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Not many specialists support Greenberg. In fact, many linguists have spent considerable effort to reverse the "damage" that Greenberg has done to popular knowledge.
But, I believe that some of Greenberg's students, such as Merritt Ruhlen, are in favor with Greenberg's proposals.
Cheers! — ishwar (SPEAK) 03:27, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC) I hardly think that a comment from Mithun is an NPOV way of describing the current consensus on mass comparison. Please see my comment in Talk:Indigenous languages of the Americas/Archive 1#lumpers vs. splitters. Benwing 23:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Battle is not a good idea. Moreover, this article needs NPOV edits. Rather than wasting your energy "battling" people whom you do not know, by all means take a few minutes to rewrite this article in something resembling encyclopedic style.
This article remains a sad example of how Wikipedia treats controversial topics. I don't think Wiki can improve on this -- at least this article has bypassed much of the insulting hogwash heard from Campbell et al -- but Wiki editors should bear in mind that "consensus" does NOT imply certain truth. Sometimes the 49% are correct.
Above someone wrote: "Of course, we don't really know how many different languages were brought to the Americas by various waves of immigration." I guess this commentator thinks these different languages all passed successfully through the Isthmus of Panama without loss! One thing is certain: The commentator is someone who has never contemplated the facts revealed by non-controversial historical linguistics, nor exhibits simple common-sense about early human expansions. Jamesdowallen ( talk) 07:36, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Incidentally, is it just me, or does the reference list seem rather long in relation to the article content, compared to other articles here? Balancer 08:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Please, make footnotes ( Inline citations) in order that the readers can verify the information. Otherwise this may well look as a presentation of the editor's/s' opinions rather than of facts.-- Pet'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 14:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
More pieces of information should be included in the article, such as:
It doesn't matter whether Greenberg/Ruhlen's classification is valid or not. It should be a part of the description of the hypothesis. It is not enough to say that Amerind is a controversial family proposed by Greenberg and consisting of all language families in Americas but Na-Dené/Haida and Eskimo-Aleut. Being a reader of Wikipedia, I'd like to know why Greenberg thought the family existed.-- Pet'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 14:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
look at the history and you'll see that the (formerly) current highly POV version was due to a single user, Billposer. the previous version is shorter and much more objective. none of the added stuff by Billposer is relevant -- it's a lot of unsourced, disputed criticisms, and all relevant criticisms are already contained in the
mass lexical comparison page.
Benwing (
talk)
03:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Given that Bill Poser actually has expert knowledge of the languages in the Amerind family, I think it's very unfortunate that you felt justified in deleting his contributions as not 'objective'. Unless you have any citations to prove that the acceptance of Amerind is greater than Bill said it is, I would advocate putting Bill's edits back in. Anon., June 5, 2008.
-- Pe t 'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 10:33, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Please, see the to-do box. I have made some changes. Let's discuss them here. Any information to be added, corrected, explained in a more detail? I think there should be a discussion in the text as to whether the main arguments for Amerind are valid or not, and why, uhm? At least, a link to the relevant articles should be made.--
Pe
t
'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom
08:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a user who reverted my corrections and said that Greenberg did not use the precepts of the mass comparative method for his classification of native American languages--this is totally and absolutely false. The user is picking up on propaganda from ultraconservative and fanatical mainstreamers who are based on polemics instead of reason. Just because the section is on reception of the idea doesn't mean it should include the lies of ultraconservative and fanatical mainstreamers without rebuttal. -- Trouveur de faits ( talk) 21:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
It seems to me it would appropriate to put the hypothetical classification of this hypothetical phylum, with links to the pages for each family, where they are there. I will begin working on this.
The classification, per "A Guide to the World's Languages Vol. 1" (Merrit Ruhlen, 1987) is as follows:
1. Northern Amerind 1.1 Almosan-Kersiouan 1.2 Penutian 1.3 Hokan 2. Central Amerind 2.1 Tanoan 2.2 Uto-Aztecan 2.3 Oto-Manguean 3. Chibchan-Paezan 3.1 Chibchan 3.2 Paezan 4. Andean 5. Equatorial-Tucanoan 5.1 Macro-Tucanoan 5.2 Equatorial 6. Ge-Pano-Carib 6.1 Macro-Carib 6.2 Ge-Pano 6.21 Macro-Panoan 6.22 Macro-Ge.
