Talk:Dené-Caucasian languages

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Contents 1 Cleanup on this talk page 2 Restructuring 3 Word Lists 3.1 12-word list 4 Phonology 5 Sound correspondences 6 Haplogroups 7 Explaining my Edits 8 Na-dené pronominal affixes 9 Notes and Footnotes 10 This artikle is good 11 Etruscan? 12 Karasuk 13 Non-NPOV concerns 14 WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE issues 15 The argument from majority 16 Some problems of DC "linguistics" (sic) 17 Some problems of "criticism" (sic) of DC linguistics 18 accepted relation

[edit] Cleanup on this talk page

I'm deleting or reducing the following:

1. "Restructuring" - a large part of it. Much of it has already happened.
2. "Suggested structure" - redundant. Although the sentence Objections are appreciated very much, too! will always be valid ;-)
3. "Tables of Sound Correspondences" - that discussion isn't productive anymore, is it? ;-)
4. "In preparation" - not useful any more. I used it as a notebook only.
5. "Word-lists" - heavily reduced, except for a few points that still need to be discussed.
6. "Phonology" - not useful anymore...
7. "Salishan languages" - useless...
--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

You should rather archive it.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops...I didn't know it was possible. If it is still possible, can somebody do that, please? --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Restructuring

• Description of the hypothesis - I've got some more information to add.
• The reconstructed morphology - Some other information has to be added.
• Special section devoted to the ancient languages (PDC roots)
• The Dené-Caucasian Sound Laws - A lot of work still ahead...
  • a. A table (=Summary) (incomplete, separate fields for different positions)
  • b. The roots should contain information on the rules involved, the rules should have some lexical comparisons.

PLUS

Anything you might suggest...--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think there should be a == Criticism == section. RMW Dixon surely has said some things which could be mentioned there. 80.126.161.176 06:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Such as? David Marjanović (talk) 23:15, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Word Lists

[edit] 12-word list

Finished transcription into IPA.* Except for the mysteries; for example there's a ŋ with something below it in the Na-Dené column, and I can't figure out what that is.

Hmm...have I sent you the varios Na-Dené papers? I'm sure there will be some explanation for that in those PDF's. I'll have a look.

We also need to explain what /H/ and /A/ are, and the dialect abbreviations for Basque and Burushaski. Was I right in interpreting every G as /ɢ/? What tones do the Yeniseian languages have (superscript numbers are not IPA)?

That's right. We have to do it with every table...hm, or perhaps, if the meanings of the more general symbols don't vary too much, we might create a more general explanatory table at the bottom of the article...but we can always do that. That can wait. By the way, we might (sooner or later) make several separate articles (one devoted to PDC phonology, another one to PDC morphology, one more for PDC lexics) and only briefly quote them in the main article. We have plenty of time for that, of course, as the article isn't that long yet.

The article is quite long, actually. David Marjanović 11:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright then. I'll think of it for a while and try to propose their future structures (i.e. I'll look at the other articles, like PIE, for example, and steal the scheme from them :-D) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 17:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

* Not just because it is Wikipedia standard, but also because it is misleading not to distinguish orthographies from scientific transcriptions! Those brackets and slashes have a purpose. I have left the orthographies in italics (and will add more – most languages have one these days), but not the transcriptions.

Exactly. Excellent point. My strategy has been to add the data in a more or less acceptible form first of all, and only then take the time to go through it and make the final arrangements of the type you suggest.

I have deleted all breve diacritics. Starostin put a macron or a breve on every vowel; if he doesn't, it means he wasn't able to reconstruct the length. In IPA, shortness is assumed by default, and the breve is the rarely used "extra-short diacritic"; maybe more importantly, you can only stack so many diacritics on a letter – to distinguish a with breve from ä with breve, I had to open the edit page; otherwise I'd never have guessed that the latter existed. The nasal vowels with high or low tone still hardly come through. David Marjanović 20:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC) (logged in at last! :-) )

You're right, of course. I haven't had time to do all that. I suggest that we mark vowels of an uncertain length with the ordinary IPA length symbol, put in brackets, e.g. /ka(ː)/. What do you think, David? Anyway, thanks for the tremendous help!

Good idea with the parentheses, I should have got it myself. Can you please do it, now that I've erased the evidence and you have the originals? :-] David Marjanović 11:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just come home, so I can look at it ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 17:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Sound correspondences

I just started that section, using the plain and ejective non-"laryngeal" plosives. The purpose of not putting everything online at once is to avoid losing everything in the next Internet Explorer crash (strange things happen today). Please check for strangenesses! I have no idea if I have correctly interpreted the Proto-Sino-Tibetan /gh/ and /ɢh/ as consonant clusters. Are voiced aspirated plosives reconstructed for PST?

Please dig up more Basque correspondences, and the Na-Dené ones! Man, am I forgetful.

Also... we should agree on using "Dene" or "Dené" (the accent being high tone).

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 21:37 CEST | 2006/9/28

"Dené" is more correct than "Dene", hence we should use "Dené"

--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 18:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I'll do that in a minute. However, someone else will have to change the name of the article. I can't do that – I still don't have an account.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 15:00 CEST | 2006/10/13

I added the voiced plosives. The old sound correspondence table makes clear that – like in the Americanist notation – ẋ is [χ], not [x̕] (which would be a major weirdness in the system), so I changed this in the phonology table.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:56 CEST | 2006/9/29

Well, in the Excel table I sent you, David, I'm putting "=" between the differing notations (one is used by Starostin, the other is used by Bengtson - really confusing) --Pet'usek 03:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Added the remaining plosives and a few affricates. I'll change the PST clusters mentioned above to voiced aspirated plosives (and affricates) at the next opportunity for reasons of symmetry, but I'd still greatly appreciate evidence... Edit: They are reconstructed for Middle Chinese, anyway.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:45 CEST, 2006/9/29 | edit 18:05 CET, 2006/11/4

So would I. I haven't collected enough materials yet. I should be kept in mind and stressed in the article, that the hypothesis is really in its beginning. The necessarily and inevitably repetitive tasks of making etymological dictionaries/databases, revealing new evidence, abandoning wrong views and making them obsolite is all ahead of us...--Pet'usek 03:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Here I'm merely talking about Proto-Sino-Tibetan (or probably rather Proto-Tibeto-Burman...). I know nothing about it; I'd like to know if it's supposed to have voiced aspirated plosives and affricates, because Starostin and Bengtson don't distinguish [h] from [ʰ] or [ʱ].

Done that, added the remaining voiceless affricates and /j/ (because it doesn't require entering any special characters).

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:24 CEST | 2006/10/1

Added the remaining affricates, the fricatives, and the nasals.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:11 CEST | 2006/10/4

Now only a few consonant clusters are missing anymore. When I'll have finished, I'll delete the old correspondence tables which are still at the bottom of the page. Please add citations!

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:03 CEST | 2006/10/4

You mean citations in general or any specific, concrete citations? :-) --Pet'usek 03:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

See below.

xcellent work, David! You're faster than the wind! ;-) By the way, getting deeper and deeper in the hypothesis, I'm reavealing many little flaws of it. But until I have the proper dictionaries and papers (many have not been written by anyone yet), I have little evidence. Actually, the evidence would not contradict the hypothesis, it would only alter the reconstructed phonological system, some of the correspondences and developements.--Pet'usek 03:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll finish the table today. Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopedia, not primary literature, so we can't include anything that isn't published (...except on the talk page...). This is one of the reasons for why we should make reasonably clear what comes from where.

Ok. I'll go through the literature I have. Anyway, most of the text needs to be rewritten. I'm working on it. As for the vocabulary lists, it's an enormously time-consuming matter. I might be a bit repetitive, but I'm still working on them :-))).--Pet'usek 12:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Then I'll try to open your .rar files and look for a few neat sample etymologies.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 20:35 CEST | 2006/10/6

The correspondence table is finished. (Accordingly, I deleted its old equivalents.) Please check it against the sources, for typos as well as for misinterpretations (I have ignored all parentheses, slashes, and tildes that are in the "DC Wikipedia.doc" file you sent me). In the long run, it would also be nice to have footnotes that refer to something other than Basque.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 21:26 CEST | 2006/10/6

I'm working on that ;-)--Pet'usek 12:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

David, I found the following passage at the end of page 28 of the Preface to SC by S.A.Starostin: "PSC *p yields aspirated ph in Bur. and PST, and p in PY and PNC. Note that the PNC *p, just as all voiceless consonants, must have also been aspirated." Maybe we should mention that in the table as well....? --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 18:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I just put it in. Please tell me what you think about it.

Well done. Thank you.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:21, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I have kept forgetting to ask you something important: The old correspondence tables show reflexes of PDC voiced fricatives. I have simply ignored them. What should we do: add those reflexes to the corresponding PDC voiceless fricatives, interpret the situation as a disagreement between Starostin (no phonemically voiced fricatives) and Bengtson (phonemically voiced fricatives),

There is no disagreement between Starostin and Bengtson on this. Bengtson states (page 20 of his Materials for a Comparative Grammar...): "...Proto-Dene-Caucasian probably had several fricatives corresponding to most of the positions of the occlusives: *s, *ʃ, *ɬ, *x, *χ. There are some indications that these fricatives may have had voiced allophones. (Cf. the conditions in Proto-Athabaskan, e.g. Krauss & Leer, 1981. Athabaskan, Eyak and Tlingit Sonotants)..."

