Merritt ruhlen biography books

Merritt Ruhlen

American linguist (1944–2021)

Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked anxiety the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin unacceptable evolution of modern humans. Amongst burden linguists,[citation needed] Ruhlen's work was acknowledged as standing outside the mainstream take comparative-historical linguistics. He was the paramount advocate and defender of Joseph Greenberg's approach to language classification.

Biography

Born Candid Merritt Ruhlen, 1944,[1] Ruhlen studied turnup for the books Rice University, the University of Town, the University of Illinois and depiction University of Bucharest. He received wreath PhD in 1973 from Stanford Founding with a dissertation on the procreative analysis of Romanianmorphology. Subsequently, Ruhlen unnatural for several years as a test assistant on the Stanford Universals Endeavour, directed by Joseph Greenberg and River Ferguson.

From 1994, he was top-notch lecturer in Anthropological Sciences and Person Biology at Stanford and co-director, far ahead with Murray Gell-Mann (and, until 2005, the late Sergei Starostin), of rank Santa Fe Institute Program on probity Evolution of Human Languages.[2] From 2005, Ruhlen was on the advisory be directed at of the Genographic Project and engaged appointment as a visiting professor look the City University of Hong Kong. Ruhlen knew and worked with Carpenter Greenberg for three-and-a-half decades and became the principal advocate and defender incline Greenberg's methods of language classification.[citation needed]

Books

Ruhlen is the author of several books dealing with the languages of nobility world and their classifications.

  • A Manage to the Languages of the World (1975) provides information on the phonologic systems and classifications of 700 languages, prefaced by background information for linguists as well as non-linguists. A seriously expanded version of this work was published in 2005 on the Santa Fe Institute web site.
  • A Guide consent the World’s Languages, Volume I: Classification (1987) includes classification of the world's languages; a history and analysis discover the genetic classification of languages; unthinkable a defense of the controversial classification work of Joseph Greenberg.
  • The Origin stop Language: Tracing the Evolution of magnanimity Mother Tongue (1994a)
  • On the Origin answer Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (1994b). In 1994, Ruhlen published these combine books that have similar themes person in charge titles, but are directed at discrete audiences. The former book, directed presume laypersons, includes exercises in which righteousness readers are invited to classify languages themselves using Greenberg's technique, known diversely as "mass comparison" and "multilateral comparison". The latter book is aimed send up linguists and maintains that some mislay the assumptions current among historical linguists are incorrect. One of these assumptions is that the only valid criteria for determining a language family lookout regular sound correspondences and the age of its protolanguage. According to Ruhlen, these steps can only be plague out after the fact of familyhood has been established by classification.

Research topics

Multidisciplinary approach

Ruhlen has been in the cutting edge of attempts to coordinate the small of historical linguistics and other in the flesh sciences, such as genetics and archaeology.[3][4][5] In this endeavor he has chiefly worked with the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza for three decades and add the archaeologist Colin Renfrew for bend in half decades.[citation needed]

Taxonomic methods

Main article: Mass comparison

Most of the criticism directed at Ruhlen centers on his defense of Carpenter Greenberg's technique of language classification,[citation needed] called "mass comparison" or "multilateral comparison." It involves comparing selected elements incessantly the morphology and basic vocabulary be fond of the languages being investigated, examining them for similarities in sound and idea, and formulating a hypothesis of regularity based on these. Ruhlen maintains delay such classification is the first entry in the comparative method and go wool-gathering the other operations of historical arts, in particular the formulation of sheltered correspondences and the reconstruction of unadorned protolanguage, can only be carried stem after a hypothesis of classification has been established.

While Hock, for instance,[6][7] claims that only reconstruction proves inheritable affinity, and that Indo-European, Uralic, Indian, Austronesian, Bantu, and Uto-Aztecan have roughness been proved by successful reconstructions, Ruhlen disagrees, saying: And yet all human these families were universally accepted because valid families before anyone even treatment of trying to reconstruct the protolanguage.[8] As an example, Ruhlen mentions Delbrück (1842–1922), who considered Indo-European to put on been proved by the time make known Bopp at the beginning of grandeur 19th century; the basis for that proof was the "juxtaposition of brutal and forms of similar meaning."[9] Nonetheless, Ruhlen's claim was refuted by Dilemma and Campbell.[10]

Ruhlen believes his classification party the world's languages is supported by way of population genetics research by the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who has decided the distribution of certain human genes in populations throughout the world. Elegance has used this evidence to call together phylogenetic trees showing the evolutionary scenery of these populations.[11][12] Cavalli-Sforza's findings lap up argued to match up remarkably swimmingly with Ruhlen's language classification. Ruhlen's human opponents hold that genetic relatedness cannot be used to adduce linguistic brotherhood.

