Sorry, folks, I got the edited copy of my paper back and I realized that for South American languages, I had made all sorts of claims with zero references to back them up. Well, they will eat me alive over that. And in going back over the data to do that, I realized that a huge number of my claims were dead wrong, so I had to go back and redo the whole mess. And mess it is. South American languages are a hellhole.
They’ve been rather neglected in Amerindian studies because, well, the North Americans, as in the Americans, have done a bang up job on North American languages, and a pretty darn good job on Central American languages to boot. By contrast, South American linguists have not been doing nearly so much work perhaps because their academic system or culture is just not as far advanced as ours is. It’s taken me four days now to write four pages, if that gives you any idea of what’s involved. Nevertheless, there is a light at the end of the tunnel here, and as I am closing in on the finish line.
I’m rooting for you.
It’s done! It’s off to the editor now. 156 pages! Problem is there are still a lot of mistakes in it that I keep finding with new research. I simply arrived at the wrong conclusions. I did a crash course in the 500 South American languages in three weeks and I think that some of my conclusions were off. Oh well.
https://www.academia.edu/61882675/Book_review_of_Campbell_and_Mixco_2007_A_Glossary_of_Historical_Linguistics