SouthEthiopic l i n e s (c lades) t o be d i st i ngu i shed from each o t h e r. Fleminghad come t o s i m i l a r conclus ions inan e a r l i e r l e x - s t a t s tudy of Southsemi t i c .

In Cushi t ic Robert d id importan t work on Somali and Agau, produc ing th e f i r s t ample da ta on Awiya(Awngi). S h i f t i n g t o a more compar

a t i v e mode he examined th e southernreg ions of Cush i t i c , concludingf i n a l l y t h a t Eas te rn and Southernc u s h i t i c were much c lose r to eacho t h e r than had been proposed andindeed t o g e t h e r cons t i tu t ed ad i s t i n c t branch (c lade) of Cushi ti c . F i n a l l y, he ex t rac t ed Beja fromCush i t i c , s e t t i n g i t up as a d i s ti n c t branch of Afras ian as a whole.


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These were a l l f a i r l y bold moves!While h i s work on Agau and

Somali i s s t i l l apprec ia ted , andh is i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of Gurage beingnow widely accepted , h i s o the rventures a re r e spec t ed but too boldfo r many s c h o l a r s . The c losenes s o f

Eas t and South Cush i t i c i s debatedbut i s s t i l l con t rover s i a l . Somel i k e myself do no t be l i eve the twot o be a t a l l c l o s e , even i f s i m i l a rin many respec t s , o the r s l i k e Ehre ta re inc l ined t o go along with Hetzron . On the s u b j e c t of Beja th e oppos i t ion i s s t r o n g e r, no t v o c i f e rous , j u s t q u i e t bu t s t rong . Flemingi s in agreement with Hetzron onBeja because he himsel f proposedthe same t h ing a t a conferencep r i o r t o th e one where Hetzron madeh i s proposa l . Ehre t , however, doesno t go along wi th Hetzron (o r Fleming) on Beja, pre fe r r ing t o seeBeja as Cush i t i c . Unfor tuna te ly, asf a r as I know, Robert d id not f o l low up on h is Beja venture . Thiswould have made a d i f f e r e n c e e i t h e rway because he was a very c a r e f u lscho la r, even i f bold about s t anding by h i s conclus ions .

Perhaps more than most h i s t o ri c a l l i n g u i s t s , c e r t a i n l y more thanmost A f r a s i a n i s t s , b u t more l i k eo t h e r S e m i t i c i s t s , Hetzron pr imar ily emphasized morphology and th ec r i t e r i o n of shared innovat ions bu tonly grammatical (morphological)ones. Such an approach does r equ i ret h a t a s t rong not ion - - of what th eances t ra l morphology was l i k e - - bepresen t t o begin with . Then one cand e t e c t which changes have been madein t h a t s t r u c t u r e and which l anguages (which grammars) sha re in th es p e c i f i c changes. Robert was not

always success fu l a t persuadingco l l eagues t h a t he knew th e ancest r a l grammar wel l enough t o d e t e c tthe changes in th e s t r u c t u r e overt ime. Occas iona l ly he t rumpeted th edef i c i enc ies of merely l e x i c a l approaches , and i n s i s t e d a t r i f l edogmat ica l ly t h a t morphology wasth e only r e a l veh ic l e which wouldc a r r y us towards taxonomic t r u t h .

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13

But he was f a r too gen t l e a man top e r s i s t in th e f r u i t l e s s l ex iconversus-morphology wars fo r toolong. His predominant view was t h a the was happy t h a t l e x i c a l i s t s gotthe same r e s u l t s he go t morphologi c a l l y. In the absence of good

grammars fo r many key languagesmany of us found the l ex icon moreava i l ab le and more p r a c t i c a l l yhe lp fu l in c l a s s i f y i n g languages.Although some of us got labe led asl e x i c a l i s t s by th e grammarians, a l lof us r e a l l y supposed t h a t bothmorphology and l ex icon were va luab le . To underscore Hetzron ' sgen t l enes s one need only rememberhow harsh and overbear ing morphol o g i s t s could be , armed by t h e i rt r a i n i n g with d i r e c t access t oGod's t r u t h . Or so t hey be l i eved .

Robert was seared by persona lproblems which a ffec ted hi m and h iswork t remendously. Although, fo rthe r e s t of us , i t i s no t ourbus iness what the problems were,t he re was no escaping th e in ferencet h a t he was s u f f e r i n g . You couldf e e l h i s pain as he descr ibed h ist r o u b l e s . No doubt t h i s pain p a r ti a l l y blocked o r abor ted h i s f u l ldevelopment, fo r he did no t come tof u l l f r u i t i o n . With h i s s o l i d background in Ura l i c , Semit ic and Germ-an ic , he would have made s i zab lecon t r ibu t ions t o the s t i l l developing f i e l d of Nos t ra t i c s . As he wasa long r ange r, a member from thebeginning of what became ASLIP, hewas examining the p o s s i b i l i t i e s oft h a t Nos t ra t i c f i e l d when h i si l l n e s s slowed hi m down d r a s t i c a ll y . Very sad! For a l l of us!

