The Comparative Method as Heuristic

Abstract

Abstract Non linguists are not always able to distinguish easily between genetic groupings established by the comparative method and those proposed on other grounds. A much-publicized recent example is Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1988), where the very deep macro groupings the authors assume for languages of the Pacific and New World are treated as the same kind of grouping as Indo-European or Uralic. Another example is Renfrew 1991, where, following IllicSvityc, Nostratic is described as based on the same comparative method as lndo-European (1991: 6). More tangential to linguistic questions, Stoneking and Cann (1989), analyzing mitochondrial DNA divergences in human populations, estimate the rate of evolution by assuming that Papua New Guinea, Australia, and North America each constitutes a single population of a single age. This amounts to an implicit assumption that each of these areas was colonized only once, an assumption compatible with the linguistic macro groupings of Indo-Pacific, Australian, and Amerind. In these and other works, non linguists working on human prehistory assume or implicitly assume that macro groupings are the same kind of entity as families like ludo-European, that they are established by the same comparative method as lndo-European was, and that the received view in linguistics takes them as established or plausible. Works like these, or the macro groupings they assume, are cited with approval in popular works such as Turner 1988 and Gould 1991.

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