Re: Linguochronology

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cowan" <cowan@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 4:23 AM
Subject: 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.
>

I don't see why relationships shouldn't be determinable by comparing
proto-languages...not 100% reliable, but it should be able to show up
glaring relationships.  So if, say, Uralic and IE are related, by comparing
the proto-languages, you should be able to prove(or disprove) this.

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