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Re: Language family trees

From:Aidan Grey <grey@...>
Date:Sunday, February 2, 2003, 11:49
At 10:31 PM 2/2/2003 +1100, you wrote:
> From <http://www.einst.ee/publications/language/history.html> (from >the website posted by Jim Grossman about Estonian cases):
<snip>
>Is this saying that there's doubt as to whether languages evolve from >others? Do I understand this correctly? Is this actually true (i.e. >that people think otherwise)? How do these people explain things like >French, Spanish etc. which have diverged in historical times? Is this >some weird form of nationalism, or creationism applied to language? Or >do they actually have a legitimate, explainable alternative? And how >many is 'a significant proportion'?
Well, I have to say that this guy is dreaming. I don't know of ANY linguists who disavow the theory of language trees, applied to Uralic langs or elsewhere. Indeed, most of the biggest names in linguistics here at Harvard are teaching it (I'm taking Intro to PIE linguistics, PIE to Old irish, and IE poetics this term). Further, saying the theory is wrong because it makes Estonian too much like Finnish is just plain disingenuous and facetious. Seems like a dumb statement to me... Aidan