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Re: Linguochronology

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Sunday, August 17, 2003, 3:23
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. -- First known example of political correctness: John Cowan "After Nurhachi had united all the other http://www.reutershealth.com Jurchen tribes under the leadership of the http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Manchus, his successor Abahai (1592-1643) jcowan@reutershealth.com issued an order that the name Jurchen should --S. Robert Ramsey, be banned, and from then on, they were all _The Languages of China_ to be called Manchus."

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Joe <joe@...>