Talk:Merritt Ruhlen

General

Well, this article has now turned 180 degrees and reads like Ruhlen himself wrote it. Nowhere in this article is there any indication that Ruhlen's views on historical linguistics anywhere near as 'controversial' as they really are, much less the fact that they are shared by less than 1% of all actual historical linguists. It is not an exaggeration to state that Ruhlen is, frankly, a completely marginal figure in linguistics, and it does a huge disservice to linguistics to present his rejected ideas as tho they've been accepted by the scholarly community. I am going to add a few qualifications to this article, and if Wikipedia wishes to delete them, I should hope that they would replace them with something else addressing this absurd imbalance. -anonymous linguist, November 6, 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.245.21.217 (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the phrase '"mainstream" linguists' with its snide scare quotes. It reads far more like an embittered polemic rather than a statement of the facts. -anonymous, 11/6/07. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.245.21.217 (talk) 17:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Merritt Ruhlen’s work is accepted as being controversial, but in the interest of promoting open-mindedness and being unbiased, both sides of this argument should be presented. The method that Ruhlen used to establish a Proto language, mass lexical comparison developed by linguist Joseph Greenberg, has been used before to determine the origin of African languages, according to "Before Babel" (Horizon), BBC Videos for Education & Training, 1992.

I find the language in this article is too strong. "Ruhlen is an extremely controversial figure in the linguistics community, from which he has been all but ostracized," "Ruhlen's assumptions and methodology are unsound and unfounded," and the quote by Larry Trask sharply criticizes Ruhlen. But there is nothing that defends him and no quote by people who support Ruhlen to balance the attacks. It is not appropriate to argue one side of the debate without also showing the other side.

This is my first contribution to Wikipedia so if I did something completely wrong or broke any rules, please let me know. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stran (talk • contribs) 2006-04-10 05:39:47.

• Your comment is fine, but to have a proper conversation it is useful to sign your posts on talk pages. As to the content of your note, the appropriate thing for somebody to do who has identified problems such as you have would be to go right in and fix them. Good Luck! -- Ngio 21:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that Wikipedia's NPOV policy is not the same thing as requiring that all viewpoints be given equal airtime (so to speak). When one viewpoint is contested by nearly all academics of a certain discipline, then in order for the article to be encyclopedic, that fact needs to be made very clear--otherwise, readers won't have any way to distinguish information that's agreed upon by most in the academic community from information that's argued only by a few guys outside the mainstream. It's important to balance absolute neutrality with the reality of the debate within the academic community and with the generally accepted version of the facts. That's why, for example, Holocaust denial is not treated as though it has as much truth as the explainations given by historians and Holocaust survivors, or why those who advocate that the Earth is flat are not treated the same as astronomers, sailors, and everyday people who know from personal experience or scientific evidence that the Earth is not flat. While opposing viewpoints should be presented, if they are agreed by almost everyone to be wrong (which, for what it's worth, really is the case with Ruhlen's theories, as he freely admits--although he's not happy about it), then that needs to be made clear, and the reasons why that viewpoint is seen as wrong should also be explained.

I hope I'm making sense and not rambling...

Take care, --Red Newt 06:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the Trask quote should be left out. Judging from his postings to sci.lang, Larry Trask was a vociferous and relentless opponent of Ruhlen's, so it's hardly fair to quote him as if he were neutral source.--Chris 21:37, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Libel? Certainly dubious application of WP policy

Actually, after reading Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons, I'm convinced that this article must be toned down to comply with WP policy. Arguably a number of unsourced assertions or characterisations border on libel. And even though the Trask quote is sourced, that doesn't necessarily exempt WP from libel charges.

I will make a few edits; whoever else is interested in this article can discuss them.

Note that in cases of possible libel, WP policy is to delete old as well as current revisions. Please do not quote possibly libellous material on the Talk page; just refer to it obliquely.

I hope I'm not overreacting here.--Chris 13:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, which is it?

The final paragraph contains these apparently contradictory sentences:

The results [of Cavalli-Sforza's genetic analysis] show a remarkable match-up with Ruhlen's proposed structure of the languages and language families of the world.

