Clicks

[Eve Danziger]

--On Tuesday, March 28, 2006 10:05 AM -0500 Ronald Kephart 
<rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:

I don't
> (necessarily) read into Shreeve's statement any notion
> that San DNA codes for click consonants; my charitable
> reading is that since San DNA appears to reflect a
> long-lasting lineage, an unusual (from a non-San
> perspective) feature such as clicks are also long-lasting
> remnants of the language spoken earlier in the lineage's
> history. It just seems to me that their rarity could just
> as easily reflect a fairly recent innovation.

I think you're being too charitable. Why else refer to the 
other African groups who also "carry ancient DNA" and who 
also use clicks, unless to appear to be bringing evidence 
in favor of the position that the DNA and the clicks go 
together?  At the very least, this is an invited inference 
from the collocation.

 "The San communicate with clicks to keep from spooking 
game-- a feature that is also found in languages spoken by 
other African groups who carry ancient DNA markers."

The position that clicks represent an "ancient" way of 
doing language is not at all new (although reprehensible 
and now discredited). The link in the original version was 
between the rarity of this phonology and the 
"primitiveness" (on 19th century scales of cultural 
evolution) of subsistence and technology among the San. But 
what's really noteworthy to me in this NGS passage is in 
fact the translation of this old stuff into the 
hyper-modern idiom of genetics. It's only because we had 
the 19th century notion that the San were somehow "ancient" 
in the first place that we could commit the (bio)logical 
absurdity of imagining that 21st century DNA is any older 
in one part of the world than another.

Eve

P.S. There is perhaps some room for charity/ deniability in 
the way the sentence is structured. Maybe the clause "who 
carry ancient DNA markers" could be read to apply only to 
the other groups, as a piece of colorful specification 
about them -- "also found in languages spoken by other 
African groups, who wear interesting hats". In that case 
the passage says nothing at all about San DNA. But note 
that I've had to add a comma to get that reading.