Talk:Borean languages/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Borean languages. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Old talk

When there is no controversy, it doesn't make sense to say "highly controversial", and indeed the hypothesis is in such early stages that discussion, including rejection, doesn't make much sense. In the Starling database there are, for example, several proposed roots "*CVCV", where C is any affricate and V any vowel; this is not what a testable hypothesis looks like. So I changed the article. David Marjanović 21:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Help! The link [1] does not work. David Marjanović 21:27, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Turns out they added one character to the URL. I've fixed the link in the article. --JWB 01:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

saying in effect that Borean may be pWorld

Concerning this change:

For example, suppose Afro-Asiatic and one or more of the African phyla turn out to be a valid node, and the other phyla proposed for Borean turn out to be another node; that does not mean this version of Borean is Proto-World.

Are you supposing that Borean can be enlarged further and would still be called Borean, but not reduced? I don't see anything to support this. And even if Borean were enlarged in one way, say adding Indo-Pacific, that does not imply that it would therefore be enlarged all the way to Proto-World.

Finally, the name "Borean" is an association with the North. If a family containing many of the Southern phyla in Africa, Australia and New Guinea were proposed, "Borean" would be a poor and unlikely name for it. Austric is already stretching it a bit, especially since it is actually named for the South, but at least it apparently started in the Northern Hemisphere and spread south. --JWB (talk) 02:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that's fine as is. kwami (talk) 05:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

refimprove

This article is practically unreferenced. It lists Greenberg (2002) as its only source, and it is completely unclear what exactly is in the source cited, or what chapter or page we are referring to.

It seems clear that this article is in fact based on its "External links" rather than its "References". --dab (𒁳) 11:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe they count as references regardless of format, but OK, I have converted all to hatnotes, added a link and page to the Greenberg reference, and answered the Who? tag with a reference from Kusunda language, for a total of 10 hatnotes. Now let's discuss your proposed edits. --JWB (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

the question is not "format" it is "notability". See WP:RS. Since you keep reverting my edits, I had no choice but to plaster the article with cleanup tags. I take it that by "hatnote" you mean footnote.

My "proposed edits" are related to the fact that this article appears to be based on a google search. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. --dab (𒁳) 18:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea how you think Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day is relevant. I am not associated with any of the referenced authors, who include some of the best known linguists in the long-range comparison field. --JWB (talk) 22:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Two hits from google books, one from Mother Tongue, the other from a 2009 volume on Proto-Human language
Zero hits from google scholar (note that the three hits returned are OCR mistakes, from "Hyper-borean languages" and "Bornean languages")

I find it very hard to justify the existence of this page as a standalone article. Perhaps the concept can be mentioned in a brief paragraph at Proto-Human language and/or at Nostratic. --dab (𒁳) 18:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Here are three Google Scholar results from a few minutes of searching:

And some more from Google Books:

so, if you can forgo reverting me for a while, we can base this article on the actual references. The term was apparently coined by Fleming (1987) and is one of a number of suggestions for a Eurasian "mega-super-phylum".

Merge

Looking into such sources as we have, and seeing that

Macrofamily is a stub
discussion of "Borean" involves numerous other macrofamilies that are itself disputed

this results really in an overview of the various suggested super-phyla and their interrelation, as suggested by various linguists. This is in fact what the macrofamily article should to, so I suggest the content should be merged there and discussed in context. --dab (𒁳) 14:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Borean is one macrofamily proposal. It is an instance of "macrofamily", not the concept itself. It does not need to be merged away any more than Nostratic or others. The amount of references and content so far are well above the amount needed to support an article. Here are comments on your other changes:

"Boralean" not a widely used term
Map is really useful for overview at a glance. No reason to delete it.
Table is also carefully designed to be easy to read at a glance. No reason to delete it.
Tree-structured list is not bad in itself but less clear, and less added value over the tree-structured lists already in other articles.
"Speculative" vs "commonly recognized" info is more visibly and compactly communicated by columns in table vs bloating a list with repetitive text.

List has other very specific info on families several levels further down that may be too much for this article (but would certainly be appropriate for a general article on long-range comparison) and is sometimes controversial - just as one example, the statement that Micro-Altaic is more accepted, while on the other hand I've seen it said that current linguists' opinions are now either proposing some version of Macro-Altaic or denying that any version of Altaic is genetic, with few or no standing by Micro-Altaic in particular.