Since the allophones have distinct reflexes, they should be given the right :-). It's just as with the other phonemes at differing positions.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:21, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

or assume voiced allophones as certain, assume that they have become phonemic in some daughter-languages (check out the reconstruction of the Proto-Athabaskan sound system here on Wikipedia!), and therefore make two lines for the phonemes in question, one for each allophone?

Yes, exactly. Since there is probably no minimal pair available among the PDC reconstructions that would prove the opposite, the easiest thing - at least at the current state of knowledge - is to assume that there was no opposition of voice in the fricatives. Anyway, if you look at the reconstructed system, there are no ejective fricatives either. The three-way contrast was a matter of plosives and affricates only. Moreover, I have long suspected that at least some of the abundant affricates might have evolved from biphonematic groups of occlusives and fricatives (Note the weird opposition between the ST-like groups and TS-like affricates - Bengtson himself doubts there was a difference, the contrast is based only on PY in fact).

And yes, in some daughter languages, the differing fricatives may have become separate phonemes.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Good, will do, sometime. Good point about the affricates...

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 22:50 CEST | 2006/10/15

Done. I just wonder what evidence there is for the existence of [ɮ] and [ʒ] – they don't appear in the correspondence table you sent me. Are they just assumed for reasons of symmetry?

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 22:11 CEST | 2006/10/17

I doubt it was just to make the system more symmetrical. I will provide you with some etyma if you give me some time. Anyway, I'm working on a database of semantically organized DC lexemes PLUS a database of etyma to exemplify the listed sound changes. The latter, I'm almost sure, will increase the attractivity of the article :-).--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 18:17, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes yes yes yes !!!! Take all the time you need. :-)

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:17 CEST | 2006/10/23

That said… don't make a too big list. If you want to exemplify every sound change in the article, the article will become three times as long as it already is!!! Better look for examples that are attested in most or all descendant branches.

Yes, of course. I will send you the whole database, though, and we can discuss which etyma to include in the article. Sorry for the continuing delay - I've had some problems with my laptop :-(

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 18:11 CET | 2006/11/4

BTW, I recently added the supposed pitch accent from the cited Bengtson paper to the bottom of the correspondence table.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 14:58 CEST | 2006/10/13

[edit] Haplogroups

It seems that Bengston is a genius! His split of Dene-Caucasian matches the haplogroups. His way indicates that R1a was NOT the Indo-european marker but the North-Caucasian and probably the IE's of Anatolia borrowed the word for horse from North-Caucasian not the other way around. It even accomodates the R2 haplogroup which is amazing!!!!.

Current view of J. D. Bengtson, as yet not dated by glottochronological analyses:

1. Dené-Caucasian

1.1. The Macro-Caucasian family (R)

1.1.1. Vasco-Caucasian (R1)

1.1.1.1. Basque (R1b)

1.1.1.2. North Caucasian (R1a)

1.1.2. Burushaski (R2)

1.2. Sino-Tibetan (O)

1.3. Yeniseian (P)?

1.4. Na-Dené (Q)

Human Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) haplogroups (by ethnic groups, famous haplotypes)

most recent common Y-ancestor

|

A

BT

B

CT

DE

CF

D

E

C

F

G

H

IJ

K

I

J

L

M

NO

P

S

T

N

O

Q

R

Your comments. Please.--Kupirijo 07:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds very interesting, except that cases where languages and genes don't match up have to be expected, so I bet a closer look will show it's not that neat. David Marjanović 01:51, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

To answer myself… I just had a look at the articles, and it's nowhere near that neat. For example, haplogroup Q is found in almost all Native Americans, not (just?) Na-Dené speakers. Most, if not all, of the haplogroups are far too old to correspond to a Dené-Caucasian branch.

Let's come back in 5 years and look what will have been found :-)

David Marjanović 02:01, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

What do the others speak? I know there are also mongoloid haplogroups in America like C. Isn't that true? And what do you mean old? All isolate languages must come from the Palaeolithic stock like the Rs? That is why they evolved further apart. For example Basque from North Caucasian. --Kupirijo 05:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I still think that there are correlations between ALL haplogroups and ALL languages. It is just difficult to decipher and deconvolve, because of the mixing of populations. Humans ALWAYS had a language. That is what makes them human. And if we all descend from one Adam (and one Eve) that Adam spoke ONE language. --Kupirijo 05:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Also let me remind you the quote from the Na-Dene article: "This proposal (of Dene-Caucasian) also is supported by biological studies (Rubicz 2002) showing greater genetic differences between Na-Dene speakers and other native Americans than between speakers of Na-Dene and peoples in Eurasia, particularly speakers of Yeniseian languages.". --Kupirijo 06:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

And also just because Q3 is found in other Native Americans does not mean that Na-Dene speakers as new-comers did not adapt to local customs and languages. You can have people that speak a completely different language adapt another language. A shocking example are the R1b that actually represent most of the Western Europeans whose ancestors used to speak Basque and then Indo-european. Something similar happened in Eastern Europe but the linguists are reluctant to accept it for various different reasons. As a biologist I think genetics is going to shine light to many areas of "evolutionary linguistics" that sometimes can give the wrong impression by looking at reconstructions that are only on paper and disagree with reality, but also genetics will enforce "weak" theories for larger scale relationships that linguists are reluctant (or afraid or superstitious) to touch upon or dismiss other "weak" theories that were due to geographical contacts or mixing. I probably insulted all the linguists here but as an arrogant biologist and an amateur linguist I see things differently (more deterministically I would say). I apologize if I offended anybody. :) --Kupirijo 06:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry, you didn't.

What you say is interesting, indeed. Nevertheless, I still think we have to consider both, DNA analyses and linguistic analyses, and that the former alone cannot prove the case without the latter. And, of course, archeological findings. Imagine the following scenarios:

• • • Invaders X occupy group Y. X adopt the language of Y. (or most of it)
    • Invaders X occupy group Y. Y adopt the language of X. (or most of it)

Also, you can multiply these options by the following:

• • • X outnumber Y.
    • Y outnumber X.

Or:

• • • X are technologically more advanced.
    • Y are technologically more advanced.

How would you distinguish between all those possibilities if you only depended on biology?

--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Are you a linguist by training? --Kupirijo 08:03, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm a university student of linguistics and phonetics.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 21:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The whole Dene-Caucasian hypothesis is very doubtful - if not an utter nonsense. There exists a genetic support for the relationship between Burushaski and Ket language, as well as a relationship of these languages to some languages of American Indians, Eskimos and Nivkhi. However, this relationship goes 40 000 years back! The position of Basques is uncertain, because their dominant female lineages are of different (Gravettian) origin than Aurignacian R1b. But let's say that the bearers of Badegoulian (Pre-Magdalenian, i.e. R1b) imposed their language upon Gravettian Solutreans and Basque is thus distantly related to Burushaski. An affinity of some Caucasian language to Basque is not excluded, however, because Aurignacians (R1b-people) penetrated from Europe to Anatolia and they dwelled in today's Georgia during the Ice Age (together with G2). In any case, the membership of Chinese-Tibetan among these languages lacks any support in genetics. In fact, Chinese-Tibetan very probably belongs to a large south-east Asian language phylum that diverged during the glacial maximum (20 000 BP) into Chinese-Tibetan, Dai, Hmong, Austroasiatic and Austronesian. The branching of south-east Asian haplogroups well correlates with this language branching! These languages may be distantly related to Dravidian, Burushaski, Ket, Basque, Amerindian and very probably to languages of Papuan highlanders. Linguists should at first learn something about genetics and follow the haplogroups - instead of constructing bizarre theories. 82.100.61.114 (talk) 13:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not that old. Among the native americans, the theory uses the 2 last imigration waves in the American continent, which is probably 4000-7000 years old interval. It´s not that old, at worst case, if it is in the older level of the interval, it wouldnt probably also be possible to make correlations with Indo Arian languages with the Uralic family, assuming a similar rate if divergence. Considering the genetics, you have different distributions for different markers. Which one you can choose? Daniel de França 17:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Explaining my Edits

Hi. Sorry for not explaining m edits here, I was cut short of time on that particular day and later forgot.

1. I moved the notes to the bottom of the page because firstly that is the normal way of doing it on wikipedia and because having a long list of notes in mid aticle is extremely disruptive. When I first read the article I thouhgt it consisted only of the lead and notes! Also the notes are not standardized in their format for exaple by using the <ref> tags, which is ok, but makes them a lot harder to ead and makes them look even more disruptive to the article flow if appeared in every section.

You're right about the excessive length of the notes to the lead. Most or all of them should be turned into normal text – I'll try to make a history section for them.

2.As for the NPOV the neutral stance is mentioning that the hypothesis is not accepted by most historical linguists, because it isn't.

Fine.

I doub't you can find one linguist specialising in native american historical linguistics who support it. Lyle Campbell in his 1997 authoritative classification certainly doesn't. Not even Joseph Greenberg did. As is the article presents the hypothesis as if it is almost proven, and has a solid grounding and acceptance in linguistics- that is not the case. If you are only aware of one linguist (Vovin) who is not convinced then you should read up on mainstream historical linguists.

