Re: Sinitic and Tai (was: sci.lang FAQ)

[Scott Horne <horne-scott@CS.YALE.EDU>]

> Nevertheless, the world of scholarship once believed that Tai was a branch
> of Sinitic, and now it no longer believes so.  Was there a definitive paper
> "Tai Is Not Sinitic", or was the hypothesis merely allowed to die of old
> age?

I'm not aware of any crushing disproof.  More likely, sensible people realised
that there never was a sound basis for linking Tai and Sino-Tibetan.  The
data certainly do not support such a link.

Actually, I'm not sure it's possible to prove that two language families are
not related.  But that's of course the assumption we make in the lack of
evidence in favour of relation.

> There is a bit more evidence: the presence of a Great Tone Split in both
> families (and in Vietnamese as well), the tendency to monosyllabic words,
> the presence of similar kinds of consonant clusters in Tai and Tibeto-Burman,
> etc.

Such typological features do not constitute evidence of relation.

> It isn't enough to say "The hypothesis of relationship is rejected because
> there's no sufficient reason to accept it."

Why not?

> Earlier scholars did find
> sufficient reason.

There has never been a paper describing sound correspondences between
Sino-Tibetan and Tai, and a few haphazard musings about tone splits and
consonant clusters aren't likely to provoke many linguists to write a
detailed refutation.  If someone has a good case for Tai-ST, let him make it.
In the meantime, I'm not going to worry too much about it--or about Tai-IE,
or Tai-Altaic, or any of a number of hypotheses and possible hypotheses I
haven't seen defended.

					--Scott