Talk:Pseudoscientific language comparison

"most widespread type of linguistic pseudoscience"

I would seriously question this assertion. Not only is it unsourced, I think common experience indicates that false etymology is much more common. I have very seldom heard people assert non-existent connections between languages; but I think everybody has heard many, many false etymologies proposed, whether "Jolly Roger = Jolie Rouge", "news = North East South and West" or "posh = Port Outward, Starboard Homeward," not to mention false sources of profanities. My favorite, though, is the one that appeared in The Straight Dope years ago, where somebody proposed that when Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake", and Cecil Adams replied "it's possible that one day, while under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, Marie said 'Le theme est quete'...". Fool4jesus (talk) 15:10, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

"Certain types of languages"

Re: "Certain types of languages seem to attract far more attention in pseudoscientific comparisons than others. These include languages of ancient civilizations such as Egyptian, Etruscan, Sumerian, and Classical Hebrew, […]": Should it be clarified that Egyptian and Classical Hebrew are related to each other? —Ruakh_TALK 00:34, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Bias

This reads to me as though it was written by someone who really dislikes pseudoscience. I think a value judgment on the topic is unnecessary and undesirable, but that's the impression I get from it. The list of ways of identifying pseudoscience at the end brings to mind some sort of paranoid witchhunt. 129.15.106.21 (talk) 06:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. I find it interesting that most of the mentioned languages (Egyptian, Etruscan, Sumerian, Basque, Japanese and Ainu) have some connection to each other. The article now seems to be no more than a frantic political propaganda trying to discredit all who do not see the world as the writer does. Some examples:

- Failure to apply an accepted method in order to demonstrate regular correspondences between the languages.

Accepted method?? Accepted by whom? And why MUST everybody accept those methods? Just let me remind everybody of Dr. Semmelweis's discovery of disinfection. He was the laughing stock of the whole world because he did not accept the 'accepted methods' and demanded his doctors to wash their hand. This sentence alone discredits the whole article.

- Failure to consider the possibility of borrowing.

While this is generically true, the opposite is happening right now. Hungarian is 'proved' to borrow from other languages to such an extent that no actual hungarian words left. One has to ask: How on earth did Hungarians speak before meeting others?? The so called 'professionals', the accepted Finnugorists happened to go too far in their efforts of anti-Hungarian propaganda.

- Neglect of known history:...

Absolutely true. This is an area what the 'accepted Finnugrists' simply ignored.

-Ignoring established results in favor of new, speculative hypotheses.

Again, you are not allowed to voice anything that is not in the direction of the 'accepted propaganda'.

- Advocation of fanciful historical scenarios on the basis of the purported linguistic findings

Yes. This is exactly what the 'accepted' Finnugrist group is committing.

-Assertion that criticism towards the theory is motivated by traditionalism, ideological factors or conspiracy on behalf of the linguistic community.

Exactly what the Finugorists are saying.

Nobody supports pseudo-science. At the same time people who don't accept other opinions are not scientists.

Regarding using pseudo science to justify racism ... a dictatorial system will always find a reason and justification to committ atttrocities. This is exactly what Pope Piccolini and the Habsburgs did regarding Finnugorism.

I find this article not scientific but a desperate effort to preserve the status quo by discrediting everybody from the start who dares to think differently. The 'accepted method' is to turn them into a laughing stock by calling them 'pseudo scientists'.

Real scientists would not write such an article because they know that pseudo science does not stand the times. In the minute the supporting dictatorial system collapses the theory collapses too. Finnugorism was well and alive as long as the Habsburgs and the following kommunist terror of Hungary needed and supported it. As soon as the terror collapsed, the theory collapsed too.

It is very interesting that Finnugorism that breaks most of the 'accepted' rules is not mentioned as pseudo science. Is the writer a Finnugorists?

And finally, I hunted down some proof regarding Sumerian-Hungarian language relation.

Anton Deimel - father of Sumerology - writes to Prof. Badiny-Jos in a private letter, 5. January 1953, Rome "Ich habe nicht die geringste Schwerigkeit eine Verwandschaft des Ungarishen mit them Sumerishen ancunehmen." (I have no hardship accepting sumer-Hungarian relation.) Additionally, Prof. Samuel Kramer advocates the Sumerian-Hungarian-Turkish relation. Kramer spent only fifty years on the subject and Deimel ... never mind, they must be pseudo scientists too for they are not in line with current 'methods'. (Magi) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.122.121 (talk) 15:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the former statement. While I also dislike pseudoscience, and do not think Wikipedia or any other source of knowledge should be encouraging it, the article - even though the author is careful not to list any actual examples of what he/she personally considers "pseudoscientific language comparison", or to give any names - seems to be directed not so much at really obvious pseudoscience, but at those spheres of language comparison that lie outside "mainstream" comparative linguistics. In other words, there is a crucial difference between a "controversial" theory and a "nutty" non-theory, and the article gives absolutely no hints at how to distinguish the two. Given these "criteria", one might dismiss as "pseudoscience" such widely varying approaches as, say, Merritt Ruhlen's Proto-World; Illich-Svitych's Nostratic; Laurent Sagart's Sino-Austronesian; and the local crackpot's "Japanese (or Arabic, or Hebrew, or Serbian, or Kiswahili, or Rapanui) is the original language of all mankind" - whereas the only kind of theory out of these that has no scientific use whatsoever will probably be the latter.

