Re: languages of pre-I.E. Europe and onwards

On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:12:35 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>> Population genetics is probably valid for some very general conclusions
>> about the interrelations of the world's languages.
>
>Not really.
>It is usually reasonable to assume that the nearest relatives of
>language X are found in its neighbourhood. For instance, it is
>more likely that the nearest relative of Indo-European is Uralic,
>rather than, e.g., Wakashan. But this assumption can easily fail,
>because some groups of people apparently engaged in large-scale
>migrations, and languages evidently spread even faster.
Which is why I said "very general". Ruling out Wakashan-IE is not something
I would do offhand (remember that Tsimshian-IE proposal BTW?) I'm regardless
basically certain there's nothing of the Wakashan-Khoisan or Pama-Nyungan-IE
sort. When the area we're talking of is pre-inhabited, what we have evidence
for is expansions across a single continent, or somewhat more rarely, a
single ocean. But the time-depth at our disposal just isn't sufficient for
an expansion that goes across two-three of each without leaving anything
in-between, and not only because an expansion leaves a large amount of
child-groups: a child-group expanding again further in the "right" direction
is about as unlikely as any single language group expanding in the first
place (ie. not too good).


>>       But in the
>> meantime, the current proposals are the best clue we have to go on.
>
>I would not say that Nostratic or Dene-Caucasian are impossible, but
>the evidence is simply insufficient.  I indeed feel that IE, Uralic
>and probably a few others are related - but I cannot prove it.
The hypotheses need more work, that's for sure.  Just saying that there are
too many estabilish'd families for random "no preconceptions" comparisions
to be any more fruitful.

John Vertical