Wait, wait. I said I can only think of one who has had a long, hard look at the evidence and rejects DC. (I haven't read either Vovin's paper nor the responses to it, so I don't know how long and hard his look really was, but let's assume it was for the sake of the argument. For that matter, I don't even know what Vovin's current opinion is – his paper is from 2002, when a lot less was published on DC than is now…)

BTW, I don't think I should care much about whether Greenberg accepted it. Greenberg only used mass comparison, which is good as a method for generating hypotheses, but not for testing them. The DC proponents use the comparative method.

Campbell, on the other hand, is apparently a Wikipedian: User:Miskwito. Feel free to direct him here!

Miskwito is an acquaintance of mine and he is certainly not Lyle Campbell.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 11:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Merrit Ruhlen who is also quoted is an extremely controversial linguist of the american tradition and generally none of the theories that he accepts as probable are accepted by the general linguistic community.

The article doesn't exactly rely on Ruhlen. The only research on DC he has done was an attempt to relate the ejectives of Na-Dené to the glottal stops of Proto-Yeniseian, and we don't even cite that because Starostin has a better explanation for the latter (see bottom of correspondence table).

The list of references IS extremely tendential: it contains 5 names all of whom represent fringe historical linguistics. The article needs references and viewpoints from mainstream linguists.

Well, I've been looking for some, but haven't found (m)any...--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that a bit circular? As in: only fringe linguists accept DC, therefore all who accept DC are fringe?

Does it really make sense to call Starostin or Chirikba "fringe"?

Of course, more references are always good. I just added the Trask references John Bengtson suggested in an e-mail. David Marjanović 20:44, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Try looking up the proposal in a handbook or introduction to historical linguistics preferably of american or european origin (not because russian material isn't good but because the american tradition is more representative of the mainstream).

As far as I know, most of those people haven't looked at most of the evidence, thinking it's just yet another early-20th-century attempt to relate Basque to Georgian, and/or being suspicious because so many "isolates" are proposed to belong to DC, and therefore refusing to simply withhold judgment. Besides, I fully agree acceptance of DC isn't mainstream, but isn't your definition of "mainstream" a little circular nevertheless?

That doesn't matter it should be evident from the article that only a handful of linguists takes it seriously enough to even bother to comment on it - at also shouln't make that fact look like it is an unfair judgement, only time can tell whether the proposal will gain wide acceptance, and untill it does an encyclopedic article needs to say that it is not generall accepted.

only a handful of linguists takes it seriously enough to even bother to comment on it is a totally nonsensical argument (if it is an argument at all). It looks as if all the other people rejected it a priori, and as if the "bothered handful" commented on it without really considering it seriously. :-)))--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

3. for the citation needed tags I just reccommend making a reference to a reference by name publication year and page number.e.g. (Starostin 1996:45) but a clickable note would also be ok. I would really prefer if you changed the notes system to the <ref> format and made all of the notes end notes with a <references/> tag, but as main editr that is up to you.

Petr or I will fix that.

I've just begun, but I'm not sure of the outcome. I think I'll have to do some stylistic (and/or format) corrections, since I copied the references from various sources. Patience, please! ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

4. The example farm tag is simply because of the huge collection of sound correspondences and cognates which are not really encyclopedic at all and of interest only to a very limitid group of linguists who would probably much rather get their hands on the original publications. An encyclopedic article only has to present the theory it doesn't have present all the underlying data upon which the theory builds.

By comparison with the articles on Indo-European, the correspondence table certainly does belong into Wikipedia. After all, it is probably the most convincing evidence for DC – if the superfamily is fictitious or built on random similarities, why is it possible to discover regular sound correspondences!?! However, I agree this huge table makes the article far too long. Now that an article on the Proto-Dené-Caucasian language exists, I'll move the table there in a few minutes hours.

That is a much better idea - but as I said an encyclopedic article is not supposed to present the bulk of data on which the hypothesis is based, only give an overview of it.

The article is very far from the standard of formatting, sourcing and referencing in other articles on wikipedia. The editors here should look at some of the other articles about linguistic families and long range linguistic relationship hypotheses to see how they can conform to that format.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for your constructive comments. David Marjanović 11:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)| edit David Marjanović 11:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just begun to correct the formatting (see the History section)--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

There is one other linguist who has looked at the evidence and rejects DC: Stefan Georg. I'll start reading his paper right now (thanks, Petr).

What do you think of my huge edit? David Marjanović 23:20, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Good step. ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Oopsie… Georg does reject something, but that's the Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic languages, not DC. David Marjanović 23:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll add more citations from more people soon.

All three articles together don't present the bulk of the data – those are the hundreds of etymologies that we won't repeat here.

Petr has told me that Campbell (in his book American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America) had a look at the data and found them wanting… in 1997, before most of the work available today was published… David Marjanović 19:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That's right - just look at the references. ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 03:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

---

OK. Petr has brought the history section into order, and I've made stylistic improvements. Can we remove the NPOV and cleanup tags now? – In the meantime I'll read Vovin's 'bum-pa article (thanks, Petr). David Marjanović 12:36, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I think that the article needs to make clear that the hypothesis is not accepted by most linguists and particularly not by most historical specialists.

Also a question: where are the regular sound correspondences? – ishwar  (speak) 18:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi, nice to "see" you here!

The proposed sound correspondences have been moved to Proto-Dené-Caucasian language because, as you can imagine from the fact that Caucasian is included, the table is huge.

Good that you ask, though! User:Maunus wanted us to delete the table for being "not encyclopedic". :^)

It is true that most specialists don't accept it – but very few experts have ever investigated the proposed evidence. (Are there even any experts on Caucasian and Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan except the late S. Starostin?) I think the article is clear enough on this. If you find published evidence against Dené-Caucasian, however, please do insert it into the "evidence" section (which already has a paragraph of possible problems). David Marjanović 19:56, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Na-dené pronominal affixes

Where are the affixes from Na-dené (and sino-tibetan)in the table? As far as I can see it only compares affixes from caucasian, burushaski and basque.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 07:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

As I wrote: "to be expanded and modified". Hopefully today. David Marjanović 19:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, that was originally meant to demonstrate the Macro-Caucasian subgroup (i.e. Caucasian, Burushaski and Basque). Be patient, people, please - editing Wikipedia is not our full-time job! ;-))) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 23:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Originally? Why, then, are there Proto-DC reconstructions (instead of Proto-MC ones), and why are there all those Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian and Na-Dené words that you removed here (but not in the Roots article)?

Apparently, we were talking about different tables... :-))) I was talking about the suffixes shared by the three Macro-Caucasian branches, not about the weird reduced version (I don't know how it got there, as it had been the preliminary draft here on the Talk page) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 15:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Accordingly, I've restored the full table and added Salishan and Algic (and one Wakashan suffix). The format is ugly, but I'll change that. I'll also comment the class prefix table (also from the Roots article), most importantly with the functions of the prefixes. Just not too soon. David Marjanović 00:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I've corrected the Salishan 2nd person pronominal stems (as you can see, they represent the suppletive paradigm again).--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 15:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notes and Footnotes

As the Wikipedia footnote templates offer rather limited functionality, I'll make the notes in a different way, preserving the Wikipedia look at the same time...but not today. Tomorrow, perhaps. ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 16:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks great so far! Thanks for the correction you mention above. David Marjanović 11:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This artikle is good

Against this artikle INDOEUROPEAN RASISTS. Hide and stupid rasistes (as from Germany)

[edit] Etruscan?

¿Can Etruscan be included in the Dené-Caucasion family group?--Lobiclegg 03:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably not. Starostin or someone thought it had some similarities to the Caucasian languages, but these were, it seems, based on misinterpretations (like confusing "4" and "6"). It is much more likely that Etruscan belongs to the Nostratic languages. In Etruscan, "I" was mi, and "me" was mini – you can't get more Nostratic than that! David Marjanović 11:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the scarcity of the Etruscan material is a serious problem, of course. Although mi and mini really look Nostratic, they can be lookalikes in the end. Notice the oblique markers in Caucasian and elsewhere (*-nV-), as well as various nasal pronominal elements (cf. the puzzling Burushaski 1st pl /mi/). Of course, these suggestions may well turn out to be folk etymologies.

As to the confusion of "4" and "6", what misinterpretations are you talking about? /huT/ = "4" and /Sa/ = "6" in my opinion. What arguments against this view do you have?

