14.3055, Media: New Scientist Review of Forster and Toth

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Mon Nov 10 16:31:42 UTC 2003


LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-3055. Mon Nov 10 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.3055, Media: New Scientist Review of Forster and Toth

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1)
Date:  Fri, 07 Nov 2003 20:41:48 +0000
From:  Mark Liberman <myl at cis.upenn.edu>
Subject:  New Scientist review of Forster and Toth

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 07 Nov 2003 20:41:48 +0000
From:  Mark Liberman <myl at cis.upenn.edu>
Subject:  New Scientist review of Forster and Toth

The November-December issue of New Scientist includes a badly-informed
and credulous review of Forster and Toth, 'Toward a phylogenetic
chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic, and Indo-European', PNAS
(2003), which Larry Trask discussed more critically in Linguist
14.1876. The New Scientist review begins with the extraordinary claim
that ''[e]ver since Darwin proposed an evolutionary tree to describe
the descent of species, linguists have sought to apply the concept in
their own field... Now historical linguists may stand to benefit by
borrowing a second idea from evolutionary biology.''

I've discussed this review at somewhat greater length, with
appropriate links, in

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000094.html

Language-Family:  Indo-European; Code: IE

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