Re: Linguochronology

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> Now, you don't need to be a linguist to note that there's nothing to say that
> there weren't several groups of early immigrants, who may've spoken languages
> which separated long before their speakers crossed to the Americas.
Even the most aggressive lumpers don't think that Eskimo-Aleut (which
still has relatives in Asia), Na-Dene (basically Haida, Tlingit, and
Athapaskan), and the remaining languages are related below the level
(if there is such a level) of Proto-World.

> But what does people think of thirty thousand years as an
> estimate of the time it takes from one language splitting in two and the
> relationship between the respective descendants getting totally obscured?
The time-depth of Indo-European is only 6000 years, and Austronesian
perhaps 10,000.  Most mainstream linguists don't think that relationships
are even determinable when the time-depth gets greater than that.

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