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Re: Linguochronology

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Sunday, August 17, 2003, 13:36
Quoting Joe <joe@...>:

> From: "John Cowan" <cowan@...> > > 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.
Well, a minority of practicing historical linguists agree with you. The problem is, and this point is often fiercely debated, that most historical linguists think that over a very long period of time it is increasingly hard to tell what words look like cognates simply by chance, because two proto-Languages happen to have coined a similar sounding word for similar phenomena, and what are actual cognates. Most linguists think that, over millennia, the likelihood is that most words will simply drop out of use, and therefore there will simply be no words with which to compare. The more radical lumpers, like the late Joseph Greenberg, hold that there are certain components of the lexicon, largely family terms, body parts, and other items on the Swadesh list, that are resistant to change. This does not really increase the number of cognates, but it methodologically means you can be more certain of a fit if you can find putative cognates within these "priveleged" parts of the lexicon. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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Roger Mills <romilly@...>