In fact I see you just edited Ural-Altaic to remove information on lower-level families on the ground that it is accessible in other articles. This makes it even stranger that you are doing the opposite here.
Grouping Dene-Caucasian and Austric closer to each other than to Nostratic is something I have seen only as an unnamed intermediate node of short duration in Starostin's referenced tree. Do you have other references, or ones which actually name an "Eastern group" and "Western group"?
Amerind languages would be in Borean according to Greenberg who is one major opinion, so the definite statements they are out is not good.
Indo-Pacific is not two languages - as a glance at the article would tell you, Greenberg's proposal included Papuan, Andaman, and Tasmanian. Kusunda and Nihali were proposed as additions much later. Please at least read the relevant articles before making sweeping changes, especially ones introducing blatant errors.
"comprised in" not "comprised by"

Overall I can't see that your edits have improved either information or presentation, except for adding two references to Fleming, and have made it worse in some ways. Rather than reverting immediately I invite you to discuss the points. --JWB (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore Nihali is very rarely considered Indo-Pacific, also linked to Austric and I think sometimes Dene-Caucasian. Unlike with Kusunda I've never actually seen a proper case made for it's inclusion as Indo-Pacific, so stating it as part of I-P is inaccurate. Palaeo-Siberian is not a family, Yukaghir is closely related to Uralic and Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut are almost certainly related to Uralic and each other, but the relationship of Nivkh and especially Ainu (which Bengtson puts in Austric and many others have noted a similarity with Austronesian languages) to it are disputed and this needs mentioning, Palaeo-Siberian doesn't do this. Dene-Caucasian if anything is usually grouped with Nostratic and Amerind, not Austric so this East grouping is rubbish. The table isn't necessarily the wrong format, but it needs to be at least accurate. Also Macro-Caucasian as proposed by Bengston doesn't include Sino-Tibetan or Yeniseian.81.158.140.148 (talk) 12:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

of you "cannot see how my edits have improved either information or presentation" I guess I cannot help you. Before you embark on correcting my English ("comprised in" not "comprised by"), do your research.

The problem this article had, and still has, is one of references and notability. Borean as a super-macrofamily was apparently a project of Starostin's, but Starostin died and all there is now is bits and pieces on the internet. The fact that "Borean" can be shown to be mentioned in a number of published papers does not make for WP:NOTE. I have tried to give this the benefit of doubt, collecting the Starostin references such as they are, but it is really barely holding together. The best idea would be to merge this into a broader discussion at macrofamily. I am not being mean, I really like this idea and I am trying to incorporate it within Wikipedia guidelines in some way. Somebody else would just have sent it to AfD. --dab (𒁳) 19:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The largest part of your edits have not been addressing notability or referencing, but have reformatted the presentation of the same content to make it less clear, e.g. removing tables and graphics and partially replacing them with a bulky outline list with repetitive notations. If you view notability and referencing as the sole problems, and are not concerned with presentation, I will restore some of the presentation tools you have removed.

Please go ahead and tag any facts/assertions that are unreferenced and we will address them. Almost everything in the last version before your most recent changes does have a reference attached. All of those references were present in the article before you started, although many were formatted as links instead of with the ref tag.

If anything, your edits have introduced a number of unreferenced subjective judgements, for example most of your current 4th paragraph. And as mentioned previously, you introduced a major factual error on Indo-Pacific which has not been fixed.

You are welcome to introduce new relevant references. So far you have only added Sanchez-Mazas which I pointed out to you, and two by Harold Fleming that are not used as references for any specific passages, and that I haven't been able to evaluate as they are not online.

I am aware that an AfD would get votes from the usual deletionists who have no knowledge of a field but routinely vote against notability of anything they don't understand, as I have had to defend some of these recently. Therefore I am asking other editors who do have knowledge of linguistics for input. --JWB (talk) 20:29, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I haven't read the lit for years, so I may be dated. On the other hand, I've had lunch with Starostin to discuss some his ideas (though not specifically Borean), and am sympathetic to what he was trying to do.

I do think it may be beneficial to merge this into 'macrofamily' or some similar article. Proposals such as Austric have been picked up by many scholars; Borean is much more tenuous. Also, looking over the classification, I have my doubts that this is what Flemming or Starostin actually proposed. (Again, I may just be out of date.) For example, did either include Uralo-Siberian as a subbranch? If not, what is it doing here? The problem with a hypothesis as tenuous as this is that, if we restrict ourselves to Starostin, IMO we should cover it in his bio. If, however, we do not, then I wonder if Borean will hold up as a coherent concept. At macrofamily, much of the background and many of the subfamilies have will already been covered by the time the reader gets to Borean, so it will be possible to say, "Fleming proposed a Borean super-phylum consisting of XYZ. (See above.) Starostin modified it to XAB" etc. And we can keep all the charts we like. That strikes me as a more accessible presentation. I also think that notability will be less of an issue. 'Macrofamily' is certainly notable, and we can illustrate it with proposals from the likes of Greenberg, Flemming, Benedict, Starostin, etc. without worrying so much if each illustration would stand on its own. kwami (talk) 22:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Uralo-Siberian is dbachmann's addition - please look at the version before his last edits. I'll revert now to make it more visible.

