Evolution and language.

[Robert L. Rankin]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

This week's issue of _Science_ (vol. 284:2124-2128), the journal of the
American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, has a review article by W.
Ford Doolittle, entitled "Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal
Tree", which surveys current views of classification in Molecular Biology.
Those interested particularly in linguistic classification might find the
paper worth reading, although, as you might guess, no basic questions will
be resolved, but some provocative ones are posed, including "What if
Phylogenetic Classification is Just Let Go?" (pp. 2127f.).  There are
"synchronic thinkers" and "diachronic thinkers" among biologists too, and
Linguists can probably expect to hear more of this sort of thing in the
future.

If you do not have access to the journal, it is possible that the article
can be viewed at http://www.sciencemag.org

Bob Rankin
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045-2140 USA