Unexplained deletions: continuing what appears to be a common theme

The purpose of including reconstructions in Wiktionary is not to posit them with some claim of certainty, nor is it to say “here is a theory the details of which are unilaterally agreed upon,” but rather more along the lines of “there is evidence for the existence of this, though as a reconstruction it is by nature hypothetical,” as disclaimers such as {{reconstruction}} are clear about.

I fear that you are letting your personal range of experience and particular set of opinions get in the way of constructive discussion. The theory of Altaic for one is certainly not unilaterally accepted either, nor are the particulars of the phonetics of Proto-Sino-Tibetan or Proto-Afro-Asiatic, or even Old Chinese—hell, there is still much disagreement about PIE—but in the same sense that settling on a particular phonological model for the time being shouldn't prevent Wiktionary entries for these languages from existing, neither should disagreement about families like Altaic prevent there from being any inclusion of them, as is evident already. If the assumption is that there is something inherently wrong in describing such hypotheses, what is it that is wrong? This is not a matter of whether a scholarly interest exists (it most certainly does) nor a matter of whether there is consensus among any subset of scholars working on the areas in question (there is); instead, you are in danger of now turning it into an issue of neutrality. You did not provide any rationale for the deletions either in prior discussion or retroactively (and I can only guess that your expectation was that I come to you). Other than useless deletionism I do not see any grounds for it. It is not in the same ballpark as modifying or deleting PIE paradigms in favor of alternative models: in this case your choice has been to wipe the (only) information out of existence without hesitation. Regardless, I can only hope that future incidents of this form do not take this path.

I suppose the reason for deleting them is that the reconstructions are founded on poor scholarship using questionable methods which very few people believe. Other than that, the entries are fine, I guess...

“poor scholarship”

Such as what? And in what sense? Quality? (If so, what specifically?) Quantity? (If so, I agree that it is lacking. But there has been a considerable amount of work done since over century ago.)

“questionable methods”

Again, such as what?

“very few people believe”

That may be so. Sadly very few people, relatively speaking, have any knowledge of or interest in comparative linguistics. But, assuming you are referring exclusively to comparative linguists, I would like to know what counts as “very few”. Not that I am contesting that there are few: I would simply like a genuine reference point on which to base the observation of how many of the whole agree with the methodology used and conclusions drawn, and which whole. I don't expect that there have been many surveys on comparative linguists' opinions at large; however, as for the number of linguists who have worked on the areas in question, is it any less than for protolanguages such as those of Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian or “Altaic”? In each case the picture is overall the same: two, maybe three, large works which are regarded as the standard, separate and collaborative efforts among a handful of well-known names, and other small contributions by a larger number of lesser-known names. (Of course this description then also leads to the issue of defining “well known”: how much?, and, more importantly, by whom?) Whether the opinions of those who do not study these areas is just as relevant as the opinions of those who do is another question, though perhaps more relevant to the philosophy of ways of knowing. Both you and Rua are evidently very experienced, in the areas relevant to what you have studied, but there seems to be no objective manner in which to discern whose beliefs matter to what—other than the principle that Wikimedia administrators are granted the unquestioned last word!

I would be delighted, anyway, if Rua has any input to add.

If the community approves of the addition of those languages, and assigns them a language code, then you are free to add entries.

Ah, thank you!

I understand the issue now: One must first request a code, and hope the dice roll in their favor.

Hopefully the opposite logic won't then be invoked, i.e. “Why create a language code for something with no entries?”

I don't know a single linguist who regards Nostratic as anything more than a bad joke. I think you're aware that there might be a reason almost nobody takes it seriously. But yes, it's definitely the work of a shady cabal of Wiktionary administrators trying to keep the truth locked away...

Well, it sounds like you might benefit from expanding your knowledge of linguists then. :)

As for your implication that I regard this as some sort of conspiracy, thanks for the laugh! In reality, though, work on the theories of such families as Nostratic and Indo-Uralic continue regardless of what Wiktionary or Wikipedia have to say on them (which are, respectively, nothing and almost nothing).

People working on these theories is not the same as these theories being accepted as mainstream. I've seen enough hooey from the Nostratic camp to make me quite leary of anything coming from there.

Yet again, no specifics are mentioned, and this appears to be an argument by association. Would you be willing to discuss the problematic details of the theory itself, encompassing more than your experiences with "the Nostratic camp"?

Nostratic as an hypothesis appears to assume an Altaic grouping. Altaic itself is not an accepted theory in mainstream linguistics. Why should I accept a theory that tries to build even older and more far-flung etymologies, starting from such a shaky base?