At a minimum, Borean is Starostin, Fleming, and Bengtson, from the references so far. Plus someone else, Krugly, took credit for the name; see referenced discussion.

So far it appears to me that as discussed by the Starostins, Fleming, Bengtson, Murray Gell-Mann and Peiros, and referred to by Kessler[1] and others, it is a coherent concept. Fortescue did not use "Borean" AFAIK and dbachmann apparently added his Uralo-Siberian just because it includes some of the same families. This is indeed content suited for a general article on long-range comparison, but only because dbachmann is insisting on inserting it here and then insisting the content he has inserted is more suitable for his preferred title. --JWB (talk) 08:43, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually there's another glaring error in that he included Dravidian, Kartvelian and Altaic under Uralo-Siberian when they clearly aren't and when Indo-European and Uralo-Siberian are much closer (Indo-Uralic and Uralo-Siberian seem to be contradicting hypotheses but both are closer to each other than to anything else (probably even than to Altaic, definitely than to Kartvelian and Dravidian), subdivision of it is less clear apart from Yukaghir being closest to Uralic. I actually think because he hasn't even corrected the Indo-Pacific clear error this is close to deliberate misinformation (thinks like Eastern branch are a POV, but not a common one and 3 branches would be better). Also he has subdivisions for Altaic but not for Palaeo-Siberian despite the former being a commonly (but not universally) accepted family and the latter being a polyphyletic term of convenience. If he doesn't correct the errors I'd revert it.81.158.140.148 (talk) 08:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with reverting to the branching that was actually proposed, but I like dab's intro much better. I'm not pushing for merger, but see it as a reasonable suggestion. I don't take Bengston very seriously, but with Flemming and Starostin on board, there is some substance, at least as far as really long-range stuff goes. kwami (talk) 10:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm certainly open to changes in or expansion of the intro. Which points do you like about dab's intro? Longer discussion can be informative to readers, but neither do we want to add unreferenced value judgements. --JWB (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I liked covering the history of the proposal before getting into the proposal itself. That made it very clear that it's a hypothesis based on hypotheses, and not just another language family. kwami (talk) 18:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I think my lead made clear, in a non-negative way, that superfamily proposals go beyond "well-established language families", but to make this even more explicit, I've wikilinked the Macrofamily article which already explicitly says "the term refers to hypotheses of genetic relationship that are not, or not yet, generally accepted".

I would of course like to see more material on the history of the proposal, but maybe George, you, and other linguists can comment on the specifics dab has introduced such as saying that Fleming (1987) originated the proposal, or that Sergei Starostin had a top-level division into branches named Eastern and Western, or the hypothesized dates listed. --JWB (talk) 23:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello all. I've been asked to comment on the latest suggestions and changes. Personally, I prefer to see as many different articles/stubs on Wikipedia as possible, and I see no reason whatsoever for an article on Borean not to be included. I am no frantic believer in Borean, but a connection between the major language families of Eurasia HAS been put forward by several scholars known for sane, reasonable research in historical linguistics (yes, Sergei Starostin is one of the major proponents, but plenty of people in Russian comparative linguistics and a few scholars in the Western world take the connection seriously); some papers and collections of data have been published; and the connection is subject to further testing in the future, which makes it all perfectly Wikipedia-suitable. What I do not understand is why having an article on "Borean" could be considered harmful when all the proper caveats have been made. A proper approach would be to stimulate people to look into the issue rather than ignore its existence. -- Gstarst (talk) 20:27, 26 February 2010 (UTC) (George Starostin)

I agree it should have a page, a bit on the different theories of long range on Macrofamilies is useful (e.g. the Greenberg/Ruhlen classification, the Swadesh classification, Sergei Starostin etc.). All the major serious theories should get a mention (regardless of our personal views, I am very skeptical of the amount Ruhlen copies Greenberg to the level of virtually viewing him as an infallible prophet, even keeping groupings he has been since proven wrong in while ignoring long range groupings that are now widely accepted if he didn't propose them), but any of these quack theories like the Hungarians that try to compare Hungarian to everything or the people that try to link Basque to Ainu in a Saharan language family should only be mentioned if we need an idea of pseudoscientific theories (which regardless of Campbell's views it isn't fair to label Greenberg as).