Robert had a r epu ta t ion amongh i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t s as b r i l l i a n t .I t was r i c h l y deserved, in my opinion . I su re ly would l i k e to havehi m back and working as he d id inth e 1970s. I know many o the r s wouldjo in in t h a t sent iment . Robert a l sohad many col leagues , given h is workas c o - e d i t o r with Bender of a bookon Ethiopian l i n g u i s t i c s and giventh e t ime he served as e d i t o r of thejourna l AFROASIATIC LINGUISTICS.


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A good man has d ied . A f inescho la r has s topped h i s work prematurely. Amin. Amen.

We do not know what the f i n a ld i spos i t ion o f h is books and papersw i l l be . For those seeking informa t i o n , o r t o he lp , con tac t :

Gabr i e l l a Barber, 698 Zink Avenue,Santa Barbara , CA 93111 USA, t e l .805-964-5575 o r E-Mail< [email protected] > I f yo u wri t e ,do mention where your exper t i sel i e s . She could use your he lp .

Aiwo Kurtonen. Since Profes so rMurtonen fol lowed th e B r i t i s h h a b i to f reduc ing h i s f i r s t name t o ani n i t i a l , I p e r s i s t e d i n c a l l i n g him'Adam' in hopes o f provoking him t ot e l l me what h i s t r u e f i r s t namewas. He never t o l d me. Only ong e t t i n g no t i ce o f h i s death d id Il ea rn t h a t he was 'Aimo' no t'Adam'. While i t i s poss ib le t h a tAimo i s Finnish fo r Adam, I haveno t pursued t h i s mat te r. I t seemedo f so l i t t l e importance t o him.

Here i s th e d i f f i c u l t y i nw r i t i n g o b i t u a r i e s . Aimo i s anothergood man who I knew per sona l ly andl i ked a g r e a t dea l . He was a l soqu i t e d i s t i n c t from Paul andRober t . I would c a l l hi m very F inni s h - - i n t r e p i d and s e l f - r e l i a n t ,good-hear ted and s t u r d y, s c e p t i c a lbu t no t i n t o l e r a n t , needing t o beshown why something ought t o bebe l i eved bu t w i l l i n g t o be l i eve i fhe could be shown why. A f ine mindand an open one . (There a re manyFinns in New England. My v i l l a g e ,Lanesv i l l e , i n Glouces te r wa s popul a t e d pr imar i ly by Finns who workedi n th e g r e a t s tone quar r i e s o f CapeAnn. There i s an opera t ing saunal e s s

than a k i lome te r from myhouse . )Aimo was a l so very tough.

Perhaps hardy i s a b e t t e r word. Wef i r s t met when he was a l r eadye l d e r l y bu t had never the le s s s e to f f on a t r i p around th e UnitedS t a t e s by bus and a l l by himsel f .We met in a s tuden t pub on campusand soon my s tuden t s loved him fo r

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14

h is s t o r i e s and hard ines s . The nextt ime I met him he was t r ave l inga lone in Ethiopia , a l ready havingt roub les pecu l i a r t o th e aged( e . g . , p a l s y ) , neve r the l e s s s t i l lworking with in formants . Gutsy!

Aimo was pr imar i ly a Semit ic

i s t , a l though he d id spend somet ime working on Aus t ra l i an l anguages . He did no t f a l l i n to thegrammar- f i r s t bag bu t r a t h e r soughtin format ion from both grammar andl ex icon. He was a pioneer i n arguing t h a t the Modern South Arabianlanguages (Soqo t r i , Mehri, Shhauri ,Botahar i ) were a d i s t i n c t branch oSemit ic , no t simply der ived fromSabean, not such c lose s i s t e r s ofE th iop ic . While he d id not over turnt r a d i t i o n a l Semi t ic c l a s s i f i c a t i o n ,h is i deas were promoted by bothMuscovites and Fleming. RobertHetzron, however, s t rong ly opposedAimo's hypothes is and was a mostc r u c i a l person i n i t s defea t .

