LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.15 (05) [EN]

Fri Apr 15 17:45:10 UTC 2011

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L O W L A N D S - L - 15 April 2011 - Volume 05
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "History" 2011.04.14 (04) [EN]

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>

Subject: History

Dear Lowlanders,

Someone posted a link to an article on my Facebook page that I am sure many
of you will find interesting.

http://tinyurl.com/3fbbvxb

It asserts that recent findings point toward there having been one proto
language, i.e. one ancestor of all of today’s languages.

I don't know about Atkinson's research, I haven't read it (is it available
online somewhere?). But the Wall Street Journal article is not very
scientifically trustworthy. Look at the map. Seems pretty impressive: !Xu in
Africa with 141 phonemes and the farer away from Africa the fewer phonemes
til Piraha with just 11 phonemes. This map is pure nonsense. The picked six
languages to illustrate their point. I could pick six other languages and
the map would indicate the exact opposite.

The World Atlas of Language Structures (<http://wals.info/><http://wals.info/>)
collects information on languages and puts them into maps. They also have
maps on consonant inventory size and vowel inventory size. You can find
languages with large inventories in any part of the world and you can also
find languages with small inventories in any part of the world.

And what Atkinson found, as the article tells later, was not a steady
gradient, but just a weak gradient in the average inventory size. The whole
Pacific for example was settled by members of a single language group. If
the Polynesian proto-language had a small phoneme inventory it's descendants
obviously are also inclined to have a below-average phoneme inventory. Most
of Africa is Niger-Congo. If Proto-Niger-Congo had a large phoneme inventory
it's descendants are inclined to have a above-average phoneme inventory. I
would guess that it's extremely hard to statistically eliminate the
influence of big language families.

Perhaps Atkinson took measures to get a statistically siginificant result
from the data. Without a link to the actual research the WSJ article leaves
us in the dark.

Marcus Buck

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From: Isaac M. Davis <isaacmacdonalddavis at gmail.com>

Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.15 (03) [EN]

Hello all,

Paul Finlow-Bates wrote, in response to Ron:

Ruehlen and Greenberg have been postulating this for years, with a
classification system that ultimately unites all the world language groups.

I can't see why a single proto language should be "fringe science".  Unless
you believe that different languages were created independently, Tower of
Babel fashion, I can't envisage any mechanism of language evolution that *
doesn't* involve a single proto-language.  The alternative seems to me not
just fringe science, but no science at all.

However, whether we can actually determine the family tree, and even
reconstruct parts of that language (as Ruehlen and Greenberg claim) is
another question.

I am a layperson at the moment, and certainly have no data to back up my
opinions, but I've long thought that it would be possible for language
ability to develop without there being one ancestral language. Language is
at its roots a system of symbols, and although it's helpful to share your
set of symbols with others, people outside your immediate family group, it
also contributes to group cohesion to have your own set of symbols that
aren't shared. If the human race began as several related tribal groups, say
in the Rift Valley, then there would never have been any 'political'
situation, as it were, that would have caused them to speak the same
language, rather than sharing some words (but not all) with the groups more
closely related to you and having next to no vocabulary in common with
groups that are on the other end of the valley, even as all groups were
developing more complex language skills. The primary function of language,
in a situation like that, is in-group communication, not communication with
other groups.

If there were a Proto-World language, on the other hand, I tend to think
that it would be next-to-impossible to reconstruct, regardless of what
Greenberg (I'm not familiar with Ruehlen) would have you believe.

Best,

Isaac M. Davis

-- 

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master."
—Abraham Lincoln

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