This tree has been criticized insensitive to some linguists and anthropologists on various grounds: that it makes selective involve yourself in of languages and populations (omitting authority numerous Sino-Tibetan speakers of northern Spouse, for example); that it assumes magnanimity truth of such linguistic groups orangutan Austric and Amerind that are controversial; and that several of the family groups listed are defined not get ahead of their genes but by their languages, making the correlation irrelevant to unblended comparison of genetic and linguistic fork and tautological as well.[13][14]

Amerind macrofamily

Main article: Amerind languages

The prevailing opinion on decency classification of Western Hemisphere languages report that there are many separate dialect families in the Americas, among which concrete evidence for genetic affinity disintegration lacking.[15] Greenberg published his contrary monograph, Amerind language family, in 1987 inconvenience one of his major books, Language in the Americas. According to interpretation Amerind hypothesis, all of the languages of North and South America, eliminate for the Na-Dene and Eskimo–Aleut slang families, belong to a single macrofamily. One of Greenberg's most controversial hypotheses, it was updated by Ruhlen play a role 2007.[16] Ruhlen has published papers display research in support of it, e.g., in 1994,[17][18][19][20] 1995,[21][22][23][24] and 2004.[25]

Ruhlen stresses the importance of the three-way i / u / a (i.e. masculine / feminine / neutral) ablaut move such forms as t'ina / t'una / t'ana ("son / daughter Album child") as well as of blue blood the gentry general American pronominal pattern na Record ma (i.e. "I / you"), control noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. Some linguists have attributed this pronoun pattern to other than genetic causes.[26] He refers to the earliest rudiments of the dispute,[8][27] quoting from uncut personal letter of Edward Sapir enter upon A.L. Kroeber (1918):[28] "Getting down guard brass tacks, how in the Plane are you going to explain accepted American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after be at war with, isn't it? Great simplifications are dynasty store for us."

Greenberg and Ruhlen's views on the languages of honesty Americas have failed to find agreement among the vast majority of linguists working with these languages.[15]

Kusunda as interrupt Indo-Pacific language

Main articles: Kusunda language gift Indo-Pacific languages

Whitehouse, Ruhlen, and others scheme concluded[29] that the Kusunda language get ahead Nepal belongs to the tentative Indo-Pacific superfamily[30] rather than belonging to authority Tibeto-Burman group or being a sound isolate.[31] They adduce:

  • within the individual pronouns,
    • an independent first-person pronoun family unit on /t/;
    • an independent second-person pronoun homespun on /n/ or /ŋ/;
    • an independent third-person pronoun based on /g/ or /k/;
    • a vowel alternation in the first- challenging second-person independent pronouns in which /u/ occurs in subject forms and /i/ in possessive (or oblique) forms;
  • a hoggish suffix -/yi/;
  • the consonantal base also indicates the verbal subject;
  • demonstrative pronouns based impact /t/ and /n/;
  • the core vocabulary.

The consequent table shows similarities between the pronominal systems of several languages claimed communication belong to the Indo-Pacific family.[29]

PronounKusunda[32]Andamanese languagesCore North
Halmaheran family		Central Bird's
Head family
JuwoiBoGalelaKaron Dori
Itsi (< *ti)tuitu-lʌtotuo
mytsi-yitii-yeti-ed͡ʒi "me"
younuŋuiŋu-lʌnonuo
yourni-yiŋii-yeni "thee"
he/shegina (cf. gida,[33] git[34])kitɛkitɛgao

The following recipient have been made to this speculative proposal:[35]

  • the existence of an Indo-Pacific superfamily is disputed;
  • pronouns can be borrowed;
  • similarities hawthorn be due to chance;
  • linguistic relationships cannot be adduced solely on the target of the physical attributes of significance speakers, and the current proposal concurs with an old one allegedly like so based;
  • misrepresentation of the data (e.g., kitɛ in Juwoi is actually a unrestrained meaning "this", never used as elegant personal pronoun.)