I think, at least, if not (Dene? Macro?)Caucasian, Etruscan was influenced by these languages... --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 10:58, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Karasuk

I just added that, and modified the Macro-Caucasian section accordingly. I don't have time to add appropriate citations. Can someone else do that, please? David Marjanović 11:37, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-NPOV concerns

I think it would be premature to remove the Neutrality and cleanup tags right now. Firstly I think the article in its present state tries to brush off the fact that the proposal is only held to be probable by a small minority of linguists (some of whom, like Ruehlen, are known for believeing almost any long-range genetic relationship proposal) by stating that the lack of acceptance is only due to its not having been investigated by other independent scholars. Secondly it does not state explicitly any of the problems inherent in the investigation of long range relationship, nor how the scholars investigating the hypothesis have adressed these problems and more importantly it doesn't state any points of criticism that other scholars who remain unconvinced (A majority) have made. I am sure that you people who have looked at the evidence presented for the hypothesis have also stumbled upon critical remarks now and then - these deserve to go into the article. If you haven't found any criticisms of the theory start with Campbell 1997. I am sure more has been published somewhere - if you want a neutral article you should dig it up. As for the cleanup tags I still feel the article is messy - it doesn't show well what the point of each table is, what do they illustrate how do they relate to the structure of the article, The lead also doesn't make the structure of the article clear and doesn't touch on all the important points of the article. In my opinion there is much work still to be done on this article and the tags serve as a reminder of the tasks at hand.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 13:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your valuable comments! Many of the points have been considered by us already, but we have just been too busy to work on the article. I hope the situation will change soon. We are planning a whole section devoted to various (counter-)arguments. Thanks once more! --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 11:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

A few citations I found for the list of PDC roots a few months back, aside from Campbell, who reject the DC hypothesis, are:

1. Goddard, Ives (1996). "The Classification of the Native Languages of North America". In Ives Goddard, ed., "Languages". Vol. 17 of William Sturtevant, ed., Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. pg. 318
2. Trask, R. L. (2000). The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pg. 85
3. Dalby, Andrew (1998). Dictionary of Languages. New York: Columbia University Press. pg. 434

Trask's is the most recent publication there. Campbell might reference DC in his more recent textbook on historical linguistics; I'd have to check. Anyway, those are some references for now to justify saying that most linguists reject DC--which, regardless of whether they should or not (not having seen more recent publications on it), is still the truth. Still, more recent publications that cast doubt on the hypothesis would certainly be better. --Miskwito 20:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE issues

Very little (=nothing) has been done on any of the three Dene-Caucasian languages in the last couple of months, even after Maunus' post August 1st, which concerns me.

Me too. The reasons are that only Petr and me work on it, that Petr has little time and his grandmother is ill, that I have little access to relevant literature (most of the time at least) and not much more time, and that John Bengtson, who has at least published on the subject, is somewhat afraid of the Internet… David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

What really concerns me, though, is the issues all three DC-related articles have with giving undue weight to the theory and its proponents, and with promoting a fringe theory, counter Wikipedia policy. Specifically:

1. Having three articles on the subject is not only unnecessary, it gives the theory way more coverage than is warranted, given how little faith most linguists put in it, and indeed, how few linguists even mention or discuss it, taking for granted that it's absurd (whether such attitudes are fair or not is irrelevant for Wikipedia's purposes). This is a clear violation of WP:UNDUE. Also, from WP:FRINGE: "an appearance on Wikipedia should not make something more notable than it actually is."

IMHO the opposite should happen: there should be much more and much longer article on lots of language families, especially the uncontroversial ones. Have you seen the sorry state of Sino-Tibetan languages? David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, it would be great to expand articles on universally-recognized language families. But even if they were greatly expanded, I would still be arguing that having three articles on DC is giving undue weight. It has only a handful of serious proponents. It's simply not a major, significant proposal, because most linguists think of it as nonsense and ignore it. --Miskwito 00:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This fact that WP:UNDUE can limit the number of articles a subject can have, as opposed to limiting the presentation of a viewpoint within a larger article with different viewpoints is something new to me. Care to explain it? mike4ty4 (talk) 05:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

1. One problem is that I don't know of many (any?) linguists in the past few years who have addressed the more recent DC proposals. As far as they're concerned, it relies on already-rejected methods, can't possibly be demonstrated. I've already given several examples of well-known linguists who've either rejected the older DC proposals, or have commented that the linguistic community as a whole rejected them. But, as the article itself notes, "not much discussion between supporters and skeptics has happened yet, because most of the research on the hypothesis only started in the 1990s", and indeed, pretty much the only sources of the articles are primary sources by the proponents of the DC theory.

Would you care to elaborate what the "already-rejected methods" are? Obviously, this should be mentioned in the article. (I just hope the people in question don't believe DC is based on mass lexical comparison.) David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Most historical linguists, I suspect, would agree with Campbell's list of various shortcomings often found in long-distance (whether such accusations are warranted or not): failure to eliminate potential loanwords, wide semantic leniency, inclusion of onomatopoeic forms, inclusion of forms with sound symbolism, inclusion of "nursery forms and infant vocalizations", failure to avoid chance similarities, erroneous morphological analysis, inclusion of non-cognates and the neglect of known history, "comparison with forms of limited scope", false reconstructions, spurious forms, "semispurious forms and glosses", "philological slipups", "a single etymon as evidence for multiple cognates", and "word families and oblique cognates" (Campbell 1997, chpt. 7 [pp. 206-259]). Whether the Dene-Caucasian proposals actually suffer from these sorts of problems, that certainly seems to be the assumption of most linguists. --Miskwito 00:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

However, in response, I'd like to quote the following, from WP:FRINGE:

1. 1. "Theories which have not received critical review from the scientific community should be excluded from articles about mainstream scientific subjects"
   2. "Wikipedia is not a forum for presenting new ideas, for countering any systemic bias in institutions such as academia, or for otherwise promoting ideas which have failed to merit attention elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a place to right great wrongs. Exclusion of non-mainstream ideas from articles about mainstream scientific topics may occur when the scientific community has ignored the ideas."

This is obviously designed to keep pseudoscience out of Wikipedia. The DC hypothesis is testable. (And, BTW, a theory is something much bigger!) David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Few proponents of any idea like to have it called "pseudoscience", but in the eyes of most linguists, extremely distant genetic proposals like Dene-Caucasian amount to that. Again, whether this is a fair attitude is irrelevant as far as Wikipedia is concerned. --Miskwito 00:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

1. 1. "Wikipedia is meant to be a tertiary source of information, summarizing the information gleaned from primary and secondary sources. Primary sources about research and investigations should only be used to verify the text and should not be relied upon exclusively as doing so would violate Wikipedia's ban on original research." (emphasis added)

There is zero original research in any of the three articles. David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

But the three articles draw almost (entirely?) exclusively on primary sources, by which I mean, they're written almost entirely using the original research of the scholars proposing DC. Which, as the passage I quote above states, is counter to Wikipedia policy: there should be secondary sources, which report on the DC proposals, used in the articles as well. --Miskwito 00:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

1. Almost no presentation is given in any of the articles to positions of opponents of DC. Part of the problem, as Petusek and David have pointed out, and as mentioned above, is that most historical linguists hardly ever even mention the theory. As mentioned above, whether linguists are justified in these feelings or not is not Wikipedia's concern. What matters for our purposes is that few linguists have written much about DC, and that those who have have usually rejected it. We can't just be using the arguments of the theory's supporters here.

Then please do get the arguments by those who reject DC in. David Marjanović 16:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

What I think should been done about these issues is as follows. First, the other two articles pertaining to Dene-Caucasian (Proto-Dené-Caucasian language and Proto-Dené-Caucasian roots) should be deleted, and appropriate information from them can be integrated into this article (there's very little appropriate in the DC roots article, frankly, though). Second, opposing viewpoints need to be better-documented on this page, and related to that, I also suggest that we alert WikiProject Linguistics to these articles, and ask for input, copyediting, help with citations, balancing of POV, and other assistance. --Miskwito 19:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I have nothing to add, except thatI agree.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 09:36, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree also. Several negative reviews have been written about Dené-Caucasian, and even Nikolayev and Starostin's Proto-North-Caucasian (i.e. the unification of North-West and North-East Caucasian), which is one leg on which the Dené-Caucasian theory stands, is rejected by linguists specialising in both fields. There needs to be a big slab of writing done that covers all of this, and if anyone's willing to send me some references, I'll take it on myself. Thefamouseccles 04:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Good! Except that I disagree with the suggestion of deletion. The sound correspondence tables belong into Wikipedia (those for Indo-European are up, too), and they would make the present article far too long.

That the Proto-Caucasian reconstruction by Nikolayev & Starostin is not universally accepted and difficult to test is already mentioned in the article.

Good luck in finding the references! If you give me citations, I might be able to get a few this weekend while I'm sitting behind a proxy server of the University of Vienna. David Marjanović 16:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between having a list of well proven sound correspondences that nobody in linguistics will disagree with in an article about the worlds most recognized language family and a list of proposed sound correspondences in an article about a linguistic unit believed by very few to have any validity whatsoever.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:03, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The argument from majority

Fine, this is Wikipedia and not primary literature, so the argument from majority is not automatically considered a logical fallacy. OK.

But how many people have rejected the DC hypothesis for reasons other than "bah, yet another long-range proposal"? (Again, the fact that the Proto-Caucasian and Proto-Sino-Tibetan reconstructions used are difficult to test is in the article – you're welcome to move it to a more prominent position.) Sure, Trask has, mainly because his reconstruction of Pre-Basque is different. (I will mention this more prominently in the article.) But besides?

Here is a post by Stefan Georg on when a hypothesis on language relationships should be considered accepted. For the record, Georg is currently most famous for fighting against the Altaic hypothesis (though he accepts a Tungusic-Korean-Japonic grouping as likely), rejects Nostratic, rejects DC, but accepts Seefloth's Uralo-Siberian because it's based on morphology. Here is a follow-up by Trask, here one by Vovin, and here another one by Georg.

