Talk:Comparative linguistics

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"Less controversial [than glottochronology] is mass lexical comparison." Pardon me? Most historical linguists were up in arms about Greenberg's approach, saying that his work should be shouted down from the rooftops (or other such strong language). Changed the text to a more accurate description. Godfrey Daniel 19:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I know what you mean, but:

• Glottochronology is based on an assumption about "basic vocabulary" and a quantitative method both of which lack a secure foundation. It's a technique cannot do what it claims and is beyond hope.
• Mass lexical comparison is a bad way to "establish" new relationships, particularly at spectacular time depths, but is actually a reasonable way of sub-grouping or clustering varieties which are already known to be related. No one can see how to evaluate closeness where A & B share a phonological innovation and A & C a morphological one. At least mass lexical comparison, where etymolgies are already proven, takes the subjectivity out of it. I would say that the problem is not with the technique, but the combination of shoddy workmanship and exaggerated claims from its most well-known proponents.

Perhaps the text should just say "Also controversial..." ;-) --Pfold 19:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a mess. Mass comparison is mentioned twice and lexicostatistics is to all intents and purposes identical to glottochronology. Both are rejected by the scientific community and are not even to begin with part of the comparative method. They can be mentioned under diachronic linguistics, or historical linguistics, but NOT under the comparative method. I request that they be moved to where they belong, a bare (compare: [lexicostatistics]) will do instead.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

There, fixed the worst of it. Still this should be merged with [comparative method]. Also, these statistical methods are not part of comparative linguistics and it is unfitting that the article has very little information on the main topic but lots of information about peripheral and fundamentally flawed theories. That's like having most of the article about Presidents of the United States of America be about Dan Quayle and his spelling of potato.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)