Furthermore, critics point out that the correspondance between Ruhlen's linguistic classification and the genetic evidence is not really very good.

Obviously, someone needs to sort this out.--Chris 20:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, I took it upon myself to sort it out.--Chris 14:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

POV

I wonder if a little POV has crept into this article. For example:

Another problem with mass comparison is that it does not provide any way to distinguish between similarities due to common descent and those due to borrowing. Ruhlen's only response to this is to assert, without evidence, that borrowing of so-called basic vocabulary is rare.

I find it hard to believe that Ruhlen has never advanced any evidence (however controverted) that borrowing of basic vocabulary is rare. Anyway, isn't that a rather widespread notion in linguistics? Forgive me for any ignorance - I make no claim to be a linguist, amateur or otherwise - but wasn't the Swadesh list about trying to isolate a core list of relative stable vocabulary?--Chris 20:47, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

"They" is a borrowing. Deman7001 04:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've toned this passage down.--Chris 14:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, "they" is a borrowing. Anything can be borrowed, but the probability decreases with the words inclusion in the Swadesh list, which is nothing but a world-wide statistical tendency. So, "they" is replaced much more easily than "I", of course. There are several independent statistical studies that show this tendency. I don't remember the precise sources, but google for Yakhontov, Dolgopolski, Blažek, etc. --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 10:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

"No scientific foundation"

I've removed this edit of Billposer's from the article.

Although Ruhlen's claims about Proto-World are the most dramatic and controversial, the most problematic aspect of his work is his classification of the world's languages. In order to subgroup a set of related languages, in this case, all of the world's languages, it is necessary to have an objective method for determining that some languages are more closely related to each other than others. The standard way of doing this makes use of the comparative method; the major alternative is one or another form of lexicostatistics. Ruhlen does not use any of these methods, and "mass comparison" provides no alternative. Ruhlen presents no arguments at all for his proposals. Consequently, his statements about the classification of the world's languages are considered to have no scientific foundation. Neither Ruhlen nor anyone else has offered any rebuttal to this point.

I've got no brief for Ruhlen, but this paragraph isn't quite there yet. The first four sentences amount to a dismissal of mass comparison, which has already been amply criticised in paragraphs 3 and 4 of the article. (Some of your material is worth working into the earlier passages.) As you've currrently phrased it, sentence 5 ("Ruhlen presents no arguments at all for his proposals") is simply untenable, and renders the remaining two sentences untenable.

I've removed the "pseudoscientist" label again as being inherently unverifiable and contrary to WP policy on biographies of living persons -- see especially the comments on unsourced negative statements. In tone, the article is adequately critical as it stands. There is no need to turn up the rhetorical volume; in fact, it needs to be kept down to encyclopediac levels.--Chris 07:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't he claim to use the comparative method ? In his book, he glorifies the Jones method and claims to be merely extending that? Deman7001 04:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

He does, indeed. He only stresses that the multilateral comparison is only the first, taxonomic, hypothesis-constructing phase of the process, not that it suffices in postulating genetic relationships, hence, according to him:

• COMPARATIVE METHOD:

1. TAXONOMY (= classification, apparently by means of multilateral comparison)
2. HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS:

• RECONSTRUCTION
• SOUND CORRESPONDENCES
• HOMELAND
• TIME etc.

Thus, point one suggests a group of languages to be tested for a genetic relationship, whereas point two further confirms, refines, and ellucidates it, sometimes changing or correcting the proposals arrived at during the first stage. This means that the multilateral comparison only suggests the direction, nowhere is it claimed to prove something per se. As far as I know, Ruhlen by no means denies the fact that the other steps are necessary. What he questions, however, is the "temporal ceiling".--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 15:05, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Cuts and Shortcuts

As it is now, the article is less about Ruhlen than about mass lexical comparison. The arguments against the latter should be moved to that article. David Marjanović 22:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that the word "unproven" should be removed. It's not like we'd ever prove anything in science. Expressions like "badly supported" or the like should suffice (…and be referenced). David Marjanović 22:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. We should move a lot of the stuff to the appropriate articles (Mass Comparison, etc.). --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Preliminary Suggestion:

