Re: One World Language

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 1377
Date: 2000-02-04

>I wonder if anyone else saw this article?
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020100sci-archaeo->language.html

One world language... well, not quite yet. Wait a couple hundred years and
we'll see what us linguists have accomplished with our bickering. :)

I'm not sure if I had seen this article before but some interesting things
in there. It mentions Greenberg's idea of a common pronoun for first person
in *n and one for second person in *m amongst Amerind and Eurasiatic
languages. I've been stating my DeneCaucasian theory with the following
similar pronouns, *ni and *ngu. As well, there is truely a strong pronominal
correlation amongst Amerind languages as the article states. I've observed
it myself and it parallels my DeneCaucasian pronominal pattern (which is
supposed to be seperate from Amerind lgs and yet still bares some
similarities):

SINGULAR PLURAL
1rst *ni *tLu
2nd *ngu *Lu

The Amerind languages often have a pronoun with *m- in the plural second
person and *k- in the singular second person. DeneCaucasian *ng- and Amerind
*k- can obviously be related in context with the pronominal set as a whole.
In fact, Guillaume has been mentioning this *m- second person but in context
with Austronesian (Tagalog /mo/ alongside /ikaw/ for "you")... makes ya
think.

The article also mentions that Na-Dene is related to Ket (this is the
traditional DeneCaucasian theory). Ket however is probably related closer to
Burushaski. So we may as well say that Na-Dene is also related to that
language too or rather that Na-Dene is related to a BuruYen or a
KetBurushaski language group.

Have to say though that a "Korean-Japanese-Ainu group" is disturbing and
unfounded. Because of Greenberg's methodology of "mass comparison" he may be
from time to time observing similarities that are nothing more than
borrowings between languages. Hence this group is really a group of seperate
languages that have borrowed vocabulary from each other over a long period
of time. Korean is more likely the most ancient branch of Altaic (Turkish,
Mongolian, etc). Japanese is probably a later offshoot of the same family, a
distinct branch from the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungic and Manchus branches.

Ainu on the other hand has potential relationship to Austronesian. Might I
also add that this is based on _linguistic analysis_ and not on genetics.
John accidentally connects Ainu with Korean and Japanese based on genetics.
If so, we should expect some linguistic reasons for this from him on top of
the genetic evidence - he's so far been silent, relying on politics and
counting who thinks who's correct rather than facing these important issues,
oh well.

I hate the conclusion to this article. It refers to ProtoWorld connections
like *tik and such that just ooze stupidity. Proto-World is far from the
agenda yet until we can figure out Dene-Caucasian or even Nostratic in
greater detail. His Eurasiatic seems now to be nothing more than
uninformative re-hashing of Nostratic linguistics, except with lesser
exactitude.

In the end, Greenberg is probably right in a general sense about these
languages but he doesn't go into much linguistic analysis and his
methodology is troublesome when it comes to reaping this detail. Because of
this, as cocky as it may sound, I almost feel as though he knows much less
than I do about these long-range language groups and it's not as if I'm
formerly trained as a linguist but... c'mon Josef get with the millenium!

Grammatical analysis and a scientific search for sound correspondances are a
much more rewarding and faster way of establishing linguistic links than his
mass-comparison anyday.

- gLeN







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