Re: CHAT: Genetics: was: CHAT: minimum phonemes, was vrindo

On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, From Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tunuframe.Html wrote:

>
> i know little of korean language, but the little i've learned shows jap and
> korean are very close (amazingly close imho). then you may want to compare
> the jap 5th and 6th century-tumbs with other mounds in korea. i don't want to
> back korean claims about all that (a korean friend told me that "nara" means
> "our land" in old korean (?), and that the legend goes that koreans settled
> in the plain of nara), but i mean : come on. even recent jap articles claim
> that the yamato conquest and the emishi retreat to the north were so slow (a
> thousand years' span) that a bit more help from jap scholars themselves would
> clear up the whole thing and show that jap language owes to both. what is
> unique in japanese is not their origin, but the way they distorted them. and
> though i must say that the current trend for emishi curios in japan may
> result in unbiased conclusions.
>
> mathias
>
Well, I don't want to dispute that Korean and Japanese have some very
close affinity - I just want to point out that linguistic affiliations,
genetic affiliations and archeological cultures need not have very much
to do with each other, and that it is in fact dangerous to link them
too closely.

Very few linguists have enough knowledge of areal genetics or archeology
to adequately interpret the findings from those field; and the same
holds for geneticists and archeologists. Most non-linguists have a very,
well, naive, idea of what a language family is and what exactly the
value of a stammbaum and the associated time-depths is. Actually, a lot
of linguists tend to be rather naive in that respect too!

This is a point where I think I cannot push Dixon's _The rise and fall
of languages_ enough - Nik was very right in recommending it. I think
it's an essay that's about as important as de Saussures Linguistique
Generale, and that everyone should read it!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt