Sino-Tibetan again (was: Re: Alexis on Wald ...)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Scott DeLancey <delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu> wrote:
 
>     Chinese and T-B, of course, are radically divergent, in structure
>as well as lexicon, and this is the primary argument for attributing
>great time depth to S-T.  But there's good reason to think that
>the reason for this divergence is an extended period of intimate
>contact between pre-Chinese and indigenous languages in south China
>(Kadai was definitely a major factor, and A-A and Austronesian
>probably also involved).  Massive areal influence of this kind can
>result in substantial changes in a language in a relatively short
>time.
 
Yes, for Min, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.  But how does that affect
Mandarin?
 
>I have no basis on which to commit myself to one guess or
>another, but in my opinion it is not at all outside the realm of
>possibility that the time depth for S-T could be as little as 4-5,000
>years.
 
On the other hand, there is no reason to ignore recorded history,
which would put the origins of the Shang dynasty c. 2,000 BC, or
archaeology, which traces the Northern Chinese Neolithic (Yangshao) to
c. 4,000 BC.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to think of the start of
the Yangshao culture as a terminus ante quem for the breakup of S-T, a
minimum time-depth of 6,000 years.
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam