<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt">ah, yet another example of a misguided use of computational approaches based on simplistic understanding of language. and especially diachronic linguistics Historically, there wasn't any language we might call Danish until ca 1100 [i.e. after the Norman Conquest] or so when the Old East Norse dialect started to split into Danish and Swedish. Since that development is well documented historically, any analysis that posits a "closer" relationship between "English" and "Danish" that fails to explain why that would not then also be the case for English and Swedish is just another lovely "correlation proves causation" fallacy of which we already have quite enough.<br><br>In other words, [attention, rant follows], you have to do heaps of background research before you toss innocent data into the hungry maws of the
compunaut....<br><br>and just to remind, genetic background, genetic distribution doesn't have to have anything to do with what languages are spoken. Ethnic groups routinely add, dump, or replace languages with wild abandon. As the Endangered Language Fund points out, about 50% of the worlds' 7000 languages will disappear this century.<br><br>and on that happy note,<br><br>Best wishes,<br><br>Charles<br><br><br><div><span><br></span></div><div> </div><div>*************<br>Charles Hall, Ph.D., dr.h.<br>University of Memphis, Department of English<br>Applied Linguistics and EFL/ESL<br>901.313.4496<br><br></div><div>www.charleshall.info www.l4law.org<br> <div style="font-family: garamond, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Nicholas Sanders
<nix@semiotek.org><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> corpora@uib.no <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Friday, November 30, 2012 5:46 PM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Corpora-List] English is close to Sandinavian languages<br> </font> </div> <br>
<meta http-equiv="x-dns-prefetch-control" content="off"><div id="yiv148537218"><div><div><div>On 30 Nov 2012, at 14:34, Patrick Juola <<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:juola@mathcs.duq.edu" target="_blank" href="mailto:juola@mathcs.duq.edu">juola@mathcs.duq.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="yiv148537218Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;orphans:2;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;float:none;">There's a well-attested history of English and the rest of the Germanic languages that puts English fairly firmly in the West Germanic family along with Frisian and Saxon, and at a greater distance, Dutch and standard German.</span></blockquote></div><div><br></div>I make no claim to be fit to enter this debate, but I feel it worthwhile to
mention Stephen Oppenheimer's "<span style="background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Origins of the British</span>" which<div><br></div><div><h1 class="yiv148537218parseasinTitle" style="font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0px;margin-top:0px;background-color:rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="3"><span class="yiv148537218Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre;"> </span>… demonstrates that the Anglo-Saxon invasions contributed just a tiny fraction (5%) to the English gene pool. Two thirds of the English people reveal an unbroken line of genetic descent from south-western Europeans arriving long before the first farmers. The bulk of the remaining third arrived between 7,000 and 3,000 years ago as part of long-term north-west European trade and immigration, especially from Scandinavia - and may have brought with them the earliest forms of English language.</font></h1><div><font size="3"><br></font></div><div><font size="3">Whether it does so demonstrate,
I (as noted) am not not qualified to say!</font></div><div>
<div><font class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="3"><span class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" style="font-size:11px;"><br><br>-- <br><br>Nicholas J A Sanders<br>___________________<br><font class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" face="'Comic Sans MS'" size="5"><span class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" style="font-size:18px;">semiotek</span></font><br><br>+44 [0]7092 153 409<br></span></font><a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:nix@semiotek.org" target="_blank" href="mailto:nix@semiotek.org" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><font class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="3"><span class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" style="font-size:11px;">nix@semiotek.org</span></font></a><font class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" face="Verdana" size="3"><span class="yiv148537218Apple-style-span" style="font-size:11px;"><br>___________________</span></font></div><div><br></div><br
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