What follows is a preliminary suggestion. I have not made the links to other articles yet. I have prepared some schemes for upload. Do you all agree with the replacement of the current version by the following, at least as far as the text is concerned? Thanks for your opinions! --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 00:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Since it was cluttering up the talk page, I decided to move your draft to my user subpage, User:Miskwito/Notes. Sorry if that was being too...uhh....forward, or whatever. You can move it back if you want, but feel free to edit it on my subpage. I'll try to help out if I can. --Miskwito 20:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, never mind. Anyway, thanks for telling me.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 20:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments regarding the suggestion

While it's true this shouldn't be the page where Multilateral Comparison is discussed in detail, I also think it should be clear just how controversial a figure Ruhlen is in the linguistics world. The lead should mention it, at least (maybe "Merritt Ruhlen (pronounced [merɪt ruːlən]) ({the date of birth?}) is an American linguist known for his highly controversial work on the classification of language families"? Or something like that). That said, I think making sections for each of his books is a good idea; perhaps the criticism info could be merged in with the discussion of his books? Or, alternately, keep a section at the end on criticism, but keep it small and very general, and then a "Main article: Mass Lexical Comparison" and/or "Main article: Proto-World" or something like that. Or maybe combined in with the sections in "Major Issues" (for example, I'm uncomfortable with saying things like "the probable existence of old language families such as Afro-Asiatic and Nostratic (Eurasiatic) proves that the comparative method can reach farther into the past than mainstream linguists currently accept" without noting that Nostratic is not well-accepted in the same section). --Miskwito 01:21, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I see. And I agree with most of what you've pointed out, except that I would omit the attribute "higly" before "controversial", as I think "controversial" is enough.

I also agree that the criticism of the books could be a part of the separate articles for each of them. Also, Mass Comparison, Proto-World etc. - they all will be linked to their main articles, of course. Also, as I've suggested, the Summary of the disputed issues might be a brief, concise list of the most important criticisms. What do you think?

As for the sentence "the probable existence of old language families such as Afro-Asiatic and Nostratic (Eurasiatic) proves that the comparative method can reach farther into the past than mainstream linguists currently accept", it is, of course, a part of what Ruhlen "maintains": "He also maintains that [...] the probable existence of old language..." And you're right it should be mentioned somewhere that Nostratic, Eurasiatic, and Afro-Asiatic are much disputed. I'll try to incorporate it into the article...somehow :-)

Anyway, thanks a lot for the valuable comments! --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I wonder if you have read: "Is Algonquian Amerind?"--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't read it, no, thanks for showing me. I guess I don't have a problem with "controversial" or "highly controversial", so whichever you'd prefer is fine with me. --Miskwito 01:21, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Hm, so I'm feeling kind of good right now since apparently I know enough about Algonquian linguistics to recognize a number of misrepresentations or omissions (whether intentional or not I don't know) that make his arguments seem much stronger than they are. Plus he doesn't really address the criticisms of his method. But I guess this isn't the place for this, I suppose. Oh well. Take care --Miskwito 22:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think this is the right place for a list of criticisms. Please, don't hesitate to make one - as soon as you have some time. --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 19:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Argument

The basic problem with this article is that it advances arguments of its own, without attributing to sources. Hence, it violates WP:ATT, as we as arguably WP:BLP. I will blank all unsourced statements shortly.*Kutaka(-lu) 05:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't bother. See the "Preliminary Suggestion" above: the whole article will be replaced soon anyway. David Marjanović 22:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments on new version

• The reference list is too long. Better to just cite some key papers (best would be to generate this list from relevant reference in the text). His homepage has a fuller list of references in any case.

Fuller??? Can you list those references that have been omitted? ...because I think, they are all here... ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant "fuller" once some of the references copied to this page have been removed -- Ngio 18:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• It is implied that Ruhlen is the first author of all these papers. This is not always the case, e.g.

A. Knight, P. Underhill, H. Mortensen, L. Zhivotovsky, A. Lin, B. Henn, D. Louis, M. Ruhlen, J. Mountain (2003) African Y Chromosome and mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into the History of Click Languages. Current Biology, Volume 13, Issue 6, 464-473.

