LINGUIST List 5.1472

Mon 19 Dec 1994

Disc: Reply: Open letter to _Language_

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Sarah G. Thomason", Re: 5.1470 Open letter to _Language_

Message 1: Re: 5.1470 Open letter to _Language_

 Many readers of LINGUIST (and of LANGUAGE) are, as the
open letter indicates, interested in methodological issues that
come up in efforts to establish very distant linguistic
relationships like Nostratic. Although it's true that LANGUAGE
has published no review of Illich-Svitych's books -- the scholar
who agreed to review them has not yet submitted the promised review
-- research in the same tradition has been reviewed in the journal:
see Bernard Comrie's review of Starostin's book on Altaic and
Japanese in LANGUAGE 69:828-832 (1993). The methodological issues
involved in the Altaic & Japanese case are the same as the issues
involved in the Nostratic case, so I'm puzzled by the open-letter
signers' apparent belief that the Russian approach to these issues
has received no attention in LANGUAGE.

 Sarah Thomason
 Editor, LANGUAGE