To be an Indo-Europeanist, you have to know a lot about each of the branches of IE. How many people, other than the late Starostin, have anything near that kind of knowledge about East Caucasian and West Caucasian and Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan and so on? Bengtson seems to be working on it, but he almost completely limits himself to Basque, the two Caucasians, and Burushaski (which he finds to be closely related), but he almost never mentions Sino-Tibetan or Na-Dené. That makes about one half of a person that is capable of judging the DC hypothesis (as a whole) beyond finding mistakes in the data from one of the supposed members. For that matter, Starostin himself largely ignored Na-Dené, Basque, and Burushaski.

Is there (already) a paper that takes the proposed evidence apart? If so, I'll be glad to cite it. (For the record, here is a discussion of a paper that shows, IMHO quite clearly, that what little evidence there was for including Omotic in Afro-Asiatic was wrong. A link to that paper is included.)

Here, incidentally, is an introduction to Burushaski – secondary literature – which makes favorable comparisons to Yeniseian and Sino-Tibetan.

In sum, I don't see anything wrong with presenting the hypothesis (in its latest incarnation) on Wikipedia. It is a controversial discussion subject, so (comparatively) many people will find it interesting.

In the meantime, I'll add some morphological evidence (suppletive pronoun paradigms, noun class prefixes) to the Macro-Caucasian section of the article, provided that Bengtson tells me that this paper is actually published. I'll also try to make more mention of the hypotheses that combine Sino-Tibetan with geographically adjacent families and thus contradict DC. David Marjanović 13:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some problems of DC "linguistics" (sic)

Do you realise the extreme complexity of PDC's phonological inventory when compared to the daughter languages? There are so many unusual affricates and ejectives that just about any sound change will fit in. Starostin (Bengston as well) suspiciously includes typologically unusual sounds like affricates d͡ɮ and t͡ɬ to virtually all of his reconstructed proto-languages, thereby deriving everything from s to k to l to t to ʃ and so forth, through extremely restricted (and often ad-hoc) phonological rules. I mean, what can you make of roots like *bHǝrxkV, *t͡ɕʼaːd͡ɮwV or *bʕáːɫho? What is the probability of any human language having so many highly complex roots in its basic vocabulary? Such complexity is obviously due to an artifact from their attemps to make unrealistic phonological changes fit. And even so they remain problematic.

It's actually very easy to come up with "regular" sound changes this way. And even more so when you: a) are willing to relate words with glosses such as 'blood' and 'stone of fruit' (loose semantics is another issue); and b) is “reinterpreting” by yourself the Proto-languages under comparison all the time (“Vasconcic”, “Proto-Caucasian”, “Proto-Na-Dene”, “Proto-Burushaski”… come on, where else can you find the sources for these ‘Proto-languages’? Even the classification of Macro-Caucasian and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit/Haida is disputed!)

I simply fail to understand how any serious students of linguistics would take this sort of 'comparison' seriously (ah, it turns out that they don't.) Unfortunately, Wikipedia seems to have been hijacked by a couple of 'Mother Tongue' fans (yes, that odd little fringe journal that linguists are otherwise happy to ignore). KelilanK 11:03, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

While I agree completely with your opinions it would be nice if you were to suggest how the dene-caucasian articles might be developed into something more informative. We seem to be at a stalemate here.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 11:52, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. My suggestions:

1)As someone has already suggested, I believe that the Proto-Dené-Caucasian language and Proto-Dené-Caucasian roots articles should be deleted, to avoid giving undue weight to these fringe theories. Whatever useful information is provided there (not much, at least for an encyclopedia) could be merged here. We should start a formal AfD discussion for those articles now and see what comes up.

2)There should be a "criticism" section on this page reflecting the reservations of mainstream linguists.

3) There should be more information on competing theories and proposed classifications that overlap with some DC families; for example, in the case of Sino-Tibetan, Larish's "Proto-Asian" [1] and Sagart's "Sino-Austronesian" [2] (not to mention Alarodian and the equally dubious "Nostratic".) These two proposed superfamilies have so far been ignored in Wikipedia, even though Sagart's theory has received much more scholarly attention than "Dene-Caucasian" (an indication that at least it is taken somewhat seriously, while DC is not.) KelilanK 14:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

A) The second article is protected by the magazine, so its contents are not available to scrutinity with necessary funding (that includes me). Do you have any link for a pre print version?

B) Can you show evidence that this second theory is generaly more accepted then Dene-Caucasian?

C) If you think a theory is fringe, would think it is better to hide it and make the general public be cheated due to ignorance, or to add a very strong criticsm section? You provided some sources, post them on the main page. They are opinions from specialists, but don't censor, it will be much worse in any case.

D) Why don't you open articles for these other theories? At least it will be a warning against fringe theories, if you think they are wrong. Just like the articles on narcotics. Without them, the public would not be exposed to a fair discussion, and would be even more easily deceived? Daniel de França 02:47, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

A) No, I haven't, but I can e-mail you the article if you want.

B) My friend, you just mixed up Na-Dene and Dene-Caucasian. Are you sure we are talking about the same subject? (on a side note, answering the question, read some issues of Oceanic Linguistics and similar respected journals - unlike Mother Tongue - and you will see it for yourself.)

C) If someone decides to write an article on Wikipedia about a crazy theory saying that planet earth is an illusion created by the evil spirit flying spaghetti (hardly any more credible than "Dene-Caucasian", but you never know), only two things could make it worthy of an article: published derision from experts and pop-culture references. Dene-Caucasian has none. It is such a lousy and obscure theory that doesn't even deserve mention by anyone patient enough to have studied it.

D) With all due respect, the comparison with "narcotics" didn't make any sense.

If the arguments you made were to be accepted, Wikipedia would soon become a repository of all sorts of crackpot theories and a haven for pseudoscience. In fact, there wouldn't be any AfD.

Besides, there is hardly any need for "warnings" against things that nobody takes seriously anyway.KelilanK 08:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

A)No, I want you to post a link to it here. I want an open discussion. Not an email from you sorry.

B)That was a typo. I corrected. Again, show us pre prints of those articles, so that we can judge openly. And post them here.

C)The strawman argument. Comparing it to unrelated subjects, and making a point. You already showed it was taken seriously by several specialits, in the negative way.

D)Pseudoscience, except for the growing genetic and archeological correlation. Like, just like no one can see black holes, it means that their existance cannot be infered.

I really think there should be a repository of all sorts of crackpot theories, for the reasons you posted on C, besides the one I posted.Daniel de França 11:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not such a repository. Also we cannot ask anyone to include links to copyright protected material. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 15:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

No, I didnt ask links to copyrighted material, but links to pre prints, which are not the final versions published on the magazines. Usually the authors make available to the general public. Because of that, posting links to pre prints is a common practice, even on wikipedia, to make academic works available to the general public. Check the bibligoraphy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory. If you check there, you can find the same work available on official journals, although not the final, wording order, chapter or title names. But generaly updated differently from the final version of the magazine, after publication, to reflect the peer revision.Daniel de França 16:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I also don't think we can demand anyone to have knowledge about where preprints might be found on the internet, and while making preprints avaliable is maybe common practice in some academic fields it is not in all. A title and page number of a peer reviewed article is sufficient reference even if that means that we will have to find the articles on our own.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 16:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

He stated that this theory is not even worth examine. So how can this be different, on practice, then bluffing for the sole presure of trolling. I came to know this theory on wikipedia. If this article was deleted, I would never learn of this and neither researched many topics, starting from here. I wouldn´t like that a few people to be oblivious of any knowledge. As for the repository of fringe theories, I expressed my self bad. I inteded to be ironic for the things we don´t accept or dont believe because we don´t like. Forgive me for the blunt words.Daniel de França 17:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

No offense taken. We are not discussing whether the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis should be on wikipedia - it certainly should have an article, but we are discussing how to present the material in way that doesn't trick a reader into believing that the hypothesis is unproblematic and close to be proven, or that any large amount of linguists believe in it. Because if the reader were to get this image from the article we would have mislead him.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 08:58, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some problems of "criticism" (sic) of DC linguistics

Before commenting on some of the issues raised in the discussion above, please let me introduce myself. I am George Starostin, son of the late Sergei Starostin and also a comparative linguist, continuing some of the directions of his work. This does not mean that I have always agreed with every etymology or correspondence he produced, but it does mean that I am probably more qualified on explaining and defending his views (those which I agree with of my own free will) than anyone else. I am not a major expert on Dene-Caucasian, but I have worked on both comparative Yeniseian grammar and Sino-Tibetan (most particularly Old Chinese) issues, as well as translated the lengthy preface to the North Caucasian etymological dictionary (now available online at http://starling.rinet.ru) into English. So much for my credentials.

Now, to the matter. Frankly speaking, some of the near-animal hatred towards Dene-Caucasian linguistics (and macrocomparative linguistics in general) as espoused in select comments above and in a lot of other places on the Web is a source of constant astonishment for me, especially considering that this starkly negative attitude usually - not always, but very frequently - comes hand-in-hand with a nonchalant ignorance of the real facts. I will try to prove this by analyzing the three paragraphs written by user KeliLank under the previous heading - each of which is rife with errors and misunderstandings.

