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Document Details : Title: Some features in Dene-Caucasian phonology (with special reference to Basque) Author(s): BENGTSON, John D. Journal: Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain Volume: 30 Date: 2004 Pages: 33-54 DOI: 10.2143/CILL.30.4.2003307 Abstract : Trask (1997: 404) has derided the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis as an 'enthusiastic hoovering up isolates,' and Vovin (2002: 167) calls it an 'imaginative but futile attempt of human mind' motivated by 'a religious belief in macro-families' rather than scientific rigor. I suggest that the open-minded linguist consider wether the phonological patterns described in this paper, and the other non-tivial correspondences discovered by Starostin, are all merely imaginary and based on coincidental resemblances, as Trask and Vovin claim. If so, why and how would anyone 'imagine,' for exemple, that PDC lateral affricates become Basque /r̄d/ between vowels, but /I/ in initial and final position? I propose instead that recurrent correspondences of this type serve to confirm the lexical evidence that affirms the real existence of a Dene-Caucasian macro-family of languages. I further suggest that we approach the problem of Dene-Caucasion, not as a theory to 'prove' or 'disprove', but as an explanatory model, subject to constant modification and correction. In this light my colleagues and I offer Dene-Caucasian as a powerful model that helps to explain the dispersal of human beings and their cultures over Eurasia and the Americas. In details it is constantly being modified, as for example when evidence from Basque is added and compared with the existing evidence from the three families compared by Starostin. We can view the recurrent non-trivial correspondences described above as the linguistic equivalent of the replicated experimental of the physical sciences. |
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