Aimo was so much l i k e JuhaJanhunen, and reminding me somewhatof Raimo A n t t i l a , t h a t I wonderedi f t he re were a Finnish school o rs t y l e in h i s t o r i c a l l i n g u i s t i c s .Unfor tuna te ly I cannot f ind th esource o f a quote t o the e f f e c tt h a t a e a r l i e r Finnish guru hads t r e s s e d cau t ion as the most import a n t t h ing fo r h is s tuden t s t o cons i d e r. For i t has been c h a r a c t e ri s t i c o f our Finnish col leaguest h a t they have been very wel linformed about p a r t i c u l a r t op ics ,c e r t a i n l y highly i n t e l l i g e n t , y e tt ending towards such scept ic i smt h a t they suppor ted few long rangehypotheses , even though theyl i s t e n e d c a r e f u l l y t o o t h e r longr ange r s and were t o l e r a n t o f t h e i rviewpoin ts . Indeed i t i s a long wafrom a scep t i c l i k e Aimo t o a howling coun te r- r evo lu t iona ry l i k ePoser o r Goddard.

Aimo was a thought fu l an dreasonable man. I s h a l l miss him.

Roan Stqpa: (Wri t ten by Er ic deG r o l i e r, F i r s t Secre t a ry, LanguageOrig ins Soc ie ty, t o whom thanks! )


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Quoting now:"Professor Dr. Roman Stopa

(August 8, 1895 - Apr i l 15, 1995)

Roman Stopa had been e lec ted honora ry chairman o f th e Language Origin s Socie ty a t i t s f i r s t meet ing inCracow, 1985.

Thiswa s

indeed aj u s t i f i e d r ecogn i t ion o f h is l i f e -long r e sea rch in th e f i e l d of l anguage i n p reh i s to ry, begun with th ep repa ra t ion o f h i s book on c l i c k sDie Schnalze , publ i shed on recommendation by th e famous A f r i c a n i s tCar l Meinhof in 1935 ( r ep r in ted in1986 with an i n t roduc t ion in Engli s h by Gyula Decsy) and ending witha t y p e s c r i p t comparing Khoisanforms with t hose l i s t e d by Dolgopolsky i n h is 1964 paper on t h e

supposed 15 ' s t a b l e s t ' words i nhuman l anguages , which he s e n t t ome j u s t t h ree weeks before h isdea th .

My own i n t e r e s t in ' l ongr ange ' comparisons wa s very muchs t imu la t ed by reading Stopa ' s bookon S t r u c t u r e o f Busbman and i t sTraces i n Indo-European (1972) ,which wa s a fol low-up o f what Icons ide r h i s 'magnum o p u s ' : ~evo lu t ion o f c l i c k sounds in someAfr ican languages (1960) , unfo rt una te ly a lmos t ignored , th e wholee d i t i o n o f 750 copies having beenl e f t i n s to rage and n o t d i s t r i b u t -ed , due t o th e s t u p i d i t y o f aPol i sh bureauc ra t , who l abe l l ed t h ebook as ' r a c i s t ' .

Stopa wa s i nv i t ed in 1971 t op a r t i c i p a t e a t th e col loquiumorganized i n Roma by th e I t a l i a n aAccademia nazionale d e i Lence i , fo rth e centenary o f Darwin 's The Descen t o f Man; h i s paper 'The Orig inof l anguage ' (pp.295-315 in t h eA t t i , 1973) i s probably th e b e s tsyn thes i s o f th e views he developedduring th e fo l lowing 24 yea r s o fh i s l i f e . S t o p a ' s comparisons between Khoisan and chimpanzee 'svoca l i za t ions , which he found inMiss Learned ' s bookle t (1925) wereappa ren t ly f i r s t publ i shed in t h i s1971 paper, and then reproduced in

15

The St ruc tu re of Bushman . . .c i t e d above (pp.29-35 and 50-57) ,in h is 1979 Clicks : t h e i r form,funct ion , and t h e i r t ransformat ion(1979:44-51 and 100-102) and in h ispresen ta t ion a t th e Symposium Iorganized in 1981 ( ed i t ed i n th e

volume of proceedings : Glossogenet~ ' 1983:491-512); they werescorned by Tr a i l l {1978:139), aswell as Stopa ' s comparisonsKhoisan-Indo-European (idem:145)which th e b e s t German s p e c i a l i s t ofKhoisan, Kohler, had more mildlyq u a l i f i e d as 'w i thou t demonstrat ions t r eng th (Beweiskraf t ) ' (1975:337) .Stopa ' s wr i t ings were deserved; inh is c r i t i c s negat ive apprec ia t ions ,by h i s somewhat old- fash ionedvocabulary, which included obsole te

terms l i k e 'Apeman' , 'Gr imald ir a c e ' , ' p r i m i t i v e t r a i t s ' , e t c .Afte r a l l , t hese were th e wordsusual when he s tud ied anthropology!