In the light of this, the article needs to be seriously rewritten. I do not think it should be deleted, because pseudoscientific language comparison is a reality that needs to be tackled. But too many of the statements given in the text are seriously debatable to be presented as facts. Just to name one example: "In comparative linguistics also grammatical evidence is required to confirm relatedness" - this is utterly false, since many languages are extremely poor in terms of grammatical morphemes, and their relationship can only be established on lexical evidence (e. g. Chinese and Tibeto-Burmese, or Thai-Kadai).

Also, while the two last criteria ("failure to submit results to peer reviewed linguistic journals" and "assertion that criticism towards the theory is motivated by traditionalism, ideological factors or conspiracy on behalf of the linguistic community") are indeed fairly characteristic of true pseudoscience, they are equally applicable to theories that are merely "controversial" and do not represent pseudoscience; their authors frequently have problems submitting their results to peer reviewed linguistic journals because the latter may be unwilling to accept anything that comes from the "minority".

I understand that the author of the article probably does not intend to state that violation of even a single one of the listed criteria turns the proposed theory into "pseudoscience". But in its present form, the article conveys exactly that feeling. Therefore, it needs a much more NPOV rewrite.Gstarst (talk) 15:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Diligence

I have read the above notes and could not help a grin: "...someone who really disklikes pseudoscience"? What a naughty bad person indeed.
The value judgement is not the central part, nor is it what this page is trying to convey. There is no witch-hunt going on, and we certainly should not get all fired up about the evil machinations of variously-spelled Finno-Ugrists and their lust for wreaking the ruin of Hungary's great nation by denying it its well-deserved place in history as Sumer's little sister. A truly blessed hunt for proof ought to have yielded a better prize than Deimel's allowing for a possibility. At least, Deimel did not claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of a Parthian princess. :-)
Dilligence is needed.
Humour aside: The main point is that, in order to maintain as high a degree of objectivity and as low a risk of jumping to conclusions as possible, any science, including linguistics, necessitates a certain set of standards, which have been tested, tuned and improved since the 1700s (the scientific method, which not only applies to science in the sense of natural science). Any new linguistic theory will have to face the global (democratic) scientific community's scrutiny.
As far as theories in historical linguistics are concerned, it is important to make the following distinctions:

1. Controversial, but feasible theories with partly circumstantial or limited evidence in their favour(such as the laryngeal theory). While at first struggling against older (and more comfortable) notions and perhaps never attaining scientific mainstream status, theories of this kind will be generally accepted as one possible explanation.
2. Feasible theories based on very limited and therefore non-conclusive evidence (e.g. the possible, but inconfirmable Nostratic theory and other mega-families); feasible meaning here that, though they may initially have been sparked by interference from nationalistic motivations or other forms of chauvinism, they neither fundamentally clash with common sense nor construe prehistoric migrations too far-fetched to be possible. However, a lack of available data, be it due to time-depth beyond reconstruction or to sparseness of inscriptions (cf. the relationship between Raetic and Etruscan), will force scientific opinion to settle for a non liquet on such a thesis until conclusive evidence is produced.
3. Linguistic theories positing prehistoric connections that range anywhere from unlikely to nigh-incredible. As extraordinary theories require extraordinary proof, such positions cannot be preferred over simpler and therefore intrinsically more likely theories unless supported by a conclusive amount of evidence. Nonetheless, such theories should not be considered pseudoscience as long as they do not blatantly disregard the scientific method.
4. Theories put forth by individuals who have not or only very superficially been trained in historical linguistics, therefore already clashin with linguistic science on the methodic level. Generally speaking, most theories in this category are less marred by their noted lack of positive evidence than by either a quite considerable amount of negative evidence or by the dubious background and ideological constructions of their proponents (from the top of my head I could name "researchers" identifying rock-carvings in Oklahoma as Punic-Celtic bilingual inscriptions, the Tamil language as the "Primary Classical language of the World", or claiming all history between 500-1300 to be a fabrication and the true foundation of European toponymy to be only "Burgundian", Latin, Hebrew and Greek). Not surprisingly, Gstarst referred to such theories as "nutty", which they are.

