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Re: On Relating Languages

From:# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...>
Date:Sunday, January 23, 2005, 21:23
>(b)How might I show relationship between, for example, one language with 5 >vowels ([a],[e],[i],[o],[u]), another with only 3 ([a],[e],[u]), and a >third with a long list of glides, diphthongs and 'soft' (as in Russian) >prononunciations. I suppose what I am getting at is, at what point is a >language UNRELATABLE to the next?
with all the complex rules of sound evolution, you can find a way to link everything if your rules can be a little logic: If you avoid /y/ -> /{~/ /p\/ -> /q_h/ /tS/ -> /b_</ it will be ok But if the only way is to make these kind of changes to link you languages you'll have to make inter-states: /tS/ -> /t_h/ -> /d/ -> /b/ -> /b_</ I don't think it is possible that two languages and to be unable to find some caracteristics that would link them I think I read somewhere about hypothétic links to Basque Some linguists argued that some caracteristics could link Basque to some native american languages. And they had more points than only the ergativity And others gived points to link it with japanese, ouralic, and african languages Others that linked Basque with Ainu That would be great: they link to isolates at the same time and solve two families link two languages without historic evidences (with with it is easy to link families like romance and germanic ones) or archeologic proofs (to link IE languages) but any other links are hypothesis because we know that related languages can be very different and unrelated languages can be similar due to the little number of morphemes usable in languages (I talk of the most frequent ones, exceptions being nothing else... than exceptions), and of the general tendensies of languages People that don't know languages history or linguistic will think of diffrent links that they are My friends are always surprised when I say them that French and English (the two languages they all learn at school and know well enough to judge of their similarity) are not directly related by languages families and that they are separated by thousands years of separated evolution They have so much borrowed from each others that they seem closely related So to conclude: without a conhistory (is that a word usable here?) you can make all the links you want between your languages