I am convinced t h a t , whenunpre judiced scho la r s w i l l se r iously s tudy Stopa ' s works, they w i l lf ind t he re ample s t u f f we wouldqua l i fy in French as 'ma t i e re ar e f l e x i o n ' (da ta worth th inkingover) and w i l l cons ide r him as aprecursor i n t h i s ( s t i l l l a rge ly tobe developed) d i s c i p l i n e I proposedt o name ' g l o s s o g e n e t i c s ' .As fo r me, and many col leagueswho knew Roman per sona l ly, we w i l lc e r t a i n l y keep in our memory h isf a s c i n a t i n g charislD8.. 11 [End ofquo t ing ] .

[ E d i t o r ' s note : 'Bewe i sk ra f t ' i ss t rong in German bu t l acks an a p tmate in English. One d ic t iona rysugges ts ' p roba t ive fo rce ' as at r a n s l a t i o n . No t bad b u t probablyb e t t e r would be 'power of evidence,ev iden t i a ry f o r c e ' . Best of a l lwould be t o say t h a t Stopa d id not'make a s t rong c a s e ' . ]

[Persona l note : Eric de Gro l i e r hastouched on a t op ic of some concernt o u s , no t g r e a t concern bu t no teworthy. He mentions th e ideas o f ano lde r anthropology and here we


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might invoke th e not ion o f ' c u l t u ra l l a g ' , wherein one p a r t o r s e c t o rof a c u l t u r e l ags , has no t pickedup changes in o t h e r p a r t s o r zoneso f a gene ra l c u l t u r e . No doubt wecan say t h a t much o f anthropologica l and b io log ica l reasoning a f t e rSpencer and Darwin became in fusedwith what i s now c a l l e d s o c i a lDarwinism bu t a l so the re aroser a c i a l h ie ra rch ies with ' t h e Nordicman' a t t h e to p and ' p r i m i t i v e 'Afr icans and Aus t ra l i ans (ando the r s ) a t t h e bottom. That i s , acentury ago i t seemed t o t a l l yobvious t o many scho la r s t h a t th edark peoples o f t r o p i c a l l ands ,many o f whom c o u l d n ' t even growcrops o r w r i t e t h e i r names, mustr ep resen t the a rcha ic human cond i t i o n , t h e p r i m i t i v e s t a t e o fn a t u r e , what we a l l evolved o u t o f ,up from. I t seemed t o t a l l y na tu ra lt o say t h a t t h e i r i n t e l l i g e n c e wa sl e s s , t h e i r awareness l e s s evolved,t h e i r c u l t u r e s backward, and t h e i rl anguages pr imord ia l , a r c h a i c ,abor ig ina l . Thei r bodies , t h e i rc u l t u r e s and t h e i r languages wereipso f ac to a l so i n f e r i o r , whi leNordic bodies , European c u l t u r e sand l anguages were a l so s u p e r i o r.We r e a l l y do know, i f we merelyglance a t our p a s t h i s t o r y, t h a tH i t l e r and h i s p a r t y d id no t i nven tth e 'mas te r r a c e ' . Simi l a r not ionssuffused th e upper c l a s s e s o f weste rn Europe and North America. Atone po in t t he English upper c l a s s e seven go t so enamored o f themselvest h a t they began t o suppor t t heor i e sabout t h e fundamental i n f e r i o r i t y -- r a c i a l l y, c u l t u r a l l y, and l i n g ui s t i c a l l y - - o f th e Engl i sh workingc l a s s ! So t h i s was t h e s t a t u s qu o

a n t e . Should we add t h e powerfuleugenics movement o f th e 1920s too?Sure!

Anthropology began t o changef i r s t , al though th e ac id commentso f Marx on European ru l ing c l a s s e sno doubt con t r ibu ted too . A verys u b s t a n t i a l fo rce in t h a t changewas Franz Boas and h i s s tuden t s

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16

from say 1900-1940. Another was thea l l i a n c e of secu la r Jews and lapsedPro tes t an t s aga ins t C h r i s t i a n i t yan d the e s t a b l i s h e d ru l ing cu l tu rein the United S t a t e s . (See a mosti n t e r e s t i n g r ecen t book: SCIENCE,JEWS, AND SECULAR CULTURE by DavidA. Hol l inger. 1996. Pr ince tonUnivers i ty Press . ) Bu t i n the r e s to f th e anglo-phone world t h e Soc ia lDarwinis t paradigm was underminedby neg lec t ; th e f u n c t i o n a l i s t ands t r u c t u r a l i s t paradigms fo rce fu l lythrew o u t most i n t e r e s t s in evolut i o n o r h i s t o r y. P a r a l l e l developments i n f ranco-phone anthropologyhad s i m i l a r e f f e c t s . From Durkheimt o Levi -St rauss dominant a t t e n t i o ntu rned away from 19th century purs u i t s . So i t came t o be t h a t mosto f th e At lan t i c Rim coun t r i e s gaveup th e o ld paradigm, f i r s t in thes o c i a l sc i ences , more slowly inbio logy.