Is it? Then thanks a lot. I'll put that under "K" (as Knight). --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• What does the phrase "is employed as an independent linguist" mean? As I understand it, he's affiliated with the Stanford University Department of Anthropological Sciences. I don't know if that's a paid faculty position or not, but that shouldn't matter.

-- Ngio 08:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Interesting question...I'll try to find out :-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the "with [coauthors]" notation is very weird. I've never seen it before. I fixed the reference to the very interesting Kusunda paper (Whitehouse et al.) yesterday and have just fixed Knight et al. (thanks). There are still two more such cases ("Ruhlen 1995e" and a book chapter) which I can't fix because I don't know the order of the authors. David Marjanović 09:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, David has responded already. Fine.--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Besides, the last two external links should be moved to the Proto-World article. David Marjanović 09:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I'm going to use the citation templates for all those publications and references. As for the latter, shall I turn them into clickable notes (<ref>)? --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I like the <ref> style -- tends to make for a list which is limited to the key references. -- Ngio 18:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are references and publications. I can use the templates for the former, but the latter are an exhaustive list of Ruhlen's publications, in fact. Why should I reduce it? It wouldn't be exhaustive any more...--Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:10, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I WILL reduce it after all :-))) Just give me some time to choose which ones to leave ;-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 17:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I have merged the two lists of references and reduced them to those that are used as notes only. Today (or tomorrow), I'm going to add some other crucial references that have been deleted in the processs of conversion. Any advice on this would be helpful, of course! :-) --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 09:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Good work Petusek. My main concern right now is that now the article is too supportive of Ruhlen. Like, in the sections on Multilateral comparison, Ruhlen's views are presented in what to me seems like a way that makes them seem like they have more support than they actually do. If I'm making any sense. Maybe I'm not. Anyway, obviously, since the article is about Ruhlen, it should present his views, but if the majority of the linguistics community disagrees with him (something I expect he'd admit, even though he thinks they're wrong or foolish to do so) that needs to be made clearer. I think. I'm trying to think of how to do that while staying NPOV, though, and while avoiding a sort of "he said this, this guy's response is this, his response to the response is this, this guy's response to the response to the response is..." and so on. Maybe I'll look at some articles on controvertial people whose ideas are mostly rejected to get some ideas. --Miskwito 19:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, you know, that is why we have been using the {{main}} template, isn't it? We cannot discuss here what - in my opinion - rather belongs to the articles on Proto-World, Mass Comparison, etc., can we? What I suggest is that we mention and discuss Ruhlen's work in those articles. Moreover, Ruhlen never used mass comparison. Greenberg did - that should be noted. By the way, have you (or just anyone) read Pierre Bancel's An Answer to D. Ringe? --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 13:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the first sentence a bit: ...known for his work on the classification of language families, some of which is considered controversial. That's simply because not all of Ruhlen's work is controversial. For instance, in the World Atlas of Language Structures, every language they use is identified with the corresponding language in Ruhlen's "A Guide to the Languages of the World." [Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures. (Book with interactive CD-ROM) Oxford: Oxford University Press.] --Pet'usek [petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com] 12:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Further Criticism

I just returned to this article and was really surprised to see that the new version seems to have supressed every single mention of criticism that was present in the old one. This page is definitely in need of a criticism section; agreed, we shouldn't go into much detail, but there are lots of criticism specifically directed against Ruhlen. Remember what Larry Trask said (and was censored and deleted from this article even though it was sourced): "Ruhlen is not recognized by anybody in linguistics as a member of the profession. Every single linguist who is acquainted with his work regards him as a crackpot and a charlatan." KelilanK 15:27, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

See Chris' comment above.--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 11:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Edits Undone!

The user who made the edits had not discussed them here. They violated several Wikipedia policies, that's why I undid them. Of course, some of them had to be deleted, because they conflicted the undo procedure (sorry, KelilanK!).

PLEASE, do discuss the changes here before you make them. Calling Ruhlen a "fanatic" is not the wording we need here!