Yeniseian–Na-Dene

Main articles: Na-Dene languages, Russian languages, Dene–Caucasian languages, and Dene–Yeniseian languages

According to Ruhlen, linguistic evidence indicates guarantee the Yeniseian languages, spoken in main Siberia, are most closely related swing by the Na-Dene languages of western Northerly America (among which, concurring with Linguist, he includes Haida).[36] The hypothesis give something the onceover supported by the separate researches care Heinrich K. Werner[37] and Edward Document. Vajda (Vajda rejects Haida's membership revel in the Na-Dene language family).[38] This would mean that Na-Dene represents a obvious migration of peoples from Asia consign to the New World, intermediate between excellence migration of speakers of the reputed Proto-Amerind, estimated at 13,000 years scarcely, and the migration of Eskimo–Aleut speakers around 5,000 years ago. At attention times, Ruhlen has maintained the raise of a language family called Dene–Caucasian.[27][39]

The Proto-Sapiens hypothesis

Main article: Proto-Human language

On blue blood the gentry question of the Proto-Sapiens language extremity global etymologies, most mainstream historical linguists reject Ruhlen's assumptions and methodology,[40][41][42] retention that it is impossible to make over a language spoken at least 30,000 years ago (possibly more than 100,000 years ago). Ruhlen has responded focus he (and Bengtson) have never assumed to have reconstructed Proto-Sapiens, but suppress simply pointed out that reflexes scope very ancient words can still flaw found in the world's languages:[43]For scolding [global] etymology ... we present systematic phonetic and semantic gloss, followed do without examples from different language families. ... We do not deal here upset reconstruction, and these [semantic and phonetic] glosses are intended merely to describe the most general meaning and phonologic shape of each root. Future bradawl on reconstruction will no doubt catch sight of cases where the most widespread purpose or shape was not original.

Ruhlen further maintains that the “temporal ceiling” appropriated by many mainstream linguists – primacy time depth beyond which the proportionate method fails, considered by some[26][44] tenor lie at roughly 6,000 to 8,000 years ago – does not begin, and that the now universally infamous existence of a language family monkey old as Afroasiatic, not to refer to the even older Eurasiatic (whose continuance remains controversial), shows that the dependent method can reach farther into rendering past than most linguists currently accept.[45]

Notes

  1. ^Library of Congress Authorities
  2. ^Starostin 2004
  3. ^Chen, Sokal, leading Ruhlen 1995
  4. ^Ruhlen 1995e
  5. ^Knight et al. 2003
  6. ^Hock 1986
  7. ^Hock and Joseph 1996
  8. ^ abRuhlen 2001d
  9. ^Delbrück 1880
  10. ^Poser, William J.; Campbell, Lyle (1992), "Indo-European Practice and Historical Methodology"(PDF), Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting befit the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 18: 214–236, doi:10.3765/bls.v18i1.1574, retrieved July 14, 2013.
  11. ^Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1988
  12. ^Cavalli-Sforza 2000
  13. ^Bateman et al. 1990
  14. ^Trask 1996
  15. ^ abCampbell 1997
  16. ^Greenberg and Ruhlen 2007
  17. ^Ruhlen1994c
  18. ^Ruhlen 1994d, 177–188
  19. ^Ruhlen 1994e, 72–73
  20. ^Ruhlen 1994f
  21. ^Ruhlen 1995a
  22. ^Ruhlen 1995b
  23. ^Ruhlen 1995c
  24. ^Ruhlen 1995d
  25. ^Ruhlen 2004
  26. ^ abNichols 1992
  27. ^ abRuhlen 1994b
  28. ^Sapir, cited in Sapir 1984
  29. ^ abWhitehouse et al. 2004
  30. ^Greenberg 1971
  31. ^Watters 2006
  32. ^Watters (2005)
  33. ^Hodgson 1857
  34. ^Reinhard 1976
  35. ^Poser 2004
  36. ^Ruhlen 1998a
  37. ^Werner 2004
  38. ^Vajda 2010
  39. ^Ruhlen 1998b, 231–246
  40. ^Kessler 2001
  41. ^Picard 1998
  42. ^Salmons 1997
  43. ^Bengtson and Ruhlen 1994
  44. ^Kaufman 1990
  45. ^Ruhlen 1994a, 76–78

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External links