Oldest words in English?

[Joseph Salmons]

This looks like a followup on the work Pagel and co-authors published
in Nature in 2007. They are serious evolutionary biologists trying to
apply their methods to comparative linguistics, with often predictable
reactions from many historical linguists.

I have to assume that Pagel was clear about these being sound
correspondences rather than the 'same words' in the sense you get from
the article. I assume the claim is that the correspondence should go
back 40,000 years to some kind of pre-pre-pre-Proto-Indo-European
community. Still, the connection between 'I' and an IE form like
*Heg-  would be only ca. 6,000 years old, and I'm curious what kind of
forms 40,000 years of time depth would get us.


On Feb 26, 2009, at 10:37 AM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
> Subject:      Oldest words in English?
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>
> Either the TIMES reporter was totally inept, or Dr. Pagel knows very
> little
> about language. The article is filled with nonsense. For example,
> the articl=
> e=20
> says in effect that the English numerals and the pronoun "I" would
> have been=
> =20
> intelligible to persons alive 10,000 or more years ago. This is
> obvious=20
> nonsense. The English numerals and pronouns were not even pronounced
> 1000 ye=
> ars ago as=20
> they are today. Moreover, the article seems to suggest that, just
> because=20
> modern languages use pronouns, any language that uses pronouns must
> be=20
> historically related. This is ridiculous, whether you are a
> Chomskyite ("pro=
> nouns are=20
> wired into the human brain") or a Skinnerite ("pronouns are so
> useful that=20
> people would be likely to invent them if their language didn't have
> them").
>
> Of course, it IS true that "By comparing these languages, it is
> possible to=20
> work out how and when they diverged, and to trace the evolutionary
> history o=
> f=20
> individual words." But this is scarcely news. Linguists have been
> doing that=
> =20
> for 150 years. AMERICAN HERITAGE dictionary used to publish a
> supplement=20
> containing ProtoIndoEuropean roots. But no one has ever claimed that
> the fir=
> st humans=20
> spoke PIE.
>
>
> In a message dated 2/26/09 4:07:32 AM,
> wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG writes=
> :
>
>
>> The BBC ran an item this morning on research into the oldest words
>> in the
>> language, picking up a story in The Times:
>> =20
>> =A0 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7911645.stm
>> =A0 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5805522.ece
>> =20
>> "Dr Pagel has recently been able to track the evolutionary history
>> of Indo=
> -
>> European back almost 30,000 years, using a new IBM supercomputer.
>> He said
>> that some of the oldest words were well over 10,000 years old."
>> =20
>> Is much known to anyone on the list about the methodology involved?
>> =20
>> =20
>> --
>> Michael Quinion
>> Editor, World Wide Words
>> E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
>> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>> =20
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> =20
>> =20
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