As I said, I will start working on this, and try to make sure I include as many of the latest research as I can find, with appropriate footnotes, etc. But I wanted to post a heads-up on the discussion page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Listmeister ( talk • contribs) 20:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
DONE. March 29, 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Listmeister ( talk • contribs) 15:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
It looks like recent work on DNA/genetics has come to the same 3-wave conclusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/science/earliest-americans-arrived-in-3-waves-not-1-dna-study-finds.html -- 12.2.10.242 ( talk) 01:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I have seen an article in the New York Times. DNA testing has confirmed that there were three migrations to the Americas. Fifteen thousand years ago, there was a large migration that would give rise to the majority of Native American tribes. This was followed by two smaller migrations. One would give rise to the Eskimo. The other would give rise to the Apache and the Navajo. This is evidence that Joseph Greenberg was right. Please check http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/science/earliest-americans-arrived-in-3-waves-not-1-dna-study-finds.html?partner=rss&emc=rss for more info.
173.57.39.131 ( talk) 21:58, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Anonymous
I undid a removal of the classification scheme. We need to discuss this first. The list of languages and the classification thereof is the Amerind hypothesis. The article has little real content without it. Maunus's edit note says "removing excessive list which breaks the article - this list should have its on article if it is to be included at all" (sic) well, the note itself suggested two alternatives before deleting content: rearrange the article, or put the list in its own article. But there was no indication of why it should not be included. Listmeister ( talk) 19:50, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I strongly suggest we review WP:NPOV. Terms like "roundly" and "universal" are very opinionated. The article quite properly presents the fact that the most prestigious current Americanists regard the theory as unproven because they criticize the methodology. Outside Americanist linguists the lumping theories are actually more popular. In any case, the evidence can speak for itself and we do not need to present this even more hostilely than the Sun Theory. μηδείς ( talk) 21:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
The reason Lumpers tend to like the Amerind theory and Splitters tend to reject it is a fundamental assumption by the Lumpers that "Any Theory is Better than No Theory" while the fundamental assumption by the Splitters seems to be "A Wrong Theory is Worse Than No Theory."
Applied to the American Languages, a Lumper will ask, "Are these languages related to each other, or did they arise independently? Best we can figure, there are four independent sources of languages in the Americas (the Na-Dene, the Eskimo, the recently introduced European, and the Amerind). Great, we have a theory. Let's see if we can refine the theory. Maybe we'll find a fourth grouping or be able to connect two of the three together, maybe someone will come up with a better theory, but we have to start somewhere." From a Lumper perspective, the Splitters have not even tried to come up with a better theory. They just seem to be saying say "we have 150 independent language families, and we can never ever know the relationship between them. Ever. Oh sure, maybe we'll get lucky, and discover a link here and there, but on a continental scale, forget it." This attitude is as frustrating to Lumpers as I'm sure the "start somewhere even if it's wrong" approach is to splitters.
My point is, Amerind is a Lumper Theory, made by Lumpers (Greenberg and Ruhlen, mainly) for other Lumpers. Let's acknowledge this fundamental division in approach to historical linguistics, and move on from that starting point.
Listmeister ( talk) 14:47, 28 September 2012 (UTC) (lumper)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Amerind languages/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Articles with only one section of content are stubs.-- Rmky87 16:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC) |
Last edited at 16:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 07:35, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
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Hallo Florian Blaschke– I have zero subject-matter expertise here, and no longer retain any illusions re Wikipedia's neutrality. But the term "cherry-picked" reads as critical or judgmental, and, as justified as the criticism may be, I thought it might be better to go with a more neutral heading. I don't have a dog in the race, just wanted to explain myself. Eric talk 13:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
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![]() Updated 2008-07-22
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Not many specialists support Greenberg. In fact, many linguists have spent considerable effort to reverse the "damage" that Greenberg has done to popular knowledge.
