Talk:Algonquian–Wakashan languages

Wording + Campbell Reference
I changed the wording concerning Greenberg's Almosan-Keresiouan stock back to "This proposal has received little support among historical linguists." (At least, from its location I've been assuming the statement refers to Almosan-Keresiouan...it's actually kind of ambiguous...). Campbell is certainly not the only one to reject Greenberg's classifications, and on pg. 328 he cites some of the "many Americanists" who have "reviewed, mostly negatively" Greenberg's proposals, although many of them said more about his general methods, or about specific errors they found in his work, than on the Almosan-Keresiouan grouping (or his 13 superstocks) in general. On pg. 289 (which I can't see on Google books, but I have Campbell's book) the relevant quote is "Greenberg (1987) accepts Sapir's Almosan and combines it further with what he calls Keresiouan to form his Almosan-Keresiouan grouping. All these broad classifications involving Mosan are controversial at present and have not been accepted byt specialists in the field."

That being said, I think it might be more accurate to change the statement to something like "This proposal has received little support among specialists in American Indian languages" or similar. I can also try to look through some of the Americanists Campbell cites (I know I've got a few of those articles somewhere on my computer...) and find where some of them might directly discuss Almosan-Kerisiouan.

Anyway, that's why I changed it back, but I'm not totally opposed to various changes or whatever. Let me know what you think --Miskwito (talk) 20:05, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I would be fine with quoting or paraphrasing Campbell's statement about "many Americanists", or other citations - just not an uncited statement especially about historical linguists as a whole.


 * The Americanist school is well-known for splitters, but the Russian school, for example, tend to be lumpers, and linguists working on African languages do not reject large, ancient, continent-spanning superfamilies. --JWB (talk) 21:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and tried the "many Americanists" phrasing. --JWB (talk) 02:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There are quite a few mentions of the Americanist school - maybe it deserves an article. --JWB (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)