Re: Japanese from Tungus

On Wednesday, January 26, 2005, at 09:47 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Hallo!
>
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:03:11 +0000,
> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
>> As far as I know, that Japanese and Korean are related is not proven.
>
> I agree to that.  I am also skeptical about their inclusion into
> Altaic,
So am I - very skeptical.

> which I think has been done mainly for typological reasons.
I think you are right.

> (Greenberg does not include Japanese and Korean into Altaic, but he
> nevertheless includes them into his Eurasiatic macrofamily.)
Ooh - shades of Nostratic  ;)

> But as you wrote a few lines above:
>
>>       If one judges simply by similarities of structure, then a good
>> case can be made out for a relationship between the Celtic and semitic
>> languages; but few would take such a relationship seriously.
>
> Indeed.  In the case of Celtic and Semitic, we of course know that
> the Celtic languages are Indo-European and acquired their "Semitic"
> features secondarily, possibly from an unknown substratum.  (And the
> Semitic languages are known to be Afro-Asiatic, which probably did
> not display all of the "typically Semitic" features, either.)
Precisely! Which is why I think positing relationships on grounds of
typology alone is inherently unsound.

Ray
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"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
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