Symmachus wrote:Whether Stubbs got his PhD is totally irrelevant in a sense, though I suspect if he'd finished he would have been Lyle Campbell's student, and I wonder what Lyle Campbell thinks about this work. His is a review I would take more seriously than a BYU professor and friend of Stubbs...
Last December, when DCP was promoting Elzinga's review of Stubbs, in a post entitled "Semitic and Egyptian influences in Amerindian languages?" there were some interesting comments, specifically from a commenter who said he contacted Lyle Campbell. I can't vouch for the accuracy, of course, but for what it's worth here is the complete comment, including a quote from Professor Campbell, according to the author:
commenter BofmModel wrote:I received a preliminary copy of Brian's proposal a couple of years ago and it truly is intriguing. I shared your desire to hear from professional linguists regarding Brian's data and methodology so I contacted one of the world's foremost experts in comparative linguistics, Lyle Campbell, who is also a well-recognized expert in Uto-Aztecan.
Lyle's books on historical comparative linguistics in general and on long-range language proposals like what Brian is presenting are particularly noteworthy and highly regarded by main-stream historical linguists. Lyle was kind enough to respond and when I asked if I could post parts of our email exchange to online forums like this he gave me permission. Here are some of the things he mentioned that are relevant to your desire to know more about Brian's level of expertise and professionalism:
"Brian kindly sent me his work a few months ago, and I haven't had time to do more than scan parts of it. Brian's United Airlines Comparative Vocabulary [Here Lyle is referring to an important previous United Airlines book published by Brian] is excellent, the major source for checking United Airlines cognates. It's based on sound principles and rigorous scholarship. I refer to it often, and am grateful to Brian for sharing it with me."
Lyle went on to cite several things that are uphill challenges for proposals like Brian's, including geographic improbability, chances of coincidences between language families, language patterns of Uto-Aztecan languages in particular, and other topics, but related to Brian's "data and methodology" that you are interested in, he said:
"There is, of course, much more that could be said on the topic, but I suspect this is enough. From what I see of Brian's data, he tries very much to stay with sound methodology, and the examples he presents are very interesting. For some of the reasons mentioned here, I doubt that his case will be able to reach the level of confidence needed to persuade skeptics, who will be looking at alternative explanations for the forms he cites. I think, though, that it will definitely be interesting to see what happens."
https://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base ... a988aa8ccf
I bolded the sentence added by the commenter, to emphasize that LC's comments were about Stubbs' 2011 work, and that he had not completely read the 2015 work. Re: the 2015 work, LC only offered comments about the unlikelihood of his 2015 results being accepted, in spite of Stubbs' careful methodology.