proto-proto-proto...

[Jonathan Lighter]

"Rip a new one" goes standard.

JL




On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: proto-proto-proto...
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sally Thomason rips Pagel a new on on Language Log...
>
> http://goo.gl/2M4j1
>
>      VS-)
>
> On 5/8/2013 11:48 AM, Baker, John wrote:
> > Several articles on this research have now appeared.  For convenience,
> I'll list the most interesting ones here, though some of them have already
> been linked.
> >
> > The original research and supporting information is at
> > http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110
> >
> > The Washington Post article, which started the discussion, is at
> >
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html
> > (Note that long links may break across lines.)  This is perhaps the most
> interesting discussion, with a linked chart and spoken pronunciations,
> although the writer made several rookie mistakes.
> >
> > ScienceNow has probably the most knowledgeable account, reprinted on
> Huffington Post at
> >
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/ultraconserved-words-ice-age-language-study_n_3228664.html
> >
> > History.com also has a good account, at
> > http://www.history.com/news/do-you-speak-ice-age
> >
> > NPR also seems to get it, at
> >
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/182040665/study-fossil-words-are-older-than-we-thought
> >
> > The LA Times writer apparently knows something about the subject,
> working in a bit on the cognates of "fart":
> >
> http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ice-age-language-ancestor-superfamily-eurasia-20130507,0,1515430.story
> >
> > Several of these have extensive comments, although the commenters tend
> not to be very knowledgeable.
> >
> > My own take, for what it's worth, is that the researchers have made a
> strong case that a handful of common words have cognates in multiple
> language families and probably predate the prototypes of the language
> families.  However, great caution should be used in assessing this
> evidence's relevance to language superfamilies.
> >
> > The less knowledgeable popular commentary has in several cases
> constructed speeches using these words and speculated that an ancient
> speaker could understand at least part of them.  Heck, I have enough
> trouble understanding Chaucer, and that's English.  I don't think someone
> speaking French or German - arguably the two modern languages most closely
> related to English - would be able to follow any of those speeches.  It's
> ridiculous to think that someone from 15,000 years ago could understand
> them.
> >
> >
> > John Baker
>
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