On Borean the basic theory makes sense at some level, but I'm unsure of the exact membership and if it turns out to include everything bar Khoisan it really hasn't told us anything we don't know already. A lot of it is what distance of relationship do we draw the line at. If it turns out the Niger-Congo/Nilo-Saharan languages are closer to the Borean languages than either are to the Australian languages this would on the other hand be very interesting (either back to Africa linguistic spread or a second out of Africa one; probably the former). Also if the Trans New Guinea languages can be shown to be Borean it would prove Wurm's theory of them being a later migration than other Papuan languages.217.42.125.6 (talk) 15:49, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I consider the blanket revert to the half-baked stubby version simple vandalism. I took great care to compile a detailed list directly based on the tree published by Starostin, including references for the various nodes (author, year). If I went wrong at some point by all times tag it or fix it.

I frankly think this entire exercise has next to no value, but as long as we agree to just do an article about "here is what Starostin said", I have no problem with it. --dab (𒁳) 11:16, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You've deleted several of the references as well as the previously noted problems with your version. You have no consensus; no other editors appear to support your position. --JWB (talk) 17:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Not happy with the gross misrepresentation of Fortescue's Uralo-Siberian in this article. I've made a note of all the groups he doesn't include in Uralo-Siberian, but realistically when his Uralo-Siberian comprises of 4 families (that probably are closely related) should be really be cited as stating lots of other less closely related languages are part of it? Fair enough giving Starostin's tree even if the nodes are not widely accepted as it is his proposal, but incorrectly labelling them with other people's proposals is not right. It would perhaps be better to reduce the number of nodes to simplify the article anyway, particularly removing the Palaeo-Siberian node.81.158.140.63 (talk) 12:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Possible background information

http://books.google.com/books?id=IYQkVkdsKXgC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=macro-quechua+swadesh&source=bl&ots=2fOoSr52ja&sig=fQvPv1D9lW7LU2zDQLj5bdQ2LYg&hl=en&ei=eGuGS6iiLYyM0gSG0uHTCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

This suggests Swadesh's Vasco-Dene was roughly equivalent to Borean, albeit excluding the Afroasiatic and Indo-European (and of course Amerind) languages. Seems it would be suitable background information, though I don't want to put it on the main article yet til the editing is sorted out. (the link is in Spanish, but should be pretty obvious the family names and the maps) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.140.148 (talk) 12:56, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

why "of course Amerind"? "Amerind", much like "Paleo-Siberian" is a grouping based on geography, not genealogy. So it isn't meaningful that Amerind, or Paleo-Siberian, is included or excluded in some family, because these terms aren't denoting phylogenetic units in the first place. Na-Dene is, of course, an Amerindian family, and hence Vasco-Dene would, for better or worse connect the Basques and the Tlingit.

Fwiiw, the current revision is already aware that Dene-Caucasian is a suggestion due to Morris Swadesh. Dene-Caucasian is, as it were, one quarter of Borean, taken to consist of Eurasiatic+Afroasiatic on one hand and Dene-Caucasian+Austric on the other. It isn't superfluous to stress that three out of these four 'quarters' of Borean have no kind of acceptance in mainstream scholarship. --dab (𒁳) 19:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course Amerind meant of course Swadesh excluded it (it's obvious in the link). He had 5 families where Greenberg had 1 Amerind family. Swadesh's Vasco-Dene was not even remotely the same as Dene-Caucasian, it was Austric+Dene-Caucasian+Eurasiatic (excluding Indo-European). That is virtually the same as Borean, nothing to do with Dene-Caucasian aside from having it included among the members (but not as a subdivision of it).81.158.140.148 (talk) 21:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Look, the problem here is obviously that there is one hypothesis by scholar. Nothing of this is in any way verifiable. There is no sort of consensus on any of it, because it is all completely speculative and up in the air. This is why I was dubious of the merit of the standalone article in the first place.