But, I believe that some of Greenberg's students, such as Merritt Ruhlen, are in favor with Greenberg's proposals.
Cheers! — ishwar (SPEAK) 03:27, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC) I hardly think that a comment from Mithun is an NPOV way of describing the current consensus on mass comparison. Please see my comment in Talk:Indigenous languages of the Americas/Archive 1#lumpers vs. splitters. Benwing 23:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Battle is not a good idea. Moreover, this article needs NPOV edits. Rather than wasting your energy "battling" people whom you do not know, by all means take a few minutes to rewrite this article in something resembling encyclopedic style.
This article remains a sad example of how Wikipedia treats controversial topics. I don't think Wiki can improve on this -- at least this article has bypassed much of the insulting hogwash heard from Campbell et al -- but Wiki editors should bear in mind that "consensus" does NOT imply certain truth. Sometimes the 49% are correct.
Above someone wrote: "Of course, we don't really know how many different languages were brought to the Americas by various waves of immigration." I guess this commentator thinks these different languages all passed successfully through the Isthmus of Panama without loss! One thing is certain: The commentator is someone who has never contemplated the facts revealed by non-controversial historical linguistics, nor exhibits simple common-sense about early human expansions. Jamesdowallen ( talk) 07:36, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
Incidentally, is it just me, or does the reference list seem rather long in relation to the article content, compared to other articles here? Balancer 08:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Please, make footnotes ( Inline citations) in order that the readers can verify the information. Otherwise this may well look as a presentation of the editor's/s' opinions rather than of facts.-- Pet'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 14:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
More pieces of information should be included in the article, such as:
It doesn't matter whether Greenberg/Ruhlen's classification is valid or not. It should be a part of the description of the hypothesis. It is not enough to say that Amerind is a controversial family proposed by Greenberg and consisting of all language families in Americas but Na-Dené/Haida and Eskimo-Aleut. Being a reader of Wikipedia, I'd like to know why Greenberg thought the family existed.-- Pet'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 14:24, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
look at the history and you'll see that the (formerly) current highly POV version was due to a single user, Billposer. the previous version is shorter and much more objective. none of the added stuff by Billposer is relevant -- it's a lot of unsourced, disputed criticisms, and all relevant criticisms are already contained in the
mass lexical comparison page.
Benwing (
talk)
03:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Given that Bill Poser actually has expert knowledge of the languages in the Amerind family, I think it's very unfortunate that you felt justified in deleting his contributions as not 'objective'. Unless you have any citations to prove that the acceptance of Amerind is greater than Bill said it is, I would advocate putting Bill's edits back in. Anon., June 5, 2008.
-- Pe t 'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom 10:33, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
Please, see the to-do box. I have made some changes. Let's discuss them here. Any information to be added, corrected, explained in a more detail? I think there should be a discussion in the text as to whether the main arguments for Amerind are valid or not, and why, uhm? At least, a link to the relevant articles should be made.--
Pe
t
'usek petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom
08:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
There is a user who reverted my corrections and said that Greenberg did not use the precepts of the mass comparative method for his classification of native American languages--this is totally and absolutely false. The user is picking up on propaganda from ultraconservative and fanatical mainstreamers who are based on polemics instead of reason. Just because the section is on reception of the idea doesn't mean it should include the lies of ultraconservative and fanatical mainstreamers without rebuttal. -- Trouveur de faits ( talk) 21:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
It seems to me it would appropriate to put the hypothetical classification of this hypothetical phylum, with links to the pages for each family, where they are there. I will begin working on this.
The classification, per "A Guide to the World's Languages Vol. 1" (Merrit Ruhlen, 1987) is as follows:
1. Northern Amerind 1.1 Almosan-Kersiouan 1.2 Penutian 1.3 Hokan 2. Central Amerind 2.1 Tanoan 2.2 Uto-Aztecan 2.3 Oto-Manguean 3. Chibchan-Paezan 3.1 Chibchan 3.2 Paezan 4. Andean 5. Equatorial-Tucanoan 5.1 Macro-Tucanoan 5.2 Equatorial 6. Ge-Pano-Carib 6.1 Macro-Carib 6.2 Ge-Pano 6.21 Macro-Panoan 6.22 Macro-Ge.
