Distant Native languages bridge Bering Sea (fwd link)

[John Atkinson]

phil cash cash wrote:

>Distant Native languages bridge Bering Sea
>Siberian culture's words have echo in North America
>
>By GEORGE BRYSON
>gbryson at adn.com
>Published: March 4th, 2008 12:41 AM
>
>A remote population of a few hundred indigenous Siberians who live thousands of
>miles west of Alaska speak a language that appears to be an ancient relative of
>more than three dozen Native languages in North America, experts say.
>
>A panel of respected linguists who met in Anchorage on Friday are hailing new
>research that links the Old World language of Ket, still spoken sparingly along
>the Yenisei River in western Siberia, and the sprawling New World family of
>Na-Dene languages -- a broad grouping that encompasses the many Athabascan
>tribes in Alaska, along with the Tlingit and Eyak people, as well as Indian
>populations in western Canada and the American Southwest, including the Navajo
>and the Apache.
>
>Full article link below:
>http://www.adn.com/front/story/334139.html
>  
>
Well, Comrie's certainly no lumper, and he's written about Ket 
elsewhere.  So if he says there's probably something in it, I'll go 
along with that. One wonders whether Ket and Na-Dene separated back in 
Siberia, or whether the Ket migrated back over Bering Strait some time 
in the last few thousand years.

A pity that newspaper article gives no references, presumably because 
Vajda hasn't published it yet in the open literature.   I'll be looking 
out for it when it is.

John.