Beyond the comparative method?

As we have seen in previous chapters, the criteria for establishing genetic relationships among languages were generally clear, and widely known and applied, with reliance on basic vocabulary, sound correspondences, and patterned grammatical evidence of particular sorts – where the comparative method played a central role. Nevertheless, a number of scholars have recently expressed dissatisfaction with what they perceive to be limitations of the traditional methods. “Since the tried-and-true Neogrammarian comparative method can only reach back a few thousand years before the evidence fades out, something else must be tried,” so declares Johanna Nichols (1996b:267), and recently she and others, recognizing the limitations of the comparative method, have proposed differing ways to see past them. While this goal is an appropriate one, none of the alternative approaches proposed to date has achieved success. In this chapter we assess several of these to show why they do not really reach beyond the limitations of the comparative method.