Criticisms are welcome, of course, but they have to be both sourced and polite.--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 11:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I did discuss the edits, at the top of this edit page.

This bio is wildly unbalanced, and omits any reference to the plain fact that the great majority of Ruhlen's ideas, methodology and conclusions are overwhelmingly rejected by the linguistic community. It is very misleading to give no indication of this fact. Evidently there previously was text in this page explaining this, but evidently it's all been stripped out by nonlinguists who like Ruhlen's conclusions. Pointing out these facts is not 'impolite'.-anonymous, Dec. 1, 2007

I will repeat my earlier explanation:

Well, this article has now turned 180 degrees and reads like Ruhlen himself wrote it. Nowhere in this article is there any indication that Ruhlen's views on historical linguistics anywhere near as 'controversial' as they really are, much less the fact that they are shared by less than 1% of all actual historical linguists. It is not an exaggeration to state that Ruhlen is, frankly, a completely marginal figure in linguistics, and it does a huge disservice to linguistics to present his rejected ideas as tho they've been accepted by the scholarly community. I am going to add a few qualifications to this article, and if Wikipedia wishes to delete them, I should hope that they would replace them with something else addressing this absurd imbalance. -anonymous linguist, November 6, 2007. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.245.21.217 (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I have removed the phrase '"mainstream" linguists' with its snide scare quotes. It reads far more like an embittered polemic rather than a statement of the facts. -anonymous, 11/6/07. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.245.21.217 (talk) 17:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I do not question the fact that he is a controversial figure, but the wording you used was inappropriate. In fact, you have NOT discussed the edits, you have only expressed your opinion. You can be critical, of course, but you have to provide references. My suggestion is as follows: Do write a critique of Ruhlen here on the Talk page. Then we can discuss it (and its wording), and, maybe, incorporate the text into the article. You know, I don't mind criticism at all, but biographies of living people must obey certain rules as defined by Wikipedia's policies. --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 18:56, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Undone Again

It is very convenient to call oneself "anonymous". Anyway, your edits violated the rules, again. Let me explain why I had to undo them:

1. You changed the original neutral statement "Some of his ideas are considered controversial." to "His ideas about the classification of the world's languages are not accepted by the linguistic community." Why?

• A) It was an unsourced statement - do YOU represent the whole linguistic community? Certainly not. Have you published a statistical survey analysing this? Definitely not. If you had added a reference supporting this libelous assertion of yours, I'd have kept it.
• B) Many of the classifications presented in his "Guide" are completely uncontroversial. This quite clearly contradicts your claim.

2. In the section on Multilateral Comparison, you wrote: "This notion is rejected by the vast majority of historical linguists as lacking rigor or falsifiability." And, again, this was an unsourced statement. You did not include proper (in-line) citations.

3. Previously, I hadn't undone the following sentence: "This has served to convince nonlinguists of the validity of Ruhlen's classifications, yet linguists agree that genetic relatedness cannot be used to adduce linguistic relatedness." I must have forgotten.

• A) In fact, Ruhlen belongs to those linguists, agreeing DNA traces can only serve as indirect clues.
• B) The first part of the sentence (about convincing nonlinguists) was both wrong and offensive. It is NOT Cavalli-Sforza's survey that has convinced a number of linguists.
• C) Actually, the sentence is totally redundant, as the cons of the tree had already been mentioned (and properly sourced!): "This tree has been criticized by some linguists and anthropologists on several grounds: that it makes selective use of languages and populations (omitting the very numerous Sino-Tibetan speakers of northern China, for example); that it assumes the truth of such linguistic groups as Austric and Amerind that are controversial; and that several of the population groups listed are defined not by their genes but by their languages, making the correlation irrelevant to a comparison of genetic and linguistic branching and tautological as well."

4. You have changed the neutral "Ruhlen has supported and adduced more evidence for one of Greenberg’s most controversial hypotheses..." to Ruhlen is one of the very few advocates within linguistics for one of Greenberg’s most controversial hypotheses...

• A) Another unsourced statement. Why don't you include any references? Why don't you make a brief list (either of the other very few advocates, or of the most important anti-Amerind representatives)? Can you define "very few"?
• B) The original sentence states quite clearly that this hypothesis of Greenberg's belongs to the most controversial ones.