One may r e s i s t a cu l tu rechange, indeed one may d e f e a t one.E i t h e r way from t h e s t andpo in t o ft h i s concept th e unchanged o rr e s i s t a n t v a r i a n t i s an example ofcu l tu re l ag . Compared t o my c h i l dr en , fo r example, I am th e p e r f e c texample of cu l tu re lag with r e spec tt o music and dance. This does notn e c e s s a r i l y mean t h a t my t a s t e i si n f e r i o r o r s i l l y ; i t j u s t meanst h a t I r e j e c t t h e i r music/dancec u l t u r e . Well , I l i k e some o f t h e i rmusic.

So i t has been in c e n t r a l andeas te rn Europe and th e former USSRSome elements o f th e o ld paradigmwere dropped. In o f f i c i a l Communisttheory which s a t on th e a rea fo r50-70 years ' r ac i sm ' was a badt h ing , bu t in t h a t same theory a

s t rong ly marked c u l t u r a l evo lu t ion ,u n i l i n e a r t ype , was de r i g e u r. Whaseems t o be t r u e , and i t alwayss u r p r i s e s me, i s t h a t th e notion opr imi t ive cont inued in l i n g u i s t i c sand i t was a t t ached t o th e samedark t r o p i c a l people a s always. Thnot ion o f pr imi t ive in At lan t i c Riml i n g u i s t i c s i s dead, kaput , as fa ras I know. Unless we a re t a lk ing

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about modern concerns about language o r i g i n s , one d o e s n ' t hear aboutpr imi t ive languages or what theya re supposed t o be l i k e . There a reno c r i t e r i a t h a t I know o f , o the rthan r ecen t t h e o r e t i c a l ones .

So I t ake the assumption t h a tKhoisan i s an a rcha ic , p r imi t ive orabor ig ina l language t o be a case ofcu l tu re la g i n i n t e r n a t i o n a l l i ngui s t i c c u l t u r e . Since we a re ded icated t o g e t t i n g back t o t h e pr imit i v e s t a t e of human language ( inour t ime machine) , and t o recons t ruc t ing proto-human, then quest i o n s of a rcha ic o r p r i m i t i v econtemporary languages i s hugelyimpor tan t t o u s . I f Khoisan o rNiha l i o r Asmat Papuan a re t r u l ya rcha ic , then we should be focusinga l l our a t t en t ion on them, n ' e s t - c epas? Why? Because they a re supposedt o exemplify what proto-human wasl i k e .

But fo r Stopa and h is co l l eagues t h e key ques t ions a re f i v e .F i r s t , do you a l r eady know whatproto-human was l i ke? Second, i fyou do no t know what proto-humanwas l i k e , why assume t h a t Khoisani s most l i k e i t ? Third , was pro tohuman probably simple or complex,grammat ica l ly o r phonet ica l ly?Fourth, why no t choose Pol i sh orEnglish o r Chinese as examples ofsimple proto-human language t ypes ,s ince Khoisan i s f a r more complexby th e above c r i t e r i a ? F i f t h , whyn o t compare Yoruba or Thai withchimpanzee t a l k , s ince both a rehighly t ona l and have s h o r t words &morphemes? The sounds emi t ted byany Khoisan speaker v a s t l y exceedth e vocal ou tpu t of an y chimpanzee.Myself t h inks t h a t Par i s i an French

with i t s avalanche of nasa l andf r i c t i o n sounds would come c l o s e rt o chimpanzee. Or Portuguese. Butnot very c lose ! (Je vous demandpardon, mes amis!) (Perdoeme)

M8ry Haas. (Formal o b i t u a r i e s a represumed t o be ava i l ab le in anumber of p l aces in Americanl i n g u i s t i c and/or an th ropo log ica l

17

j ou rna l s . We presen t here veryb r i e f l y a shor t apprec i a t ion of hercon t r ibu t ion t o Americanis t l i ngui s t i c s . For those unfami l i a r withher biography i t i s p e r t i n e n t tomention t h a t she was wife t o Morrisswadesh a t one po in t in t h e i rl i v e s . )

Joseph H. Greenberg, wri t ingin ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, haa forthcoming a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d ,"Mary Haas, Algie an d the S c i e n t i fi c Consensus", which we may quotefrom b r i e f l y. Some observa t ionsmade by Greenberg inc lude: " In 195Mary Haas published a landmark a r ti c l e which fo r a l l p r a c t i c a l purposes ended th e widespread doubtsand long per iod of cont roversy concern ing the v a l i d i t y of what i s nousua l ly ca l l ed th e ' A l g i e ' s tock ,cons i s t ing of Algonquian, Wiyot,and Yurek, f i r s t proposed by Sapi rin 1915. I t i s a t r i b u t e t o th eenormous i n f luence of Mary Haas inAmerican Indian l i n g u i s t i c s tud iest h a t t h i s i n t e rven t ion proveddec i s ive an d e s s e n t i a l l y endeddebate on th e bas i c po in t .

The importance of t h i s i n t e rven t ion , whose imp l i ca t ion extendsbeyond th e s p e c i f i c po in t a t i s sueand has imp l i ca t ions fo r h i s t o r i c a ll i n g u i s t i c s in genera l , i s highl i gh ted by th e f a c t t h a t a l thoughth e main po in t was s e t t l e d , thereremained a penumbra of problems asshown in continued d i scuss ion v i rt u a l l y up t o th e p resen t day."

[End of quo t ing . ]Bas ica l ly Greenberg i s observ

ing t h a t S a p i r ' s Algie hypothesiswas proposed in 1915 bu t opposed svigorous ly by Truman Michelson, th

leading Algonquianist of t h a t t ime ,t h a t u n t i l 1958 Algie had no t ye tbeen accepted by Americanists , inc luding Algonquianis t s . Mary Haashad proposed another grouping, Muskhogean and Natchez, which had beenaccepted wi thout fus s . Sh e remarkedt h a t , had she been opposed by somes o r t of Michelson of Muskhogeans t u d i e s , her hypothesis probably


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would n o t have been accepted e i t h -e r . In any case Mary Haas announcedin 1958 t h a t she had reviewedS a p i r ' s argument and da ta and hadfound t h a t Algie was qu i t e accep tab le t o her. That c a r r i e d the dayfo r Algie . Greenberg a l so poin ted

ou t t h a t , con t r a ry to some i n t e r -p r e t a t i o n s of th e even t , Mary Haashad no new da ta t o br ing t o bear onth e t o p i c . Her approval was basedon S a p i r ' s o r i g i n a l a r t i c l e of 43years p a s t . . . . Why does a l lt h i s remind me of S r. Trask?

[ E d i t o r ' s Note: Something e l s e ofimportance included in th e abovea r t i c l e about Mary Haas has t o dowith a r a r e analogy. Greenberg incommenting on th e d i f f i c u l t y of th eAlgie problem had t h i s t o say : " Ican only r e p o r t my r e a c t i o n s a tt h a t t ime [1953 Ed.] t o th e Algiecont roversy. At t h i s po in t in mywork on my Afr ican c l a s s i f i c a t i o n Iwas concen t r a t ing on what a t t h a tt ime were c a l l e d th e Sudanic , o rEastern Sudanic l anguages . Thesea re now genera l ly accepted , wi thth e except ion o f Kordofanian whichbelongs with Niger-Congo, as forming a va l id grouping Nilo-Saharan ,a family of g r e a t h i s t o r i c depths .At t h a t t ime, however, I s t i l lpos i t ed 12 f ami l i e s in Afr i ca . Ihad heard about how d i f f i c u l t an dcon t rover s i a l Algie was. When Ilooked a t th e evidence, t he re fo re ,I was as ton i shed . In t h e Afr icancon tex t , I would have cons ideredAlgonquian, Wiyot, and Yurok asprobably belonging t o th e samebranch o f Niger-congo. Experiencei n looking a t language on a widesca le does , I be l i eve , give a background fo r eva lua t ing th e s i g n i f i -cance o f resemblances. I had expected a marginal and d i f f i c u l tcase and i n s t ead I found a commonplace i n s t ance o f a reasonablyc lose r e l a t i o n s h i p and my commentsr e f l e c t e d t h i s . "

[ E d i t o r ' s Note - The meaning herei s by ana logy. Had t hese Algie

18

languages been Niger-congo theywould have f i t t oge the r in abranch , i . e . , they a re no f a r the rapa r t than a re the members of as ing le branch of Niger-Congo.]

This provokes an aphorism from

me. Given a group of 3 languages,t roop o f Americanis ts w i l l immedia t e l y perce ive how pos i t ive lyunique each on e i s . Given thosesame languages, a t roop of Afr icani s t s w i l l immediately perce ive howmuch th e t h ree have in common.

