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

On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, alypius wrote:

> >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, alypius wrote:
>
> Cavilli-Sforza, in connection with the human genome research project, has
> demonstrated that there is a very strong--not perfect, but very
> strong--relationship between genetic relatedness and linguistic relatedness.
I've heard of that project, of course, but merely in the newspapers...
Can you give a reference for that demonstration? Its not that I don't
believe you, it's that I'm not convinced yet ;-).

> Of course, this relationship is breaking down in modern assimilationist
> cultures with diverse immigrants, but it is true of people who continue to
> live in their native lands.
Dixon in _The rise and fall of languages_ has a lot to say about this, but
it boils down to the theory that languages develop relatively slowly under
the conditions you mention, and that only when that period of peace and
stability is broken, new languages develop (and then they develop rapidly),
thus the origin of any distinct language lies in a period of turmoil...

> When one combines the genetic evidence with the
> linguistic evidence for "Niplang's" relationship to Korean, I would not
> regard the evidence as merely additive, but multiplicative.  I was not
> making my statement on the basis of genetic evidence *alone*.  In
> comparison, the Finns are genetically Germans, but no one claims that
> Finnish is related to German--it was clearly learned from the Saami.
> However, if Finnish had numerous similarities to German--which it does
> not--it would then be logical to conclude, with a high degree of
> probability, that Finnish was a derivative of German, as are the people.
>
I'm not at all familiar with Finnish - my contact with the language is
limited to one ancient grammar (in French), a Teach Yourself booklet and a
few words encountered in a roleplaying game, but if the facts are as you
state, then trying to use evidence from genetics would be actively
misleading in the case of Finnish, and superfluous in the case that Finnish
would be a Germanic language...

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