5. You added: "It should be stressed, however, that Greenberg and Ruhlen's views on the languages of the Americas have failed to find acceptance among the vast majority of linguists working with these languages, and Ruhlen remains a marginal figure within linguistics."

• A) Again, another unsourced statement.
• B) Offensive. YOU are not a speaker of a the vast majority, are you?

6. The following paragraph was problematic as well: "Americanist William Poser has made the following summary of Ruhlen's methodology: Although Ruhlen's claims about Proto-World are the most dramatic and controversial, the most problematic aspect of his work is his classification of the world's languages. In order to subgroup a set of related languages, in this case, all of the world's languages, it is necessary to have an objective method for determining that some languages are more closely related to each other than others. The standard way of doing this makes use of the comparative method; the major alternative is one or another form of lexicostatistics. Ruhlen does not use any of these methods, and "mass comparison" provides no alternative. Ruhlen presents no arguments at all for his proposals. Consequently, his statements about the classification of the world's languages are considered to have no scientific foundation. Neither Ruhlen nor anyone else has offered any rebuttal to this point."

• A) It was irrelevant to the section (i.e. Amerind languages!)
• B) Poser is wrong anyway. In fact, Ruhlen has repeatedly presented strong arguments in the articles that are cited.
• C) Relying on one author only is rather unreliable ;-)

7. "This genetic grouping is not accepted by linguists specializing in the languages in question." is another statement that is unsourced and redundant.

8. "Ruhlen remains a marginal figure within linguistics." What is the source of this allegation??? A friend of mine (a linguist himself) told me a few hours ago: "I get the feeling that this writer only talks to linguists who agree with him/her, and naturally is unaware of the linguists who either agree (broadly) with Ruhlen, partially agree, or don't care."

9. You say that "Nowhere in this article is there any indication that Ruhlen's views on historical linguistics anywhere near as 'controversial' as they really are, much less the fact that they are shared by less than 1% of all actual historical linguists."

• A) The figure of "1%" is certainly questionable.
• B) According to the guidelines "Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous." No source of the 1% figure is given. (Nor, I'm afraid, can it be.) My advice is that you add the citation needed tag yourself to warn the reader that what you have written cannot be verified yet. --Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 16:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

A Few Brand New Changes

User User: 66.245.23.173 has changed the article a bit. Here's a brief summary of her/his edits:

1 INTRODUCTION

• Original: Some of his ideas are considered controversial.
• New: His ideas about the classification of the world's languages are not generally accepted by linguists.

1. If they were not accepted by any linguists, they would not be adopted in the World Atlas of Language Structures (mentioned in previous comments)
2. This statement is not generally well sourced. If the ideas have been rejected, you should mention who rejects them, i.e. the name of the expert.

2 COMPLETE CLASSIFICATION

• Original: In 1987 Ruhlen published A Guide to the World’s Languages. Volume I, Classification, which includes a complete classification of the world’s languages as well as a history and complete analysis of the genetic classification of languages.
• New: In 1987 Ruhlen published A Guide to the World’s Languages. Volume I, Classification, which includes his classification of the world’s languages as well as a history and analysis of the genetic classification of languages.

Well, we could question the "completeness", of course.

3 DEFENSE OF GREENBERG

• Original: In addition to the factual information in this book Ruhlen provides a thorough examination, and defense, of the controversial taxonomic work of Joseph Greenberg.
• New: In addition to the factual information in this book Ruhlen attempts a thorough examination, and defense, of the controversial taxonomic work of Joseph Greenberg.

Well, we could agree that whether he succeeded or not has been a matter of dispute. Then, what about a compromise, such as: In addition to the factual information in this book Ruhlen provides an attempt at a thorough examination, and defense, of the controversial taxonomic work of Joseph Greenberg. (I wonder if the word "attempt" is neutral enough)

4 RUHLEN "CLAIMS"?

• Original: The results are widely (though not universally) accepted as matching up remarkably well with Ruhlen's proposed structure of the languages and language families of the world.
• New: Ruhlen has claimed that the results match up with his proposed structure of the languages and language families of the world.

That sounds as if only Ruhlen claimed that, which is not true.

OK, I'll finish this later. ;-)--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 09:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm adding numbers to the individual discussion points above, and going on below:

5 TO CLAIM vs. TO MAINTAIN

• Original: Ruhlen also maintains that the “temporal ceiling” assumed by many mainstream linguists – the time depth beyond which the comparative method fails, considered by some...
• New: Ruhlen also claims that the “temporal ceiling” assumed by linguists – the time depth beyond which the comparative method fails, considered by some...

Well, I don't really understand why you changed the verb "maintain" (=to express firmly your belief that something is true) to "claim". That's pretty contraproductive, as far as style is concerned.

6 "MANY" DELETED

• Original: Ruhlen also maintains that the “temporal ceiling” assumed by many mainstream linguists – the time depth beyond which the comparative method fails, considered by some...
• New: Ruhlen also claims that the “temporal ceiling” assumed by linguists – the time depth beyond which the comparative method fails, considered by some...

Here, you are calling those linguist that agree with Ruhlen "non-linguists", and that is an INSULT! This kind of languages doesn't belong to Wikipedia!

7 MOST vs. PRACTISING

• Original: ...the comparative method can reach farther into the past than most linguists currently accept.
• New: ...the comparative method can reach farther into the past than practicing linguists accept.

Are you, again, insulting the linguistic minority???

Please, undo the problematic edits, source the rest if you insist on them. Otherwise, I will tag them and ask for blocking your IP, as this is really very close to vandalism.--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 16:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that any of the above edits get anywhere near vandalism. I'd like to read the arguments by each side. In the meantime, it would be better simply to revert them rather than make accusations of bad faith. IPs and newbies are all entitled to make edits. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:18, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it may not be vandalism any more (the wording is much more moderate this time), but it's been the third time and some people could see at least some of the edits as insults, which is obvious (changing "most linguists" to "linguists" implies that the minority - and we all agree they are a minority - either doesn't exist, which is a lie, that they are not linguists, which is another lie, or that they are linguists of lesser qualities, which might be true (but I doubt that), but cannot be proven, can it?).--Pet'usek ^{[petrdothrubisatgmaildotcom]} 07:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Kusunda: update request

According to Kusunda language the recent discovery of fluent Kusunda speakers enabled scientists to confirm that the language is an isolate. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 12:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

POV, but can anything be done about it?

Reading this article, the reader might easily think that Ruhlen is an academic like any other. The problem is, of course, that in the opinion of virtually every linguist, Ruhlen is a bogus linguist advocating an extreme fringe theory of pseudo-science. His contribution to linguistics, at least in the opinion of 998 out of 1000 experts of that field, is comparable to a geographer claiming that the earth is flat. For a geographer, few laymen would ever believe that, but comparative linguistics is a field where it is easier to be fooled (I'm not claiming Ruhlen is trying to fool anyone, it is entirely possible that he believes in what he is doing). Even though it may be hard to correct, due to the fact that the opinion that most of his colleagues hold of him would be libellous, having an article like this, focusing almost exclusively on his life work without mentioning the obvious fact that this work is bogus is quite clearly POV.Jeppiz (talk) 01:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree with these comments, and I think the answer is negatory. This is how academia works: relentless self-promotors, often with the help of prominent friends, carve out a niche for themselves. Their nonsense is forgotten in a generation of course, but it is a form of careerism. The snag is that the interested layman often cannot tell the difference, and also that science journalists gravitate towards "interesting" figures.88.110.122.195 (talk) 09:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

And then the self-promoters with "interesting" theories will inspire the next generation in their field (linguistics in this case), and then that next generation will re-examine his theories and keep what works and throw away what doesn't. Ruhlen's impact will be decided by the generation after him, not his contemporaries.Listmeister (talk) 18:56, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

