Mass comparison
The Lexical mass comparison or English Mass Lexical Comparison and Multilateral Comparison, developed by the American linguist Joseph Greenberg method, relationships among a large group of languages prove (also known as short of Greenberg's method). The power of this method is controversial in comparative linguistics, although it has been very successful in the classification of African languages (see Niger - Congo, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan ).
Background
Linguistics was interested to determine phylogenetic relationships of languages since its beginnings as a modern science. This approach is the antiquity and the Middle Ages largely alien, because at this time languages were considered immutable sizes. Only the idea that languages can evolve and change ( discovered about by watching the development of the Romance languages from Latin ), and creates space for the concept of kinship of languages that have evolved from a common ancestor language. Thus, there was William Jones speech from 1786 in Calcutta, in fact, a breakthrough, as he recognized by voice comparison, that a group of languages - which were later called Indo-European - probably descended from a defunct common ancestor language: ... jump from some common source.
The historical- comparative method developed later in the course of the 19th century, then tried - set up the sound laws of a language family, and finally to reconstruct their proto-language partly - based on the detected through word and morphology Compare relationships. The historical- comparative method, however, was only able to reconstruct a state of language, which goes back in time more than a few thousand years into the past ( depending on the author 5000-10000 years ). In addition, after the performance of many researchers no reconstructions are possible.
Mass Lexical Comparison is now an attempt by simultaneous comparison of many languages a larger area (eg Africa, America, Australia, New Guinea and neighboring islands, northern Eurasia ) to expand in greater time depth in the issue of relationships. In contrast, no reconstructions of proto languages performed in applying this method or even sought.
Greenberg's method of mass lexical comparison
In Greenberg's method of lexical mass comparison, the classification from the comparison of words and morphemes results from a very large group of languages (in the case of the Ameri -Indian nearly all indigenous languages of the Americas, with the African languages of almost all documented languages of the continent ). This word equations are established and derived from this classification (ie groups of related languages). It is ultimately the method by which the researchers of the early 19th century, the genetic unit and the substantially correct structure of Indo-European Finno - Ugric or recognized long before sound laws established or proto languages were reconstructed. The establishment of sound laws and the reconstruction of Proto languages is a second step which confirm the results of the previous classification hypothesis, refine or can refute. This second step left Greenberg usually different.
Greenberg's method is inductive - heuristic, while the methodology of classical comparative linguistics is apparently strictly deductive. Since David Hume and especially since Karl Popper, we know that (except of axiomatic mathematics ) any science that wants to describe the real world - whether natural or spiritual science - is only inductive and not to true statements but only substantiated hypotheses lead can. As an indication of the scientific hypotheses presented such Popper falsifiability her out. In this sense, the relationship of languages is always a hypothesis and never deductive " provable ", not even by the stringent use of historical- comparative methods, such as through the establishment of regular sound correspondences. In the construction of some macro family, however, the Popperian criterion of falsifiability was not met, what then could be also more likely to " unscientific " hypotheses. (For the " provability " of genetic correlations see Greenberg's article The Concept of Proof in Genetic Linguistics from 2000, reprinted in Greenberg 2005. )
An example of the method
In the following Table 12 terms from 12 African languages are compiled to illustrate the method of " mass comparison " with a simple example ( cf. Ruhlen 1994).
African word equations
( And without looking at the language name ) are relatively easy to recognize in the 12 languages of the example groups of related languages also for non-experts, even without prior knowledge of the relationship of these languages. First tune the languages B, D, G and J coincide in almost all terms. It is Bantu languages. E and K also have some similarities to ( they belong to the Chadic, a subunit of the Afro Asian ), as well as C, H and L ( they are classified as Nilo-Saharan ). A somewhat closer look at the remaining three languages A, F and I also shows many similarities (ie for talking, drinking, and sun year ); they belong to the Khoisan ( the unusual characters |! ǁ represent and clicking sounds ). Thus one can thus already from a small sample of 12 languages and 12 terms easily the Bantu language units, Chadian, Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan filter out. This is in many ways simplified example (number of languages , number and choice of terms, simplified phonetic representation ), but which shows the principle of the method.
Become particularly clear the matches if you grouped the related languages . Here, however, also shows that there are no continuous similarities are to be expected in all words of the samples, only the totality of the matches in a group can the classification be clearly distinguished. A binary comparison of language pairs would not lead to the desired classification result, since then the disparities in the eye especially. This is the reason that Greenberg has binary comparisons rejected in principle.
Genetically grouped African word equations
Easily recognizable similarities are marked semi-bold.
Practical application: success and failure
The method of mass comparison has Greenberg successfully applied his now widely accepted classification of African languages , its classification results at the American and Indo-Pacific languages are, however, rejected by most researchers, for the Eurasian, it is still too early to be stated success or failure.
The method was described by Merritt Ruhlen Greenberg's students used to establish so-called global etymologies ( word equations are the words from globally distributed languages from different language families) and to draw the conclusion of monogenesis all languages of the earth. ( See also Proto - World language. )
Problems of method and criticism
There are many objections to the method of mass lexical comparison. An important criticism is that Greenberg's approach loanwords would not always recognize and such unjustified delay approach as evidence of genetic relationship of languages; similar problems cause onomatopoeic terms that are distributed independently of genetic relationships across all languages of the world. Against these allegations Greenberg has repeatedly explicitly defended and made it clear that he has seen the problem of loanwords and onomatopoetic word formations and also quite explicitly addressed. Were particularly important to him word equations for " stable terms", which are usually not borrowed from one language into another, but belong to the common Urbestand a language family. After Aharon Dolgopolsky in this sense " stable " are 23 terms
This list (in order of "stability" ) is based on the study of 140 languages from different language families in Europe and Asia. It is also widely used in the investigation of genetic distant relationships.
Another problem is the fact that the mass lexical comparison ignores occupied older language stages in which may deviate the phonological form of a word from the synchronous observable and so their significance is devalued. (The examples cited by Campbell in this regard, however, not used at Greenberg. )
The Americanist Lyle Campbell has " proven" with Mass Lexical Comparison that Finnish is related to the Ameri -Indian, and wanted to make it clear that the method does not work. Then he responds Greenberg (1989 ) that he would never use his method on languages completely heterogeneous areas, also never a single language (Finnish) would compare with another language or group of languages . Looking at the Finnish part of its Eurasian neighbors, the family relationships and the membership of Finland to the Finno -Ugric languages at once clearly be ( in fact, the Finno- Ugric unit was earlier recognized as the Indo-European, see the article Uralic languages). Greenberg shows in turn that the application of rigid requirements of the said comparative Americanists on the Indo-European languages would show the non- relationship of the Hittite ( Greenberg 1989).