John c . Kerns. our ob i tua ry fo rt h i s g i f t e d and amiable col leaguei s tw o years p a s t due. I t was notthe f a u l t of the w r i t e r becauseAllan Bomhard submi t ted th e fo l lowing ob i tua ry many moons ago. Myapologies fo r the seve ra l pos tponements o f th e o b i t u a r i e s . WhileA l l a n ' s ob i tua ry i s e loquentenough, and c a s t in sp lendid type ,I do wish t o say t h a t John was ano t h e r of our g i f t e d amateurs whohave matched t he p ro fes s iona l l i n gu i s t s in t h e i r long range works inthe pas t decade. More a re jo in ingevery day, you might say. (Eh b ien ,p lus de f romage.)

[ E d i t o r ' s Note: Following Bombard'sob i tua ry of John Kerns (ove r l ea f ) ,we have f ive pages of an ex t rao rd inary l e t t e r wri t t en by PK Benedictt o me on Sadie Hawkins Day 1996.That i s th e Leap Year Day he r e f e r st o . We decided t o p r i n t t h i s chaosof ideas an d undec ipherab le abbrevi a t i o n s , an d i n t e r e s t i n g remarks onp a r t i c u l a r persons , because i t wasso Paul as they would say nowadays.No r epu ta t ion i s se r ious ly damaged,e t c . , o r we would no t publ i sh t h i spersonal l e t t e r . I t reminds one somuch of the l i v ing PeeKay t h a t weurge you t o s t r u g g l e through i t !And he d id want i t publ i shed , as hesa id so a t th e e n d + o the r p l aces . ]

[We a l so r e g r e t t h a t ob i tua r i e s onEgerod, Haudr icour t an d Winter a reno t included h e r e i n a f t e r. Sorry! ]


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John C. Kerns

Allan R. BomhardCharleston, South Carolina

On 24 November 1995, John C. Kerns passed away, and I lost acolleague, a co-author, and a friend.

Kerns first became interested in Indo-European in the mid-1930's onhis father's farm in Mississippi. In his spare time, he would amuse himselfby looking up the derivation of words in the family dictionary. As ithappened, this book was a treasure in that it provided exceptionally fulletymological information. Kerns quickly became aware of the importanceof discriminating between genuine cognates and borrowed words and the

need for strict adherence to the laws of phonetic correspondence insofar asthese are known. Also, from books saved by his father from his high schooldays, Kerns taught himself the grammatical elements of German, Greek,Latin, French, and Spanish.

In 1940, Kerns enlisted in the United States Army, specializing inradio communications. Whenever it was possible, he would visit librariesto read articles on various linguistic families in the EncyclopaediaBritannica. Toward the end of World War II, in the Philippines, he becamebriefly acquainted with a cultured Finnish-American soldier who helped

Kerns with an elementary investigationof

Finnish. Since Kerns was wellaware that Finnish was not an Indo-European language, he was surprised tofind that it had considerable similarity to the more conservative IndoEuropean languages in its pronominal forms and in certain fundamentalaspects of its morphology. At first, Kerns assumed that these similaritieswere due to borrowing from one Indo-European language or another.

After the war, Kerns obtained a bachelor's degree in electroniccommunications and spent his working career as a civilian engineer atWright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, where he remainedafter his retirement. In 1958, Kerns became aware of Collinder's Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary. Reading this book, Kerns realized that the Finnishpronominal forms could not possibly be due to borrowing from IndoEuropean languages since they are shared by all other Uralic languages,including Samoyed. Kerns was further impressed by the fact that most of


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these forms are found in Altaic languages as well. At that time, he wasbeginning to suspect that Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic may have hadan early common origin.

In 1959, on a short visit to Uppsala, Sweden, Kerns met Prof.Tryggve Skoeld, whose generous help and encouragement were a source ofinspiration to Kerns.

Unfortunately, the increasing pressure of engineering problemsprevented Kerns from pursuing the matter further at that time. However,several years later, Kerns returned to the matter and performed a series ofstatistical tests which demonstrated that the numbers of pronominalagreements among Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic were highlysignificant, implying the existence of a unique historical cause for theseagreements. Further consideration eliminated borrowing as a significantfactor, leaving only the hypothesis of common genetic descent as a viablesuggestion.

This analysis prompted Kerns to write a pamphlet entitled "TheEurasiatic Pronouns and the Indo-Uralic Question", which he reprinted inhis 1985 book Indo-European Prehistory in edited and shortened form. Inthe course of writing that pamphlet, Kerns also came to the conclusion thatthe common conception of the undivided Indo-Europeans as an egregiouslywarlike horse-riding people was not supported by evidence then available.