WTF? Can we say POV

This article does a fine job of making a nutjob look respectable. That he is a kook is not just my opinion, but also the public (and published) position of virtually any mainstream linguist you can find who has ever dignified his writings with a response. Looking at the history of the page, it seems like Ruhlen's acolytes have been trying to keep out the more damaging information (such as the fact that he's widely regarded as a kook) in an attempt to make him look like a plain old academic. Calling his theories controversial is like saying World War II was a bit of a misunderstanding. The linguistics WikiProject should take a good long look at this thing. Szfski (talk) 21:01, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that Ruhlen is not so much an "isolated kook" as a pioneer in the extremely controversial field of Paleolinguistics. For instance, the linguists who call him a nut will tend to say that many American Indian languages are isolates. Ruhlen comes along and says, "Waitaminnit, is it likely that all of these American languages arose completely independently, as the term isolate implies? No, perhaps we can find some family relationships if we look hard enough." (I'm paraphrasing). Now, that method of looking really hard via mass comparisons seems stupid to most linguists, but it is the basic tool of Paleolinguistics. It may be a World War II category conflict like Szfski says, but it's not the whole world against this one guy. Listmeister (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

WHAT'S THE MAINSTREAM VIEW

I am a management consultant unacquainted with lingusitics. However the gist of Ruhlen's method seems to make sense: compile a list of the words that change least; identify the more durable grammatical features of languages; and then see how all languages in a region stack up against those parameters. An admitted layman, for the life of me I can't see what's wrong with this approach. Could someone summarise or provide a link to an article that explains what is the mainstream view of this issue and why Ruhlen's approach would be so thoroughly repudiated? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.173.43.159 (talk) 21:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

The "however" starting the second sentence is false. If you mean what you say by the first sentences, then you should not continue to advance your own views. I am no expert on quantum mechanics, but I don't go around demanding a brief repudiation of every crackpot in the field. This is because I appreciate it takes considerable study to start to understand what the issues are.88.110.122.195 (talk) 09:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Mr .159 asks a good question. I minored in linguistics (at SIL), and have read all that I could find about historical linguistics, and I haven't yet run across a convincing argument against Ruhlen's methods. The arguments they give, as I understand them, are (1) That the data is badly documented. Well, the data is the data, and lack of accurate well documented data on the lesser known languages affects all branches of linguistics, not just historical. You work with what you got. (2) The glosses (English words corresponding to the words that are hypothetical cognates) used in etymologies are a bit widespread semantically. Here, I think they have a point. Ruhlen's etymologies would be more convincing if he had fewer examples and only used the etymologies that were most solid in terms of semantic range. (3) There is no reconstruction of earlier forms of the languages. Well, Ruhlen argues, you have to group the languages genetically first before you can do reconstructions. Listmeister (talk) 18:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps you should leave this to the actual experts, who have enough experience to know all the pitfalls of the comparative method, and of less stringent methods (to put it mildly) as Ruhlen uses them. (1) Garbage in, garbage out. Ruhlen simply uses poor data which no expert on the language or family in question would use (except with heavy care and qualification, and without building huge theories on it), or which no expert would use because it is of very poor quality or wrong or wrongly analysed, and better data is available, or better analyses are available. Ruhlen appears not to communicate with the experts or ignores their advice, that's why they keep finding tons of mistakes, nay, howlers in his work. (2) "A bit widespread semantically" is an understatement. See Zompist and Language Log. Ruhlen acts like a complete amateur, combing through dictionaries without actually understanding the languages in question deeply, and without consulting experts or heeding their advice, so he keeps stumbling over irrelevant resemblances. When your method is already this loose in other ways, allowing large semantic differences, you make finding spurious resemblances super-easy and all languages suddenly look related. A method that can link any conceivable language to any other is worthless. For example, if using your method, Klingon and Sindarin turn out Amerind or Nostratic as well, something is wrong. That's what you call the control group in medicine. (3) Never reconstructing anything is the quintessential flaw in Ruhlen's method, because it not only makes finding spurious cognates even easier than it already is, it introduces complete arbitrariness. You cannot be sure that languages you relate by his method are truly related. As Bill Poser points out, simply amassing lexical resemblances was not how the Indo-European languages were shown to be related. You need systematic correspondences, and not only in lexicon, but first and foremost in grammar, especially where borrowing and accidental similarity can be ruled out with high probability. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:16, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

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