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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear Corpora colleagues, are there many
publications which prove on phonological or phonetical level that classically
defined language families and other language taxons are natural and real. I mean
Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Tungus-Manchirian, Mongolic, Turkic,
Paleo-Asiatic, Sono-Tibetan, Austronesian and other classically defined language
families. It looks like some of them are not very compact from the
phono-typological point of view. It seems to me that all the world linguists are
quite happy with the defined language families, though the fundamentals of these
definitions are rather weak and obsolete. In physics, mathemathics, chemistry,
biology and other natural sciences the fundamentals of classifications are
analysed and reconsidered by every generation of the scholars. Not so in
linguistics. Or may be I am not aware of such critical works. I have calculated
the compactness of several language families from the typological point of view
and discovered that there is a great difference between them. The most compact
is the Mongolic language family Its dispersion is only 10.78%, while the
dispertion of the Tungus-Manchurian (18.60%) or Turkic (18.77%) language
families is greater. The dispersion of Finno-Ugric (24.14%) or
Indo-European (28.00%) language families is much greater. It may mean that
Finno-Ugric or Indo-European families are not natural and real families, but
some sort of conglomerations or Sprachbunds. Not to speak of the dispersion of
the Altaic (25.97%) or Uralic (28.31%) language unities which should
never be called language families if we consider a language family some more
compact language taxon. In this case, only Mongolic language family seems to be
natural and real. Should we consider the other language families language
unities or Sprachbunds? Or what? May be some sparce language unions or language
communities? Or what? Is it not the high time to define language taxons:
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1) branch; </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2) subgroup;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>3) grpoup;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>4) family;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>5) unity;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>6) union;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>7) filia;</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>8) community.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Any other taxons?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> I wish you could send me your ideas about
language families and the other language taxons to my correct e-mail
address <A href="mailto:yutamb@hotmail.com">yutamb@hotmail.com</A> Looking
forward to hearing from you soon to <A
href="mailto:yutamb@hotmail.com">yutamb@hotmail.com</A> Your sincerely Yuri
Tambovtsev </FONT></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>