As I said, I will start working on this, and try to make sure I include as many of the latest research as I can find, with appropriate footnotes, etc. But I wanted to post a heads-up on the discussion page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Listmeister ( talk • contribs) 20:04, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
DONE. March 29, 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Listmeister ( talk • contribs) 15:41, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
It looks like recent work on DNA/genetics has come to the same 3-wave conclusion.
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/science/earliest-americans-arrived-in-3-waves-not-1-dna-study-finds.html -- 12.2.10.242 ( talk) 01:05, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I have seen an article in the New York Times. DNA testing has confirmed that there were three migrations to the Americas. Fifteen thousand years ago, there was a large migration that would give rise to the majority of Native American tribes. This was followed by two smaller migrations. One would give rise to the Eskimo. The other would give rise to the Apache and the Navajo. This is evidence that Joseph Greenberg was right. Please check http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/science/earliest-americans-arrived-in-3-waves-not-1-dna-study-finds.html?partner=rss&emc=rss for more info.
173.57.39.131 ( talk) 21:58, 12 July 2012 (UTC)Anonymous
I undid a removal of the classification scheme. We need to discuss this first. The list of languages and the classification thereof is the Amerind hypothesis. The article has little real content without it. Maunus's edit note says "removing excessive list which breaks the article - this list should have its on article if it is to be included at all" (sic) well, the note itself suggested two alternatives before deleting content: rearrange the article, or put the list in its own article. But there was no indication of why it should not be included. Listmeister ( talk) 19:50, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I strongly suggest we review WP:NPOV. Terms like "roundly" and "universal" are very opinionated. The article quite properly presents the fact that the most prestigious current Americanists regard the theory as unproven because they criticize the methodology. Outside Americanist linguists the lumping theories are actually more popular. In any case, the evidence can speak for itself and we do not need to present this even more hostilely than the Sun Theory. μηδείς ( talk) 21:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
The reason Lumpers tend to like the Amerind theory and Splitters tend to reject it is a fundamental assumption by the Lumpers that "Any Theory is Better than No Theory" while the fundamental assumption by the Splitters seems to be "A Wrong Theory is Worse Than No Theory."
Applied to the American Languages, a Lumper will ask, "Are these languages related to each other, or did they arise independently? Best we can figure, there are four independent sources of languages in the Americas (the Na-Dene, the Eskimo, the recently introduced European, and the Amerind). Great, we have a theory. Let's see if we can refine the theory. Maybe we'll find a fourth grouping or be able to connect two of the three together, maybe someone will come up with a better theory, but we have to start somewhere." From a Lumper perspective, the Splitters have not even tried to come up with a better theory. They just seem to be saying say "we have 150 independent language families, and we can never ever know the relationship between them. Ever. Oh sure, maybe we'll get lucky, and discover a link here and there, but on a continental scale, forget it." This attitude is as frustrating to Lumpers as I'm sure the "start somewhere even if it's wrong" approach is to splitters.
My point is, Amerind is a Lumper Theory, made by Lumpers (Greenberg and Ruhlen, mainly) for other Lumpers. Let's acknowledge this fundamental division in approach to historical linguistics, and move on from that starting point.
Listmeister ( talk) 14:47, 28 September 2012 (UTC) (lumper)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Amerind languages/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
Articles with only one section of content are stubs.-- Rmky87 16:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC) |
Last edited at 16:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 07:35, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
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Hallo Florian Blaschke– I have zero subject-matter expertise here, and no longer retain any illusions re Wikipedia's neutrality. But the term "cherry-picked" reads as critical or judgmental, and, as justified as the criticism may be, I thought it might be better to go with a more neutral heading. I don't have a dog in the race, just wanted to explain myself. Eric talk 13:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)