Do you realise the extreme complexity of PDC's phonological inventory when compared to the daughter languages? There are so many unusual affricates and ejectives that just about any sound change will fit in. Starostin's latest version of the DC (SC) reconstruction involves 50 consonants. That's almost twice less than in Ubykh, a real attested language, and about ten or twelve phonemes less than Abkhaz and other West Caucasian languages. The number per se is large, but not unusual. In particular, I have not heard any specialists in Caucasian languages raise THAT as a prominent issue - because they, of course, are quite familiar with the extreme complexity of some of the modern languages in that area. I would suggest a crash course in Archi, one of the most complex - and, as even a brief perusal of the North Caucasian comparative dictionary will demonstrate to anyone, the most phonetically archaic - Daghestanian languages, as the perfect cure in this particular case.

Starostin (Bengston as well) suspiciously includes typologically unusual sounds like affricates d͡ɮ and t͡ɬ to virtually all of his reconstructed proto-languages, thereby deriving everything from s to k to l to t to ʃ and so forth, through extremely restricted (and often ad-hoc) phonological rules. This is one of those unfounded blanket statements that I would deem completely unacceptable even in a routine Internet exchange, let alone a real scientific discussion. Starostin has worked on the reconstruction of quite a few proto-languages, and if my memory serves me well, he never reconstructed anything like that either for Proto-Yeniseian, or for Proto-Kiranti, or for Proto-Japanese, or for Proto-Altaic, or, in fact, for any language where such a reconstruction was not demanded by hard evidence. The only family where he did reconstruct lateral affricates although no attested language had preserved them, was Sino-Tibetan, where this reconstruction was based on the correspondence "a specific type of Old Chinese initials that belong to the lateral series, yet structurally behave like stops : Tibetan initial clusters like ld-, lt-, lc-", which, in my opinion, does beg for an original lateral affricate situation. As for "deriving everything from s to k to l to t to ʃ and so forth", this is again a blanket statement that foregoes careful evaluation of particular cases in favor of a "oh, this is so complex it can't be true" exclamation. Granted, it is certainly easier to produce such an exclamation than, for instance, to read the detailed explanation of the Abkhaz-Adyghe reconstruction of the system of lateral affricates in S. A. Starostin's lengthy review of V. Chirikba's book on West Caucasian (oh, but it's been published in "Mother Tongue", so I guess it isn't worth reading. Well, a shorter version is still available in the introduction to the North Caucasian dictionary).

I mean, what can you make of roots like *bHǝrxkV, *t͡ɕʼaːd͡ɮwV or *bʕáːɫho? What is the probability of any human language having so many highly complex roots in its basic vocabulary? Such complexity is obviously due to an artifact from their attemps to make unrealistic phonological changes fit. And even so they remain problematic. Whatever this is, this is not a scientific argument. "This cannot be possible because it is impossible". This has nothing to do with probability, because proto-languages are not reconstructed according to the overall probability of phoneme so-and-so occurring in that language: they are reconstructed based on regular phonetic correspondences between their actual inventories. If language A has 50 phonemes, shows regular correspondences with languages B and C that have 25 phonemes, and shows no sign of historical complementary distribution for any of its 50 phonemes, then the proto-language for A, B, and C will be reconstructed with 50 phonemes, and language A will be deemed the most archaic of the three. This is the ABC of comparative linguistics. North Caucasian phonetics is indeed very complex, and no one has ever been able to demonstrate that this complexity is the result of recent innovation, thus, for the moment, it has to be projected over the entire DC system - and this is further confirmed by the fact that different parts of this complexity find confirmation in various other members of the DC family (e. g., Na-Dene languages do preserve the "unusual" lateral consonants that user KeliLanK is so suspicious of). As for specific examples above, I fail to see what it is that exactly makes a root like *bHǝrxkV that much less realistic than the firmly attested Khosrekh Lak daughter form baIrh, or a root like *bʕáːɫho that much less realistic than the regular Ingush reflexation bʕal. Let us not judge languages from the perspective of English or Hawaiian.

It's actually very easy to come up with "regular" sound changes this way. And even more so when you: a) are willing to relate words with glosses such as 'blood' and 'stone of fruit' (loose semantics is another issue)

Another blanket statement. Loose semantics is occasionally to be found in any etymological dictionary of any family, and comparative Sino-Caucasian studies are no better and no worse in that respect than any other comparative studies. I don't see any particular problem with the change 'blood' > 'marrow' > 'pith, stone of fruit', but pecking on occasional semantic latitude while ignoring all the good semantic matches (of which there are plenty, as anyone perusing the Sino-Caucasian database will be able to see) is hardly productive. I would also like to remind that Sino-Caucasian, unlike many other macro-comparative theories, is propped by lexicostatistical confirmation, which means there is a significant number of exact semantic matches between the compared languages on the list of the most basic lexical items.

and b) is “reinterpreting” by yourself the Proto-languages under comparison all the time (“Vasconcic”, “Proto-Caucasian”, “Proto-Na-Dene”, “Proto-Burushaski”… come on, where else can you find the sources for these ‘Proto-languages’? Even the classification of Macro-Caucasian and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit/Haida is disputed!)

This is not only a blanket statement, but also one that does not make much sense; in fact, it reeks of ignorance. Sources for Proto-Vasconic (not "Vasconcic") can be found in the works of L. Michelena, for Proto-North Caucasian (not "Proto-Caucasian") in the works of N. Trubetzkoy, for Proto-Na-Dene in the works of Krauss, Pinnow et al., for Proto-Sino-Tibetan in the works of Benedict and Shafer. Starostin, Bengtson, Peiros and others have based their work upon previous tradition, with all due respect to their predecessors but feeling free to improve on their work where better material has become available or where not all the correspondences had been properly taken into account.

I simply fail to understand how any serious students of linguistics would take this sort of 'comparison' seriously (ah, it turns out that they don't.) Apparently user KeliLank feels himself free to represent the opinion of all serious students of linguistics in the whole wide world. I certainly do not, but I AM familiar with serious linguistic research in the former USSR, and I can safely vouch that there are numerous "serious students of linguistics" in this part of the world who either agree with the basic premises of Dene-Caucasian (having, of course, consulted the evidence) or are willing to consider it as a valid, serious linguistic hypothesis. This is obviously due to the fact that Starostin, Nikolayev et al. have had much more opportunity to expound and present their views in this part of the world rather than in the States, and that a large part of the literature on the subject is only written in Russian. However, briefly discarding all of that in one sentence is a sign of close-mindedness. Another issue, already raised in the previous posts, is that it is not clear how anything can be taken or not taken seriously if it is simply ignored. There has not been ONE detailed critical discussion of Starostin and Nikolayev's "North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary" - the cornerstone of the SC/DC theory as well - in the whole Western world. Instead, there is either ignorance of its existence or a few blanket condemnations expressed in a couple sentences (e. g., Johanna Nichols' "thumbs down" that has not been accompanied by any particular arguments). Apparently, the general position is as follows: "Ignore it, and it will go away". Well, it won't, not until someone at least takes the time to explain why exactly it is to be ignored.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia seems to have been hijacked by a couple of 'Mother Tongue' fans (yes, that odd little fringe journal that linguists are otherwise happy to ignore).

I am a linguist, and I have published twice in Mother Tongue, so I am not happy to ignore it. Neither are or were such respected specialists as Michael Witzel, Harold Fleming, Paul Benedict, Larry Trask, Edward Vajda, Heinrich Werner, Winfred Lehmann, Igor Diakonoff, George van Driem, Robert Blust, to name but some who have not deemed it below their dignity to publish articles, reviews, and participate in discussions in that "fringe journal" (I am intentionally not mentioning Greenberg, Ruhlen, Bengtson and other "long-rangers par excellence" here, to avoid potential ensuing generalizations like 'oh, all of them are crackpots'). Of course, if the current state of American linguistics is such that research on macro-comparative issues is explicitly banned from "mainstream" journals, regardless of who is publishing what on whatever issue, I can only express my sorrow at this state of affairs.

Now, to the main issue: considering my views on how "Dene-Caucasian" should be treated in Wikipedia.

First, a lot of references have been made to "fringe" and "mainstream" and how anything that is not "mainstream" should be either ignored or at least, well, relegated to the "fringe area" of Wikipedia. I believe that, before doing that, one has to carefully consider the meaning of the word "mainstream". If it is to be understood as "the general attitude on various areas of knowledge as currently enshrined in major US universities", fine, delete the article for all I care. If, however, Wikipedia has even the slightest intention of broadening its scope and not filtering all the current linguistic issues through the one and only MIT paradigm, the article should remain, because in those parts of the world where DC linguists have been simply given more opportunity to present their views, the general attitude ranges from "cautious acceptance" to "respectful skepticism" rather than "rejection of an obviously pseudoscientific conception".

From a certain point of view, DC linguistics is jammed into a stalemate situation. "It's a lousy theory because mainstream specialists reject it." "And why do mainstream specialists reject it without even discussing it?" "Why, because it's such a lousy theory it doesn't even deserve discussion!" "And how do you know it's such a lousy theory it doesn't even deserve discussion?" "Why, because that's what mainstream specialists tell me!" And the wheel rolls on.

