Re: Language family trees

In a message dated 2/2/2003 6:29:47 AM Eastern Standard Time,
kesuari@YAHOO.COM.AU writes:


> 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'?
>
I suspect that the authors of that web site are casting doubt only on the
applicability of the tree model/metaphor to Finno-Ugric, not in general.

No one (or no one with any sense anyway) doubts that languages evolve from
others over time, but whether the tree model/metaphor describes this well,
and whether recosntructions based on that model are accurate in all cases, is
more disputable.

See for example RMW Dixon's book _The Rise and Fall of Languages_, in which
he says that attempting to construct a family tree for Australian languages
is likely to be useless, because the history of Australian languages is
unlike the history of IE and the other groups that gave rise to the tree
model.

Doug