Re: [tied] Re: Laryngeal Loss (was Does Koenraad Elst Meet Hock´s

From: P&G
Message: 17409
Date: 2003-01-05

> > Since blood groups are not even spread around the world, but are
> > clustered and regional, and since linguistic features are also not
> > evenly spread, but clustered and regional, it is therefore to be
> >expected that there will a "high correlation" between at least
> > some blood groups, and some linguistic
> > features. Any such "high correlation" is therefore statistically
> >insignificant.

> I don't understand what you're saying.

OK, I'll rephrase. Since blood groups and languages are clumped, it is
highly likely that some blood-group-clump and some language clump will
roughly coincide. But since coincidence somewhere is highly likely, it
proves nothing.

A second and different point is that there might be another factor, namely
the roughly static nature of populations as a source for both language
clumping and blood-group clumping.

Take a real example: Blood groups are regional - for example, Kel+ is
found almost entirely in the Pacific. Language groups are regional - for
example, Polynesian is found almost entirely in the Pacific. That in itself
does not mean there is any causal connection between someone being Kel+ and
speaking Polynesian. Correlation does not equal cause. If the history of
the world had been different, Kel+ people would be speaking something else.

Here we can suggest this third factor, namely social groups which share
genes and share
a culture including related languages. But that doesn't mean the
blood-group has anything to do with the particular qualities of the
language.

Peter