To conclude this lengthy passage, my current suggestions are: a) Merge the "Proto-Dene-Caucasian language" and the "Proto-Dene-Caucasian roots" articles into one. The second one does look a little like an attempt to spread the knowledge and convince the unconvinced, which is not really what Wikipedia is all about. If a few roots are given as examples in the "PDC language" article, I would think it sufficient.

b) On the other hand, it might be reasonable to keep the "Dene-Caucasian languages" and "Proto-Dene-Caucasian language" articles separate, as this would closely mirror the situation with other comparative theories, such as "Proto-Indo-European language" and "Proto-Uralic language" vs. "Indo-European languages" and "Uralic languages". The former should, as it now does, relate the history of the hypothesis, the current views and classifications, while the latter may incorporate tables of correspondences etc.

c) Whatever critical publications on DC linguistics there are, one should feel free to incorporate them into the references and bibliography, making sure, however, that these are PRIMARY sources and not quotations of the "everyone knows that DC does not exist, see works by so-and-so" type.

d) Regarding the concurrent theories - by all means, an article on Sagart's Sino-Austronesian is welcome (although how exactly it is "more accepted" by the mainstream than DC evades me; the only reason it may have received more "scholarly attention" than DC is due to the fact that Laurent Sagart has frequented more international conferences than Starostin). Whoever will be doing it should, however, pay particular attention NOT to base it on the link provided by user KeliLanK; it refers to a very old and obsolete version of Sagart's theory, back when he was insisting that Chinese language is most closely related to Austronesian but not to Tibeto-Burman (thus his main argument was with Sino-Tibetan rather than Sino-Caucasian linguistics). He has since then changed his mind on the issue, now regarding Chinese as Sino-Tibetan first and Sino-Austronesian only second, and it is his newer publications on this theory that should form the basis of the potential article.

I would wait with "Proto-Asian", though, since the theory currently exists in but one or two articles and is certainly much less elaborated than either DC or Sino-Austronesian. In particular, Larish offers no phonetic correspondences for his comparanda, meaning that it is not even structured like a true comparative-historical theory.

I will be happy to participate in further discussion, provided we do not run around in circles.Gstarst 13:09, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

In my view the best argument one can make against the DC-hypothesis can be made without thoroughly assessing its data: namely that several of the subgroups which it intends to unite are still shrouded in some measure of doubt as to their validity. If a linguist could first build on commonly accepted language groupings and their reconstructed proto-languages that would be the first step towards making a long range hypothesis credible. Na-dene is a contested grouping which doesn't currently have a sufficiently reconstructed protolanguage. So is Sino-Tibetan and Caucasian. It is necessarily the case that a macrofamilies can only be as solid as the family grouping they are resting on. This alone would make Dene-Caucasian one of the least solid macrogroupings. In my eyes nothing of what has been presented in these pages give me the feeling that the DC-hypothesis is not simply another attempt to lump as many unclassified languages into a group as possible - while treating actual data and linguistic methodology with utter disrespect. Sound linguistic methodology dictates that one works from the bottom up starting with the data connecting it bit by bit and then forming the relations and then the hypothesis - it is quite obvious that DC has been formed the other way round. I am aware that this cannot go in the article unless it is referenced to a publication but it is probably the main reason why "mainstream linguistics " or "American university linguists", or "MIT-school linguists" or whatever grouping you want to believe runs the agenda of the main journals of linguistics do not lend the DC-hypothesis its attention. My view about how the article should be shaped is this: it should document the existence of the hypothesis and the main stages of its development. I think that probably it would be justifiable to mention that the linguistic methods that have been used to investigate the hypothesis are closer to the methods of Mass lexical comparison than to a strict application of the comparative method. And it should be clearly stated that the hypothesis is not considered to be proven or have been made probable. I don't think the article should contain data outside of a few examples serving only the purpose of illustrating the scope of the hypothesis, but not to make it seem as if the data is particularly convincing or unconvincing - or as if it has factual value. I think the most important part of the article is the bibliography which allows the interested reader to assess the hypothesis for himself.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:58, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, I must again disagree with the statement that "it is quite obvious that DC has been formed the other way round". It is true that Starostin's first (short) publication on SC was published before the comparative dictionaries of North Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian, but this was due to technical factors (not being allowed to publish extensively before the collapse of the USSR). In reality, Sino-Caucasian was reconstructed exactly the way you describe it: first North Caucasian (preceded by all the intermediate subgroups), then Yeniseian (a detailed article on Yeniseian reconstruction is available with all the correspondences), then Sino-Tibetan, and only then was the SC comparison effectuated. For the record, Starostin never brought Na-Dene into serious comparison EXACTLY for the reason that there wasn't a good Na-Dene reconstruction available, although he thought the connection probable. The sound linguistic methodology that you are speaking of is exactly the one that has always been advocated by the Moscow school in all of its publications. For proof, one needs but actually read some of the publications (preface to the North Caucasian dictionary, article on Yeniseian reconstruction, the monograph on Old Chinese reconstruction etc. - how many of the anti-Sino-Caucasianists have done that?).

The statement "the linguistic methods that have been used to investigate the hypothesis are closer to the methods of Mass lexical comparison than to a strict application of the comparative method" is objectively untrue. Mass lexical comparison eschews any kind of reconstructions, ignores regularity of phonological correspondences and has no formal methodology for testing its hypotheses. Sino-Caucasian is based on a complex system of intermediate reconstructions, for each of which a system of correspondences is available in published form, and has been formally tested through lexicostatistics. One may take issue with particular correspondences and etymologies, but certainly not with the methodology involved, which does not differ one iota from the classic comparative method. Saying that Sino-Caucasian is based on mass comparison is thus akin to saying that Indo-European is based on the works of Marcus van Boxhorn rather than Bopp, Grimm, and Brugmann.

What may be misleading the American public is that the theory is more frequently associated with early publications by Merritt Ruhlen and John Bengtson on the subject - publications that are, indeed, characteristic of the mass comparison method. Since they were all written in English and easily available in the States, the prevailing opinion is that the Sino-Caucasian/Dene-Caucasian theory is based primarily on these works. But Ruhlen has never really elaborated the details of Dene-Caucasian, publications like these being essentially a 'side interest'; and as for Bengtson, he has long since moved much closer to adopting the comparative method (his later works are far more rigorous in content).

A few sidenotes: 1) Like I said, Russian comparative linguistics is far more benevolent towards Sino-Caucasian, which would certainly not be the case if it were but one particular application of "mass comparison"; after all, the Russian comparative school is older than the American one and much closer in spirit to the classic German version of historical linguistics.

2) Na-Dene and Sino-Tibetan are not contested groupings. In the case of Na-Dene, the only problem is with Tlingit, which is just one language; you can just as easily deal simply with Eyak-Athapaskan (no one denies that kinship). I know of no one who denies Sino-Tibetan (Sagart used to, but he no longer does). In addition, even if North Caucasian is debated, the situation there is such that the Abkhaz-Adyghe protolanguage is almost fully derivable (in terms of correspondences) from Nakh-Daghestanian (an uncontroversial grouping), meaning that within Sino-Caucasian linguistics, it is permissible to directly compare Proto-Nakh-Daghestanian to Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Meaning that some of the controversies represent "side" problems and do not necessarily have to be resolved before we allow ourselves to move to a higher level. And, just for the record, Sino-Caucasian is objectively far more solid than some of the macrofamilies tacitly recognized or, at least, never explicitly rejected by the "mainstream" - such as, e. g., Nilo-Saharan, where the situation with data handling and intermediate reconstructions is far worse.

Besides, fine - if one does not want to assess the merits of Sino(Dene-)Caucasian before assessing the validity of the individual subgroups, why not start with assessing the validity of the individual subgroups? Where IS a detailed assessment of the North Caucasian reconstruction? Why does Johanna Nichols think it permissible to write a paper called "Consonantal correspondences in Nakh-Daghestanian languages" in which she negligibly refers to Nikolayev-Starostin 1994 with ONE sentence and then proceeds to act as if that dictionary never existed? (By the way, if you want a great example of true "mass lexical comparison", be sure to check out that piece of work - because that's what it is exactly). All the data are available, the etymologies and correspondences laid out and explained so that one does not even need to be a trained Caucasologist to check upon them. (In Russia, mind you, the dictionary has been given high praise by some of its most well-known Caucasologists, such as M. Alekseyev and Y. Testelets; the only explicit "thumbs down" - but, again, without a detailed explanation - was from the late G. Klimov).

3) I think it IS explicitly stated in the article as it now stands that the hypothesis is controversial and not generally considered to be proven, and neither I nor any Sino-Caucasologist have any problems with that. My point is that the article should stand, should give a detailed overview of the current state of the theory, and should not incorporate false accusations.Gstarst (talk) 09:20, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

In large part, I must agree with George. I could add a few points concerning the alleged complexity of the PDC phoneme inventory from the typological perspective, but any serious student of linguistics (which I was said not to be) should be aware of some well-known facts (like, for example, that elsewhere, we have even more complex systems, such as those of the Khoisan languages in Africa - !Xũ has 47 non-click and 48 click consonants = 95 consonants, 24 monophthongs and 22 diphthongs, i.e. 141 phonemes & 24 distinctive features; that many Athabaskan languages, for instance, have series of coronal affricates which may be unaspirated, aspirated, or ejective + interdental/dental, alveolar, postalveolar, or lateral, i.e. [t̪θ], [t̪θʰ], [t̪θ’], [ts], [tsʰ], [ts’], [tʃ], [tʃʰ], [tʃ’], [tɬ], [tɬʰ], and [tɬ’]; the correspondences between velars and lateral affricates are well-known among Caucasologists - we can imagine a series of changes like the following: [tɬ] > [tx] > [kx], or [tɬ] > [kɬ] > [kx] etc. - and Johanna Nichols, a "mainstream" expert in Nakh-Daghestanian linguistics, reconstructs lateral africates for Proto-Nakh-Daghestanian, too; the other changes (to [t], [l], [ʃ] etc.) are a matter of usual processes like lenition, fortition, etc. and are paralleled by similar shifts within Caucasian, as well as other non-DC language families, including Afrasian, for example, and so on, and so forth).

