Linguistic and Genetic Diversity (was: Clicks)

[Joel Kuipers]

This topic of Linguistic and Genetic Diversity strikes me as a perfect topic 
for a session at the AAA this November in San Jose.

I hope someone is planning a session that addresses this issues! The 
deadline is Friday, March 31 at 5 pm EST.

Go to http://www.aaanet.org/ to submit on line.

Joel Kuipers, president, SLA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alexandre Enkerli" <enkerli at gmail.com>
Cc: <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:24 AM
Subject: [Linganth] Linguistic and Genetic Diversity (was: Clicks)


> Adi Hastings wrote:
>> I was frankly surprised and alarmed to hear job talks which referred 
>> linguistic and genetic phenotypic groupings without distinction.
> As Ron put us in the mood to be charitable...
> Maybe these references are more like vague analogies than actual 
> assumptions about links between the two? Several language scientists seem 
> to use similar analogies, looking at linguistic classifications as 
> analogous to biological classifications. Some even call language families 
> a "genetic model" and mutual intelligibility to delimit languages seems 
> quite close a criterion to inter-fecundity in delimiting species (among 
> non-biologists).
> Daniel Netlle goes even further and links biological and linguistic 
> diversities in a more deterministic manner. Didn't get good critiques from 
> students on the subject yet but it's interesting to unpack these notions. 
> Not that they're completely absurd. In fact, Nettle's model problematizes 
> some widely-held (among non-biologists) notions of biological diversity 
> and the determinism has more to do with cultural ecology than with 
> neo-evolutionism (though the two are clearly linked).
>
> Call me naive but isn't it possible that genetics have become so prominent 
> in "popular science" that a folk model of biology serves as the basis for 
> some of our basic tropes in para-academic discourse?
> More importantly, is there money available for a project to map the 
> linguistic genome? ;-)
>
> Alexandre
> http://enkerli.wordpress.com/