Ket-Na-Dene affiliation?

[Steven Schaufele]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Colleagues,
 
My wife has just forwarded to me a Reuters story (posted on www.cnn.com)
about an article by Merritt Ruhlen appearing this week in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claiming an affiliation
between Ket, the sole surviving Yeniseian language, and the Na-Dene
family of North America.  The Reuters story begins with the (to a
historical/comparative linguist) ominous statement, `A few words in one
of the planet's most obscure languages support the theory that Native
Americans left Asia in several separate migrations', and goes on to note
that Ruhlen's paper `gives examples of 36 words that are similar in the
two language families, including the words for birch bark, children and
rabbit'. (However, the only actual lexemes mentioned in the Reuters
story are the Ket word for `birch bark' -- it's simply asserted that `in
several existing Na-Dene languages it is pronounced similarly' -- and
the Ket and Koyukon words for `breast'.)  The Reuters story goes on to
reassure us that the whole hypothesis isn't really based only on 36
lexemes: `Ruhlen found enough other similarities to convince him of the
link.  "I just picked ouit 36 for this article that looked like the best
and most obvious and strongest," he said.'
 
I'm wanting to know, does anybody subscribing to this EBB know anything
about this?  Is there anything to this proposed affiliation?  And if
not, is anybody doing anything about clarifying the issue for the
general public?  I note with great trepidation that the Reuters article
trots out mouth-watering statements like `Related words are often easy
to spot -- for instance the German word "mutter" is similar to its
English counterpart "mother", while the Russian word "brat" looks very
much like "brother" and is similar to the Latin root for words like
"fraternal".', but completely ignores any mention of such nasty little
things as false friends, etc.  Considering the trouble i go to in my
introductory courses explaining how unreliable this kind of argument is,
i'm worried about a story like this in the general press.
 
Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
 
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
 
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mail.scu.edu.tw
 
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html
 
 
 
        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
 
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***