Talk:Ural-Altaic languages/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Question

Around what timeframe was the "Uralo-Altaic family" rejected? I remember reading it was valid or accepted in books from the 20th century. Is this a fairly recent rejection? Maybe the article should fill in a little more on the history, since it isn't sourced whatsoever. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:17, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

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I think it's a problem of people not understanding the real-world concept of "non-integer probabilities", if you will. Most people think black and white. Either proven or not proven (which is improperly equated with "rejected"). So on the topic of Ural-Altaic, most Uralicists and Altaicists who know anything can flat-out see the connections but might typically say that it's unproven and hard to tell whether it's truly genetic or the result of areal influence.

But "unproven" isn't the same thing as "rejected" until there is proof against it. How could there be proof against the premise of Ural-Altaic until we know enough about pre-Uralic and pre-Altaic, which we don't! Otherwise we'll never be certain enough of the ancestries of both groups to reject the hypothesis entirely! It should be considered "unproven", not "rejected". --Glengordon01 10:26, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

A brief comment on this as well (cf. below). It is customary in science to "reject" (i.e. decline to accept) theories that are unproven. Moreover, it is logically impossible to disprove a hypothesis of linguistic relationship, and hence demanding such proof is a fallacious argument.

Furthermore, as a professional Uralic comparative linguist I would be really intrigued to see what the purported "connections" are that most specialists "can flat-out see" - perhaps I don't "know anything" as I haven't heard of such yet. (Just a rhetorical question, though - this is not the place for such a discussion.) --AAikio 19:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

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Trust me, Ante. In general, "rejected" implies something very absolute in the English language. It implies that the premise is not just unproven, but defective in logic. It's the common use of "rejected" as "defective" that makes its usage here misleading and thus inappropriate in this entry. There is nothing defective in the logic of the basic premise of Ural-Altaic itself; there is only a lack of convincing data. ( For a full definition of "to reject", click here ). Your science lesson is unnecessary since I understand how science works (or rather, how it is ideally supposed to work when politics is properly divorced from it, which is seldom ever the case). When you take away the impartiality, the entry should say something to the effect of "Ural-Altaic is insufficiently proven and unrecognized by many linguists". However, it cannot be said to have ever been formally and scientifically rejected in the absolute sense that this word is implying. You're not writing for linguists here. You're writing for everyday people. --Glengordon01 08:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, the link you gave gives "To refuse to accept, submit to, believe, or make use of" as the first definition, just like about any dictionary. I still do not really see the difference. And in any case, the Ural-Altaic hypothesis is not accepted by almost any specialist, and there is no ongoing scientific discussion or controversy on the issue. --AAikio 07:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

As a person who is interested in science and especially in mathematics, making a negative logical argument is as assertive as making the positive one. Proving that something is wrong, is as valuable and as hard as (even harder sometimes) the proof of existence. And the existance of a linguistic family can't be rejected by such an argument like "the experts don't discuss it anymore". This is not a scientific argument. So I guess for the credibility of the page it should be either neutral about the existance and recency of the family or there should be some scientific arguments that falsifies it.

All languages or at least Eurasian languages are ultimately related; it's not a yes-no question but rather how to group or which are more closely related to others. In this case the arguments are that Uralic and Altaic have as much relevant resemblance to the other families proposed for a Eurasiatic or Nostratic group, as they do to each other, so there is not a node composed of just Uralic and Altaic. --JWB (talk) 19:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Why do all the Wikipedia pages view the Ural-Altaic superfamily as a hypothesis?

Most of the historical linguistics books that I have read and much research I have done has so much supporting evidence for it, yet Wikipedia pages seems to be controlled by the few linguists who are really against this theory. Korean and Japanese are accepted as Altaic by basically any linguist that has any knowledge of the languages.

Sources? -- Visviva 10:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso's comments @ the University of Vienna for this. In essence: there is no satisfactory evidence of a special linguistic relationship between the Uralic and the Altaic languages. I'm sorry if your books are out-of-date. Clarifer 13:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

it is just that, a hypothesis. It isn't particularly loony, but it isn't really verifiable either. dab (ᛏ) 08:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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because Persian pan Iranist fascists have quite a hand here at wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.80.136.98 (talk) 18:55, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

What happened to that map?

there was a wonderful map here at this page, who removed it?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.80.136.98 (talk) 18:57, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

t-->s

the explanation that sina in finnish and estonian has been changed from a form starting with t as in hungarian seems farfetched and seems to be an attempt with racist motives to distance themselves from turkic languages. see that these pronouns are men sen and ben sen in azeri and turkish languages, respectively. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.17.30.124 (talk) 22:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Turanism?

