Editing Lumpers and splitters (section)

=== Language classification ===
{{main|Language family}}
[[File:Moscow comparative linguistics school.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A 2011 [[Russian State University for the Humanities|RSUH]] linguistics conference bringing together various prominent Russian "lumpers" belonging to the [[Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics]], including [[Vladimir Dybo]] and [[Georgiy Starostin]] (standing in front)]]
There is no agreement among [[Historical linguistics|historical linguists]] about what amount of evidence is needed for two languages to be safely classified in the same [[language family]]. For this reason, many proposed language families have had lumper–splitter controversies, including [[Altaic languages|Altaic]], [[Pama–Nyungan languages|Pama–Nyungan]], [[Nilo-Saharan]], and most of the larger [[Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas|families of the Americas]]. At a completely different level, the splitting of a [[mutually intelligible]] [[dialect continuum]] into different languages, or lumping them into one, is also an issue that continually comes up, though the consensus in contemporary linguistics is that there is no completely objective way to settle the question.

Splitters regard the [[comparative method (linguistics)|comparative method]] (meaning not comparison in general, but only reconstruction of a common ancestor or [[protolanguage]]) as the only valid proof of kinship, and consider [[genetic (linguistics)|genetic]] relatedness to be the question of interest. American linguists of recent decades tend to be splitters.

Lumpers are more willing to admit techniques like [[mass lexical comparison]] or [[lexicostatistics]], and mass typological comparison, and to tolerate the uncertainty of whether relationships found by these methods are the result of [[linguistic divergence]] (descent from common ancestor) or [[language convergence]] (borrowing). Much long-range comparison work has been from Russian linguists belonging to the [[Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics]], most notably [[Vladislav Illich-Svitych]] and [[Sergei Starostin]]. In the United States, [[Joseph Greenberg|Greenberg]] and [[Merritt Ruhlen|Ruhlen]]'s work has been met with little acceptance from linguists. Earlier American linguists like [[Morris Swadesh]] and [[Edward Sapir]] also pursued large-scale classifications like [[Classification of the Indigenous languages of the Americas#Sapir .281929.29: Encyclop.C3.A6dia Britannica|Sapir's 1929 scheme for the Americas]], accompanied by controversy similar to that today.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(137)ruhlen12.pdf |title=Is Algonquian Amerind? |access-date=2009-10-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810014839/http://www.nostratic.ru/books/(137)ruhlen12.pdf |archive-date=2011-08-10 |last=Ruhlen |first=Merritt |author-link=Merritt Ruhlen}}</ref>