Addressing specific issues that raise doubts:

• Greenberg and Dolgopolsky both appear to espouse OJP /kasipa/ (ostensibly "container for food/drink") as a cognate of Proto-Indo-European *kʷasjo (“basket”) (sp?). However, the OJP term is more likely a compound of 樫 (kasi, modern kashi, “kind of oak”) + 葉 (pa, modern ha, “leaf”): modern 柏 (kashiwa, from older kasipa, “a kind of oak”, related to but distinct from kashi) has a documented ancient meaning of "container for food or drink", with the important addendum that this container was made from tree leaves -- making the compound derivation that much more likely. Moreover, OJP kasi "oak" in turn is an unlikely candidate for a cognate with the PIE term for "basket", and is more likely to derive from the same origins as OJP root kat- meaning "hard, stiff".
• Dolgopolsky lists an OJP term of opo-mono as meaning "food"; the only term I'm aware of means "big thing", as a compound of OJP opo "big" + mono "thing".
• Dolgopolsky lists an OJP term of akuoye "pheasant's spur" as a cognate with a purported Altaic cluster meaning "arrow" and a Nostratic root meaning "sharp point / edge". However, the OJP term is a compound of 足 (a, “foot”) + 蹴ゑ (kuye), the stem of ancient verb 蹴ゆ (kuyu, “to kick something”). Even ignoring the a- prefix, "to kick" does not appear to have anything to do with "sharp point / edge".
• Dolgopolsky lists an OJP term of atuo as a purported cognate with an Altaic and Nostratic root meaning "back (of a person)". However, the OJP term is again a compound, originally meaning "footprint" and deriving from 足 (a, “foot”) + 所 (to, “place”).

Not everything listed is so clearly wrong. But this degree of mistakenness about OJP calls into question the rigor of the author's approach to all of the terms included. How many other purported cognates are in fact compounds with unrelated etyma? How many are borrowings? How many are accidental resemblances? Etc. etc. Without expertise about each and every language included in the hypothesis, the author cannot evaluate the claims that they themselves are making. That's not a firm foundation on which to build.

Wow, these are some interesting examples you've dug up. An answer to our querent, I would mention that, when I was at a conference of Indo-European scholars last month, one of the speakers brought up the concept of Nostratic in his talk, eliciting a hearty chuckle from those assembled. More generally, the field of long-range comparative linguistics (or "paleolinguistics" for those that believe it) normally does not use the same methods of rigorous historical phonological and morphological reconstruction as the historical linguistic mainstream, instead relying heavily on word lists often containing accidental resemblances. To be fair, I know that the adherents of Altaic are growing steadily, and that particularly proposal may bear further consideration soon, but Indo-Uralic and Nostratic, no way.

I downloaded a copy of Dolgopolsky's Nostratic Dictionary (https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/1810/196512/49/00ND_ALL.pdf) and searched for "OJ " (note the single space afterwards). Within 13 entries that included a purported Old Japanese cognate, I found the above four errors. I stopped searching at that point; some day I may dig deeper if a further analysis is called for. FWIW, scanning quickly through the next 15 just now suggests a similar error rate.

The thing is Altaic is weaker in question of followers than 50 or 60 years ago.

Without expertise about each and every language included in the hypothesis, the author cannot evaluate the claims that they themselves are making. That is also my main point. I know Germanic, Slavic, Italic, they are all difficult by the languages included in them, and I still do not dare doing Indo-European reconstruction. What competence has he who wants to reconstruct Nostratic? Of course all goes by wordlists and statistics ignoring all laws of grammar and sounds and regular correspondences which one learns if one deals with multiple languages of a family. This way in StarLing there are all kinds of wildcards for which one could easily posit the correct phonemes if one knew the languages. And of course a user who does that statistics and wildcard thing does not have a babel box.

That is a fair point, how can anyone even think of having a good grasp of all those languages that are supposedly Nostratic, enough so to construct Proto-Nostratic? Even Indo-European studies took a long time to come to where it is today, with lots of wrong ideas and assumptions. Even if Nostratic is a language family, it is beyond modern-day linguistics's abilities to reconstruct.

It is already remarkable how little reliable the reconstructions of Semitic are. In this Article Igor Diakonoff and Leonid Kogan unfold the absurdities in Vladimir Orel’s and Olga Stolbova’s Afrasian etymological dictionary:

We find broken plurals – an Arabian innovation – as Semitic etyma, late Iranian borrowings, sounds in Akkadian or Hebrew that did not exist, invented meanings …

In the work by Alexander Militarev (find his name on the sidebar) concerning specifically Semitic I even found sounds postulated for Proto-Semitic that did not exist, like he postulates labialized consonants in Semitic; quoting Nr. 15 of his word list: “West Semitic 1: *ḳʷr(r) ‘to be cold’ (#2), possibly related to Afras. *ḳVr- ‘dry”. The selectiveness in forms is worrying. Like for “new” Nr. 59 he gives, reconstructing *ḥadit-, Arabic ǯadīd­, though there is also حَدِيث (ḥadīṯ, “new”) which he does not mention. Such is of course caused by using weird sources for representing languages, like the popular Penrice for Arabic – Orel/Stolbova not giving any sources. For *ṭāb- (“good”) (see the discussion on the talk page there why it is ṭāb-) he lists Nr. 34 *ṭayVb for no reason, even worse than Starostin who lists *ṭayb- in StarLing.