I'm kind of surprised there's no mention in this article about turanism? 108.176.142.68 (talk) 06:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Turanism is a political movement based on Turkish nationalism, and hence, not warranted mention here.Dinkytown talk 02:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Unencyclopedic & unscientific article

There are no contemporary scientific academy or university professor on the planet, who support the turanian fantasy and the existence of the common Ural–Altaic language family. Therefore the supporters of the fantasy can't give any serious citations and sources to support their pseudo-linguistics and speudo-history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.92.104.60 (talk) 09:43, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

If you look at the first paragraph, it states that this language issue is no longer valid academically.Dinkytown talk 02:22, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

About the obsolete.

The theory has been stated as "Obsolete", and there has been no cite for the claimant and neither there is no existing acadamic or book refrences for the claim, so we should keep the theory as controversial not obsolete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dolatjan (talk • contribs) 20:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Do you have sources for that? CodeCat (talk) 23:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I think the point being made is that there are no sources (so far presented) that say that it is "obsolete". For "controversial" (or some similar description), I suppose it would be enough simply to observe that a number of sources accept the proposal and a number of others reject it. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:00, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

PS. Although having looked further down the article, it seems that the Starostin reference is a good enough source for saying obsolete. W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:03, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem with requiring a source for "obsolete" is that you can't prove a negative. A theory is obsolete when nobody cares about it, and you can confirm that if there are no more publications. CodeCat (talk) 13:18, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that quite holds - the lack of care/publications may result from no-one having any more evidence or arguments to present on either side of the debate. To say obsolete I really think we need to have a source that effectively asserts that to be the case; but in this case it seems we do, so there shouldn't be a be a problem. (Although the article does also cite a recent publication that does effectively reactivate the hypothesis, so it might not be totally clear.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 18:53, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't work that way. If nobody publishes anything in favour of Ural-Altaic, why would anyone publish something against it? It would be like me publishing an article against the position that there is a teacup orbiting Neptune. If nobody takes a position there is no need to publish articles refusing it either. Therefore, the lack of publications means it's obsolete and no longer regarded as relevant to discuss. CodeCat (talk) 18:58, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

You could just as well argue the other way round: if no-one publishes any refutations, why would anyone need to publish anything further in support? It's obviously not the same as a theory which has never been seriously proposed, like your teacup idea. W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:06, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Because if a theory is supported, then people will make use of it and refer to it. It's not a matter of finding some theory and once it's supported everyone just forgets about it. Compare it to our knowledge that Earth orbits the Sun for example. Nobody seriously doubts that, but you still find sources that support it all the time, because it's accepted. Just because certain knowledge is taken for granted by the mainstream of science doesn't mean it stops appearing in papers. On the other hand, knowledge that is obsolete will stop appearing in papers. Nobody publishes anything on phlogiston theory anymore, for example. CodeCat (talk) 19:25, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, your comparisons are not particularly apt. No-one's claimed that the UA hypothesis is generally supported in the same way that the earth-orbits-sun theory is. And the obsolescence of phlogiston theory would be easy to source directly. As indeed the obsolescence of UA is, apparently, so this discussion is somewhat moot. W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:42, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Janhunen, 61-63 (pdf pages 5-7) sum up the situation. Ural-Altaic is at most a sprachbund. --vuo (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

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Ural–Altaic languages

In Finnish language not future tense.--Chuvash Tatarstani (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

You are right in the sense that there is no inflected future tense in Finnish. The present tense is used to refer to the future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.53.53.78 (talk) 09:44, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Obsolete

I am looking at Wiley-Blackwell book that discusses Ural-Altaic languages and the structural features of this languages citing a paper from 2011. The book seems to be high quality and author Julie Tetel Andresen is an experty, so it looks like there is still disagreement in sources. The source that was cited in this article says only "this term and the kinship it implies is now considered obsolete" but for a term still being discussed in scholarship from the past 10 years this would be a very quick turnaround. There is no citation of agreeing scholars so I have not been able to find evidence of the author's statement of consensus. If other knowledgeable editors have additional information to add to this, please share it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by おいしい鍋 (talk • contribs) 17:01, 10 February 2019 (UTC)