Kerns retired from engineering in 1974. This left him time to consultcurrent publications with greater regularity and frequency. The result wasthe publication in 1985 of his book Indo-European Prehistory, a copy of

which he sent to Allan Barnhard, among others.Bomhard was impressed by the extent of knowledge Kerns displayed

and by the similarities of views regarding the genetic affiliation of IndoEuropean, Uralic, and Altaic. At the time, Bomhard was gathering materialfor a book demonstrating the common origin of the Nostratic languages. Indue course, Bomhard invited Kerns to contribute a chapter on Nostraticmorphology, and Kerns gladly accepted the challenge. This collaborationled to the publication in 1994 of their joint monograph entitled TheNostratic Macrofamily: A Study in Distant Linguistic Relationship.

Just before his death, Kerns had been working on a revised edition ofhis book Indo-European Prehistory. Regretfully, he did not complete thistask.

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Dear neveu, 2/29/96A rare date and ho w better to use than in replying to your recl!nt letter et al.First, re ASLIP business. I was delighted to learn that all, incl. 1\.-IT, will survive but

have some qualms about your change of office! My main concern here, of o u r s e ~is thejournal, with that great start, an d the newsletters. You ar e MT, or at least the father- doesthat make you a grandparent?! lvly neveu a grP? rm getting old! Actually, come to thinkof it, last fall a nephew dij.d in fact become a grP. And no t too long ago when I criticizedPulleyblank, asking "\vllere did yo u ge t that from", he replied that it was sthg. of mine thatas a student he had been assigned as a text (I told him he should keep up to date better).In any event, I asssume (hope?) you'll continue editing journal and newsletter. Right?

As to your (2), yo u ca n pu t me down fo r the Web. Altho I suffer from dystechnia,perhaps as a developmental consequence of my early-acquiredhyperlexia (my coinage)after all, neuronal networks, unlike Web, are no t infinitely expandable.

Re ( 4 ): fo r recon, need to know whether the lang's with disyllabic fonns regularly reduce tri- to di-syllabics (A N has this - Blust calls 'drive towards disyllabi.sm') -if so, keep*u- as 1st syllable, yielding *u(n)du (N)ga as root - actually, this might well be a P A. 'TIP ATroot, with homorganic NASAL INCRE!viENTs, a PA1'\J'1PAT hallmark (see my JAT),often variable in a root. I f not, and this really a PAN/PAT root, the *u- much at homehere as the widespread *u- nominal-marker (Ibid.), found inter alia in body par t roots!Implied *g > lk!, *a > !o f .... Ii i and *u > Ii i shifts have parallels? -in ANIAT, at any rate,shifts of *nd >In! type are commonplace (see JAT) an d no need to recon. the *d as retroflex since *d > /r/ also okay, unless there's need elsewhere for two *d's. This root reallylooks as if t belongs in AN / AT - shows how much shapes count for! As for the /sinalform, can hardly just rule ou t in view o f the *u > I i i and *d > It / found elsewhere, the It / apossible (unlikely!) anteceden t ofthe /s/- know of possible parallels?

As tor your closing Ha l vs. Larry, which rather reminded me of the Pa t vs. Bo b inRep. primary I watched earlier, I also like that /35/ and I remind you that my AT all beganwith that 1942 T ai. Kadai and IN paper in AA ( published there because the great A. L.Kroeber, no less, ha d advised it be offered to

thisanthrop. journal, with the remark - his

very words, as I recall- "linguists don't understand things like this"!), with 30 key Tal/INcognate sets. As I relate in this article, however, the break:thru had come when I realizedthat the Kada i numerals simply have to be related to the IN - I present them in a table andnote that p e r o ,a 'sound an d generally conservative s c h o l a r ' ( ~that he had screwed up by putting Vn . in Tai family because of tones!), ha d conncludedthat the Li (now read: I Da i- o n H.ainan) numerals "certainly" belong to the IN family.Much later Iz Dyen made an ofthand remark to me re the Hla.i numerals to the effect that,o f course, they were borrowed from :MP. Cruelly (Iz is an inviting target!) I pointed out tohim, with his grad students looking on, tha t this was "odd" since the Gelao numerals, up inthe interior of China [a key branch o f KD], are obviously related to the IDai and, trying no tto smile, asked him where those 'MP donors had landed and how

inHell ha d they got up to

GWizhou Province?! Iz suddenly got a call on his beeper, too faint for any of the rest o f usto hear, and had to get back to his office, leaving his students looking mystified.

ftcftuwt. krYlsh, pUY\c...R +o .,

N--t- r k..e1.(.)


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1 r 1 , jtr ; : f

I

You"ve prob. heard this Iz story before. It makes an interesting point here since

Mother Tongue Newsletter 29 (Fall 1997)

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Transcript of Mother Tongue Newsletter 29 (Fall 1997)