If this is going to remain a standalone article, it needs to intelligently compare the various proposals. The way to do this is to develop this article. Add context, and tag items that you feel are covered misleadingly. As long as you keep blanket-reverting to the under-developed stub which contains verifiably false claims and a weird unreferenced table with a "Some major component families" column, except its not a column due to strange excercies with colspan, there can be absolutely no progress. You are perfectly welcome to improve things, cover Swadesh's ideas or explain whatever is the matter with "Indo-Pacific". I have absolutely no stakes in this, because I believe this entire topic is "not even wrong", but I do want to see a clean exposition of what is being suggested. --dab (𒁳) 08:59, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The trouble was that your version of the article stated that Indo-Pacific consisted of only two languages - Kusunda and Nihali. That is not correct - rather, those are the only two languages held by Greenberg to be part of Indo-Pacific that are native to the Eurasian continent. The others are or were all spoken (allegedly - I realize the theory isn't generally accepted) in New Guinea, Tasmania, and the Andaman Islands. I've corrected that, and a bunch of other things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.109.170.150 (talk) 05:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Greenberg didn't include either Kusunda or Nihali in Indo-Pacific, so the 2 languages claimed as members weren't even in his proposal! Kusunda is claimed as Indo-Pacific by Ruhlen and a few other people, but obviously the theory is rarely accepted. Beyond a dubious article I am not aware of a single expert who would claim Nihali as Indo-Pacific whatsoever. Some people like Bengtson claim it as Austric which may or may not be the case, Ruhlen claims it as Dene-Caucasian which seems less likely, but it is NOT Indo-Pacific, so doesn't even merit a mention as a member of it. Maybe it needs mentioning as an excluded language from Borean. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.140.63 (talk) 15:27, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

That's wrong. Ruhlen does suggest that Nihali is Indo-Pacific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.109.175.238 (talk) 23:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Source? Read his proposals and Nihali is NOT in his Indo-Pacific, unless he's recently changed his mind. Also he doesn't relate Dene-Caucasian and Austric, he leaves his 12 top level groups unrelated (I know Cavalli-Sforza links Dene-Caucasian to Nostratic and they tend to agree on things, but Ruhlen doesn't even completely accept Nostratic). Whether these things need a mention or not I don't know, possibly something less POV on Dene-Caucasian/Austric like that it's very rarely accepted, to save proof by absence which is impossible? Surely the fact that Nihali and Kusunda are excluded should be mentioned even if by inference from what he hasn't included or is it too minor a detail?62.49.42.210 (talk) 11:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Removed some original research grossly misrepresenting views of other authors and removed nodes not named by Starostin (apart from Dene-Caucasian and Austric due to being a primary division) as other nameless nodes aren't listed (e.g. Miao-Yao and Austroasiatic). If you're going to consider common sense inferences of exclusions from Starostin's list or direct references from a review of Borean part authored by his son as original research, then naming nodes after very different proposals certainly is.

Swadesh did NOT invent Dene-Caucasian in any way shape or form, his Vasco-Dene was far closer to Borean (Nikolayev created Dene-Caucasian, it was expanded on by Bengtson). Bengtson's Macro-Caucasian does NOT include Sino-Tibetan or Yeniseian. Fortescue's Uralo-Siberian does NOT include Dravidian, Nivkh, Kartvelian or Altaic. Without sources to say these people have radically altered their proposals I will consider all reversions vandalism and original research.81.158.140.63 (talk) 17:30, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Let's revert to the pre-dab version which avoids these problems. --JWB (talk) 17:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for that, though don't want to kick off an editing war til someone gets bored. At the very least I want to get it error free, though I think many of the alleged 'original research' that was removed is actually better substantiated than most of the stuff dab put on. The groupings probably should go on Starostin's versions though, but of course not named after other people's superfamilies that happen to have the odd family in common.81.158.140.63 (talk) 21:25, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

On the issue of Dene-Caucasian and Austric, would you please see Ruhlen's popular book, "The Origin of Language", page 144: "The possibility that Austric and Dene-Caucasian are especially close is, in my view, worthy of further study." That is implying essentially the same thing as what Sarostrin has suggested - that Austric and Dene-Caucasian are part of a larger group. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.109.175.109 (talk) 00:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Not quite a proposal, but fair enough saying virtually unique isn't quite right so very rarely accepted makes more sense. I'll have a look if I can find it (I don't believe I have that book, I've got search for the Mother Tongue I think it is, but will see if Google Books gives that page, if not will trust he said it). Heard more people trying to link Dene-Caucasian and Nostratic though.62.49.42.210 (talk) 12:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

This map is not good!

It must just show the Borean languages... Böri (talk) 13:33, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Vasco-Dene

Vasco-Dene languages, referring to the early proposal by Swadesh and supported tentatively by several other prominent linguists of the time, already exists as a redirect to Dené-Caucasian languages. However, I believe that it deserves at least a section of its own. It is an important aspect of the history of the concept which is separate from Dené-Caucasian, and indeed the article on Dené-Caucasian does not even mention it, thus making the redirect somewhat inappropriate. Since it is not quite an equivalent idea to Borean, Dené-Daic or Dené-Caucasian, I believe it deserves an article of its own in place of the redirect; or, for the time being, perhaps a "History" section should be added to this (Borean languages) article which explains briefly the Vasco-Dene proposal and how it compares and contrasts with, and has led in part to, the current Borean formulation. — 129.21.147.51 (talk) 18:28, 21 April 2017 (UTC)