Personally, I think such a distinction is self-evident, but it might have to be included in the article as long as common sense is not automatically decried as WP:NOR by a well-meaning contributor. Nevertheless, in my view, this page as it is now is a very rational and useful yardstick for anybody confronted with one of the various linguistic theories that the web is teeming with, some more defensible than others. As far as I can see, it is WP:NPOV. It is not aimed against one set of theories, but can be used by people only superficially familiar with linguistics to gauge whether a particular theory they have read about seems more kosher than treif. And for those among us more familiar with linguistics, we are informed enough to look beyond such phrasings as one might find suboptimal, which I would say are not many. Trigaranus (talk) 00:23, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Wording Question?

Re: the section of the article reading-

There may also be political or religious reasons to connect languages. An example is the Turanian or Ural-Altaic language group, which had a motivation of connecting Sami (spoken by white people) to Mongolian. This justified explicit racism towards the Sami in particular.[1]. [italics mine]

Is the second sentence meant to mean "This linguistic link to an Asian group was then used to justify explicit racism against the Sami.[1]." I'm still a bit unclear, however. Does the article mean that the postulation of a the Turanian or Ural-Altaic language group itself is a pseudo-scientific exercise, rather than legitimate linguistic analysis, primarily motivated by anti-Sami racialism? I don't know enough to evaluate the validity of the assertion, but that is what it seems to say in English? Can anyone clear this confusion up?--FurnaldHall (talk) 03:00, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Reading ancient inscriptions using modern languages

There is a specific type of linguistic quackery which is clearly "language comparison", works in an entirely comparable manner and should be considered a subtype of this trope (oops, wrong wiki), namely the interpretation of (typically) ancient inscriptions in a language such as Etruscan or Venetic, where the writer, typically a hobby linguist from Eastern Europe with no particular signs of thorough linguistic education, presses his own (modern and standardised!) native language into service and claims that the inscriptions, which have baffled professionals for centuries, are plainly and patently legible in their own language, and make perfect sense as such. He will typically state that it is amazing and inconceivable how such a blantantly obvious relationship could have been overlooked. Of course, when examined more closely by sceptical experts, the readings invariably play fast and loose, and in a rather inconsistent way, with sounds and meanings, and ignore syntax as well as morphology, boiling down to the unsystematic comparison of words and arbitrarily separated chunks of words, relying on those superficial resemblances we all know and love. Not infrequently, the writer attaches grave historical, ideological or nationalistic implications to his "discovery". Could this subtype be addressed in the article as well? I remember Trask mentioning such attempts in his The History of Basque, but does he elaborate on them in Historical Linguistics? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Most such relations are advocated by amateurs from other places but Eastern Europe (see also this on lists of similarities between unrelated languages: most examples discussed there have no connection whatsoever with Eastern Europe).

I believe most of the above is already covered by the article, but of course, not in detail: advocation of fanciful historical scenarios, unsystematic correspondences, ignoring the possibility of borrowing (the purpose is to prove genetic relatedness), most of the times ignoring grammar, morphology, syntax, etc. (see the current "traits and characteristics" list) Daizus (talk) 19:14, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Uhm, I was talking specifically about ancient inscriptions. Where are those mentioned on the linked page? We're clearly not talking about the same thing, as my point is not about (lexically based) language comparison in general. It is solely my experience that examples of the kind of linguistic pseudoscholarship I'm describing are particularly frequent among native speakers of languages from that corner of the world, of course by saying "typically" I do not claim "always". Sorry if I offended you by seemingly unfairly singling out that region. And of course I've already admitted as well that the points made in the article already address this subject, basically, as it's a sub-type, obviously, of pseudoscientific language comparison. No offence, but ... have you actually read what I wrote above or just skimmed it and stopped when you read "Eastern Europe"? (The term "berserk button" from the other wiki comes to mind.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I've read what you wrote. What I said is that this "sub-type" of yours is already covered by the article. In other words, language comparison in general seems to be enough, as long as the particular cases don't have particular features.

In the linked page (and the other one linked at the end of the article) the issue is addressed in a general way and it is about language comparison where "the readings invariably play fast and loose, and in a rather inconsistent way, with sounds and meanings, and ignore syntax as well as morphology, boiling down to the unsystematic comparison of words and arbitrarily separated chunks of words, relying on those superficial resemblances we all know and love", just as you described your "sub-type". It also includes the ancient languages attested in inscriptions. If you search the sci.lang topics mentioned by the author, you'll find parallels between Etruscan and Basque or Sumerian and Tamil.