As for the article on DC roots, I began to write it when I was rather new to Wikipedia and didn't know much about the standards of its editing yet. However, there WERE reasons for its creation: 1) the series of articles on (Proto-)Indo-European as (sort of) a model (notice there are lots of sub-articles on Indo-European, such as PIE noun, PIE verb, PIE pronouns, etc.), and 2) the existence of Swadesh (and other types of) word-lists elsewhere on Wikipedia. If, however, it is so problematic to present the most stable parts of DC lexicon here, then I don't really mind its deletion. I don't need that stuff - I just wanted to inform others, give them some basic data to test, etc. I might have a suggestion for a compromise - the Proto-Indo-European root-list has been moved to the sister project of Wikipedia, called Wictionary. Could we just transwiki the PDC roots article rather than delete it (and totally ignore the time spent on it :-))? Thanks for your opinions!

As I mentioned in my reply (deleted by KeilanK for formal reasons), I agree there should be a larger critical section. A question arises here what its format should be, which papers to cite, what arguments to include (some should be transferred to the articles on historical linguistics, on multilateral comparison, on long-range linguistics etc.). Any suggestions are welcome!

--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 18:43, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Добро пожаловать, Георгий Сергеевич! :-)

I am not a student of linguistics, but I am serious, so I'd like to add my 0.02 €. Please excuse the disorganized presentation.

First of all, Miskwito (way above) implied that "pseudoscience" is an insult and subjective. The latter, at least, is not the case. Science has a strict definition; in short, as long as you can answer the question "if I were wrong, how would I know?", you're doing science, if you can't, you're not. Ideas that are dressed up to look sciency (e. g. with jargon) but fail the principle of falsifiability are pseudoscience. The DC hypothesis may be completely, utterly, resoundingly wrong, but if it is wrong, we can find out that it is wrong; thus, it is science, not pseudoscience.

On the other hand, lamenting the fact that this hypothesis is not proven is misleading. Science cannot prove, only disprove. The IE hypothesis is by far the most parsimonious explanation for a vast range of data, and it is proven beyond reasonable doubt, but it is impossible to define "reasonable" – after all, it's not even possible to disprove solipsism. Proof is for mathematicians, truth is for philosophers.

I agree that the latest version of Sagart's Sino-Austronesian hypothesis (and probably even "East Asian") deserves more mention, in the DC article, in the Sino-Tibetan article, and in an article of its own. Obviously, Sino-Austronesian and Dené-Caucasian cannot both be real (in anything resembling their present incarnations at least), so they are serious competition to each other. I will try to start fixing this over the next weeks.

Due to the fact that all reconstructed Proto-DC roots are available not just in primary literature but also at starling.ru (which is currently down), I agree we don't need them in Wikipedia. Moving them to Wiktionary is probably a good idea, though.

On the other hand, the separate article on Proto-DC should not be deleted. To the contrary: IMHO, all proto-languages for which reconstructions exist should have a Wikipedia article.

What is unusually complex about roots that contain clusters of two or three consonants? We clearly shouldn't compare reconstructions of proto-languages only to English or Hawaiian, but consider English words like strange… a three-consonant cluster in front, a diphthong in the middle, and a cluster consisting of a simple consonant and an affricate at the end, all in one syllable. A "highly complex root" is something different.

The reconstructed phoneme inventory is IMHO surprisingly regular. It's clearly at the other end of the scale from PIE, which famously had

• voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated plosives, but no voiceless aspirated ones – a combination known today from one single language spoken somewhere in Indonesia;
• common /p/ and /bʱ/, while /b/ was very rare or maybe absent, which is what would be expected (if at all) of /p/ but never of /b/;
• no or almost no trace of /a/ or for that matter any other open or near-open vowel.

All three of these features, which have not survived in any attested descendants, have been contested, sometimes for decades, and yet all three are nowadays more or less universally accepted (a few glottalists notwithstanding) because they are simply the most parsimonious explanations for the widest range of data and because there are no reasons to think they are not just unusual and unstable but really impossible. (And incidentally, at least two of them, maybe all three, can be explained if we start from AFAIK any non-Bomhard reconstruction of Proto-Nostratic, but I digress.)

Now, epiglottal consonants are unusual, but lateral affricates are much more common worldwide than, say, the /p͡f/ of my native southern German. Coming to think of it, even epiglottals are AFAIK present in a greater number of languages than /p͡f/!

While "just about any sound change" might fit into the Proto-DC inventory, not every one does. Check out what is reconstructed to have become of the lateral affricates in Basque and Burushaski.

It's not true that language phylogeny must proceed strictly bottom-up. Again, take IE as an example: What is the closest known relative of the Celtic languages? Between the obvious families (Germanic, Romance/Italic, Celtic, Slavic etc. etc.) and IE itself, very few groupings are more or less universally accepted (Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic; Kentum, Satəm; everything except Anatolian; maybe everything except Tocharian), yet nobody doubts the reality of IE on these grounds. To the contrary: serious work on IE started before even Celtic, let alone Tocharian or Anatolian, was recognized as IE! Analogously, it would be nice to have an unassailable and universally accepted reconstruction of Proto-(North-)Caucasian or Proto-Na-Dené before starting to work on Proto-DC, but it's not strictly necessary. Of course it would help; of course testing of the PNC reconstruction should continue, and of course testing and elaboration of Pinnow's work on Na-Dené including Haida should continue; but it's not necessary, any more than a Proto-Italo-Celtic (or whatever) reconstruction is necessary for reconstructing Proto-Kentum.

(Incidentally, it has been suggested that the phoneme inventories of languages such as !Xũ are actually much smaller, with many of the "phonemes" actually being consonant clusters. But, firstly, I can't judge that, and secondly, the phoneme inventories of Caucasian languages clearly cannot be analyzed away this way.)

David Marjanović (talk) 15:59, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Corrections: it's starling.rinet.ru and works just fine; and the language in "Indonesia" with the PIE-like plosive system is in Malaysia, on Borneo, and called Kelabit. Also, when I wrote "Satəm", I meant just Indo-Iranian + Balto-Slavic (see Rexová et al. 2003). David Marjanović (talk) 14:51, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] accepted relation

Okay, a lot of the work on DC has been sloppy, but it looks like we finally have some evidence good enough to convince linguists working on these languages: [3] I added a quick blurb to the article, but one of you who's been organizing this might want to work it in better.

Of course, this is a binary comparison (proto-Yeniseian + proto-Na-Dene), so it doesn't address branching depths, or whether the rest of the hypothesis has any validity, but it should be able to act as a core against which other approaches like Karasuk can be evaluated. kwami (talk) 21:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. This should be added to the articles on the two families as well. Doubt I'll get to that. kwami (talk) 21:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Good. I was going to incorporate this information when I saw that you'd done so already. :-) Fine. I'll have a look at that, of course, but I'm still reading the materials presented at the Dene-Yeniseic Symposium. Anyway, thanks! --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 12:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

While the Dene-Yeniseic connection is certainly claimed as a part of the DC proposal, I feel like it's really inappropriate to claim that Dene-Yeniseic is "the first element of this hypothesis to be well received" - DY has been advanced by entirely different authors, and through entirely different (and superior) methods of analysis. This sort of statement is equivalent to claiming, for example, new evidence for the unity of Algic as evidence for a larger-level family, like Almosan. The unity of Dene-Yeniseic has no consequences for any of the other languages involved in DC. --Peter Farago (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Peter Farago. Just because a blind chicken also finds a grain now and then that doesn't make it any less blind.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

But it is factually correct. DC is a proposal. It hypothesizes that several established language families are related. Two of those families are Yeniseian and Na-Dene. A probable connection between Yeniseian and Na-Dene has now been established to the satisfaction of specialists in those families. I don't know why you're reading more into it than that. Nowhere does it state or even imply that a connection between Yeniseian and Na-Dene is evidence that Basque is included as well.

I agree that it would be improper to argue for Dene-Caucasian as a consequence of this finding, in the Na-Dene or Yeniseian articles. However, this is an article on DC, and Dene-Yeniseian is evidence for one facet of DC, just as van Driem's Karasuk is another (although given that the methodology and reliability differs). Maybe the wording could be changed, but very often this is how things happen. The story of plate tectonics starts with Wegener, even though people thought he was a crackpot, and the evidence that ended up convincing everyone came from different people, using different methods, and the results differed drastically from his model. Nevertheless, they are considered to have vindicated his vision. Similarly, it may be that none of the rest of DC ever will demonstrated, or that if other families are ever included, they will be Iroquois or Ainu or something else never anticipated by the DC crowd. That doesn't change the fact that one aspect of DC has now been substantiated. — kwami (talk) 22:12, 7 March 2008 (UTC)