Re: Linguochronology

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

Reply