As for your ethnic/cultural stereotypes, you should note that many ancient languages attested mostly or solely in inscriptions are not from Eastern Europe and some of these (Sumerian, Etruscan) are much more famous and attract more amateurs from all corners of the world. Daizus (talk) 04:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

From essay to article

@Mathglot: I've just noticed this WP article about one of our common pet peeves that at the same time is an example of another one of our common pet peeves (= unsourced or undersourced essays/coatracks etc.). There is an entertaining article about it (btw co-authored by a quite prolific Wikipedian)[1]. What do you think, maybe we can make use of it to bring this article a bit closer to WP standards? Austronesier (talk) 20:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, Austronesier, in the long term I'd be interested, although I'm kind of busy on a project to expand our very spotty coverage of French criminal law. (If interested, see, e.g., this draft glossary which when done, will help inform many of the red links at this nav template and help expand it.) I'm not sure about the use of pseudoscientific in the title, in the context of a discipline in which I'm not sure if scientific applies (much the same question as I'd have regarding such claims regarding the dismal science), so I'd prefer a title that referred to fringe or even crackpot theories (or both), rather than pseudoscientific. Even where pseudoscientific might be defenisble, such as in Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin, they don't use tha tword. But other than that, yes, I agree. Mathglot (talk) 10:45, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Scholarly concept or WP:OR?

I can find no instance of the term "pseudoscientific" in any of the cited sources, not does the phrase "pseudoscientific language" register on Ngram Viewer. So is this really a scholarly concept or is it WP:OR citing sources that don't back the name of this article? Bermicourt (talk) 16:50, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Just an aside: It's Pseudoscientific (language comparison), not (Pseudoscientific language) comparison. --Hob Gadling (talk) 18:08, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I saw a whole scholarly lecture by Lyle Campbell devoted to this topic at a linguistics conference once (criticizing Joseph Greenberg), so it's not something invented by Wikipedia. I can't remember if he used the word "pseudo-science", but he clearly stated or implied that Greenberg's work had little validity according to the standards of academic linguistics... AnonMoos (talk) 18:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I have no problem with the idea that a language comparison may not be rigorous nor scholarly. But to slap the label "pseudoscientific" on it without evidence that the word is actually commonly used in authoritative sources is WP:OR and/or WP:POV and certainly unencyclopaedic. I can't find the term "fringe theories" in the cited sources either. If Wexler is "known" for his fringe theories, there should surely be sources saying that. At the very least it looks like loose wording. My sense is that the article should be appropriately tagged until it can brought into line with the sources it is citing or annotated with new sources that actually affirm what it is saying. Bermicourt (talk) 19:08, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

It's a little difficult for me to understand the concern with terminology when I know that the thing itself definitely exists. Here's how the controversy I referred to is summarized in the Americas section of the Joseph Greenberg article: "Historical linguists also reject the validity of the method of multilateral (or mass) comparison upon which the classification is based." -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:52, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I know from the fringe noticeboard that some editors insist on sources that explicitly mention the term "pseudoscience", thus implying that "pseudoscience" should never be used for paraphrasing. To answer their concern in this case, I recommend the paper by Thomason & Poser linked to in the preceding section. It's overdue for inclusion here. -Austronesier (talk) 22:25, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

It's not just about questionable paraphrasing in the article - for example, in the final section, I cannot locate key words from the text in the sources cited - it's about the article title itself. If no scholarly sources can be found that use the term, then nor should we. If the concept exists, then it shouldn't be difficult to find words that reflect the sources. Bermicourt (talk) 08:34, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, I guess what Lyle Campbell was criticizing Joseph Greenberg for is discussed more on the Mass comparison article, which mentions both their names (though the two concepts of "mass comparison" and "pseudo-scientific language comparison" are definitely related). P.S. Voltaire once referred to a style of etymologizing in which "the vowels count for nothing, and the consonants for very little"... AnonMoos (talk) 10:30, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

This entire point seems fairly nontroversial to me (totally a word, trust me, a fellow linguist). Will your concerns be properly allayed if we include the Thomason & Poser paper in our introductory references? We could also rename it to "linguistic pseudoscience", if that is what it takes to float this particular boat. However, while I would personally prefer that term (it is in fact used in Thomason & Poser's conclusion), it is a lot wider than the scope of the present article, which focuses on one of the major subsets of linguistics pseudoscience. Which is why I believe we should retain it until the article covers more of it.

But please: "If this concept exists" is definitely not a phrase written in good faith. You know as well as the rest of the editors of this article that the internet is full of instances of this concept, regardless of the particular name. You opened this section due to concern that "pseudoscientific (language)" was not a commonly used term. The "Fantastic Linguistics" article ought to take care of that. If there is an objection beyond that, then my problem would primarily be one of moving goal posts. Trigaranus (talk) 21:06, 16 April 2023 (UTC)